Photographs as Primary Sources

Read Borchert, chapters 4-6, Conclusion, and skim Appendix B. (Also review the class handout, "Using Visual Documents"). Then answer these questions:

1) What, in Borchert's view, was the overall effect of the alley environment on those who lived there?

2) Which source materials are most effective in supporting this argument?

3) Looking back over the photographs in this book, do you find that they were essential to supporting the argument?

4) Choose one photograph that Borchert used most effectively. Explain why you believe that this one was particularly well selected and discussed.

5) What weaknesses do you see in Borchert's use of photos? Could he have done better with the same photo? Or does the weakness lie in the source material itself?

In addition to Borchert, look at the photographs that supported Jacob Riis's 1890 expose of slum housing in New York, How the Other Half Lives, or look at Lewis Hine's photographs of immigrant life and child labor: http://www.authentichistory.com/images/postcivilwar/jacob_riis/contents.html or http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Davis/photography/images/hinephotos/slideshow2.html

6) How can you tell that the photographer is deliberately using the camera to make a point?

7) Despite their limitations, how could these photos be helpful to an historian of everyday life?