When we study history, we can learn nearly as much from visual sources as we can from written texts. Paintings and photographs--to name the two most common kinds of visual sources--can  tell us a great deal about times and places very different from our own. To use visual sources we have to ask critical questions about them as well. As students of history, we want to look at pictures as a form of evidence. Like written texts, pictures are another avenue into understanding a particular time and place. A painting or a photograph may have aesthetic value as well; that is, we may value it for its beauty or the artistic skill with which it was made, but for our purposes as students of history the picture's context is a more important consideration. What do we mean by context? Here is a definition we can use when we look at a visual source: 

Context: A set of interrelated conditions (such as social, economic, political) that 

• define specific cultures and eras
• affect the development and reception of thoughts, ideas, or concepts, and
• influence and give meaning to the visual art

Examine this photograph of Luna Park, one of the great amusement parks built at Coney Island at the beginning of the twentieth century. When this photograph was taken Coney Island was one of the most famous and celebrated places in the world.
 
 

Looking at this picture, we can ask this question: What is the relationship between the picture and its context?  What contextual information would help you to interpret or analyze this 1905 photograph? What would you want to know about the United States in 1905--or about New York City in 1905? What would you want to know about Coney Island? In other words, what kind of historical questions would you want to ask about the photograph in order to interpret it, to use it as a form of evidence?

Painting, like photography, can open our eyes to aspects of the past that we might not otherwise see. Here, for example, is a 1787 French painting that might help us learn more about the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. It's called "The Death of Socrates."
 

The question of contextual knowledge is a little trickier here. Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher (he died in 399 B.C.) who was put on trial and convicted by a jury of Athenian citizens of corrupting the youth of Athens with his ideas, which he spoke openly on the streets of the city. He was put to death by the government of Athens. So for us, as students of history in the year 2000, David's painting has a double context: it shows us what an eighteenth-century French painter thought about an ancient Greek philosopher. Why would a picture of Socrates's death--the death of a man celebrated in Western culture as a symbol of rational freedom--be a desirable subject for a painter in late eighteenth-century France? Remember: David painted this picture during the Enlightenment and just before the French Revolution. 

What's the difference between looking at a painting and looking at a photograph?  Do the differences between the two media affect our use of them as historical evidence? Do we need to think about them differently? Two on-line exhibitions can help you explore these questions while looking at powerful and historically important art. 

1. Look at the paintings (and read the supporting material) on the "Ashcan" School of American artists (The Ashcan Exhibit) put on the Web by the Smithsonian Institution. Did these artists have a common subject? How would you describe that subject? Do these paintings have social or political point of view? If they do, what is that point of view? How can you relate this visual art to American history in the early 20th century?

2. Look at the photographs (and read the supporting material) gathered in this on-line exhibition about photography during the Great Depression (Depression Photographs). What do Walker Evans's photographs communicate to you about the time, place, and people they document? Are photographs a more objective kind of historical evidence than paintings? Does the camera ever "lie"?