Click here to edit contents of this page.
Click here to toggle editing of individual sections of the page (if possible). Watch headings for an "edit" link when available.
Append content without editing the whole page source.
Check out how this page has evolved in the past.
If you want to discuss contents of this page - this is the easiest way to do it.
View and manage file attachments for this page.
A few useful tools to manage this Site.
See pages that link to and include this page.
Change the name (also URL address, possibly the category) of the page.
View wiki source for this page without editing.
View/set parent page (used for creating breadcrumbs and structured layout).
Notify administrators if there is objectionable content in this page.
Something does not work as expected? Find out what you can do.
General Wikidot.com documentation and help section.
Wikidot.com Terms of Service - what you can, what you should not etc.
Wikidot.com Privacy Policy.
For homework we read and viewed the Gardner photo book of the Civil War. In class we discussed the book and, more specifically, how to interpret its photographs. Dr. Witt gave us the following guidelines:
1. What do you see?
2. Patterns?
3. Hierarchy?
4. Interpretations?
As an example, we discussed the photograph of the porch-sitters (plate 24, page 11).
We began with what we saw: figures sitting on the steps leading to a porch, in nice clothes, a few looking at the camera, organized in a triangle, with pillars and the door leading to the house behind them. All the figures were white except a woman standing off to the back and side, who was black and dressed in maid's clothing. Overgrown foliage surrounded the porch and a white trellis rested next to the black woman, who wore a bright white apron/dress. The middle of the picture was the lightest.
We then moved on to patterns we saw. We saw the white group in a triangle — Dr. Witt called it the dynamic artistic shape through history, a way for painters to lead audiences into their pictures — with the black woman standing outside the triangle. The pillars and trellis and standing figures made for a repetition of vertical lines, and the picture was fairly symmetric over a vertical axis (with the exception of the black woman and the trellis).
As for hierarchy, we saw that the white group was looking in different directions — some to the camera, some to each other, and some off into space. The black woman, meanwhile, faced her head towards the camera, but was watching the white group with a sideways glance. Of the group, she seemed the only one not excited to be in the picture; the others sat or stood erect with pride, all taking themselves very seriously, but the woman leaned back on the porch, seemingly exasperated. Her presence had irony: she was obviously not included in the central white group that was photographed (she stood apart from the group and the group turned its back on her) yet she was still in the picture, and from her expression we can guess that others invited her to be there. Furthermore, as much as the others in the picture ignored her, her white dress and the tressil next to her are the lightest, are most attention-grabbing parts of the image.
We interpreted that the woman, deliberately or accidentally, was a metaphor for African Americans in the country. She stood apart from the white group — they were concerned only with one another — yet her presence was felt: her dress was the brightest part of the image; she disrupted the symmetry of the image; she stood between the tressil and the white group (somewhere between machinery and personhood). The whites occupied the stairs that granted access to the house. To get into the house herself, she either needed to hop onto the porch — a tough leap — or imitate the white group and walk back, around, and up the steps. In short, the white group did not acknowledge her presence, but the viewer very clearly felt it.
In the last paragraph I said tressil. I meant trellis.
Today each group presented their analysis of other pictures from Gardner's photographic sketchbook, using the same four-step methodology we used together the day before. we analyzed plates 27, 41, 94, and 99, to use the sketchbook's own numbering.
Plate 27: This picture was marked by symmetry, the two tents, the 4 people, and buy the lack of space—with the woods in the background being quite impenetrable. Triangles are very prevalent, the tents and tent openings form triangles, and the servant and the broom-thingy both are positioned in a similar spot in front of each. At the same time the breaks in symmetry or incongruities stand out much more, such as the fact that one of the men is black, and only he is working, and that the one man he is apparently serving is oft to the side and facing a different direction from the rest. Overall this picture is more reconciliationist, the symmetry and harmony can represent a reunification of the south and north, and the instances were the black servant is set apart shows how civil rights might have to be sacrificed for the reunification.
Plate 41: This picture was one of the few to have only one person in it, it also seemed to be the most likely staged. the picture is dominated by the rock in the scene, both the man made fortification and the natural bolder—the man and horizon or both confined to the corners of the picture. also all three objects are mainly horizontal, only the rifle's verticality breaks this trend. both the dead soldiers isolation and his location in a cranny on a hill seem uncharacteristic of civil war warfare. The dead soldier also looks remarkably peaceful, as if he tried to get as comfortable as he could for his death, and his contrary to the prominence of facial hair during the later 19th century, he is clean-shaven. this is probably due to the apparent staging of this picture.
Plate 94: This picture's focus is the eerie wagon of remains. The bodies are fairly linear, especially the skulls, and the crouching man, the only living being facing the camera, caps that line, his head being were another skull would be. In the background, other people are digging graves for the remains. The figures in the background also show up much better against the ground than the man and wagon in the foreground. overall, the grave-diggers are so arranged that wherever one looks the eyes will be drawn toward one of them. There is the irony that these men died in part to free black from slavery and forced labor, and yet blacks are the only ones there to bury them. because of this Irony the picture is reconciliationist, it forms a concrete example of the war not changing the historical hierarchy between whites an blacks.
Plate 99: this last picture is perhaps the most orderly. The people are certainly in the most definite arrangement, in an orderly grid with the men on top, women below, and child on the bottom, representing the hierarchy of the age. also they are all weigh. the various Fences visible in the scene form a wall along with the house, and the line of trees form a colonnade perpendicular the the fences. one can almost imagine that another line of trees lined the opposite side of the doorway, completing the symmetry. As to the subject matter, the treaty signifying the end of the war was signed in the house, adding yet another example of two sides coming together. Lastly the door to the house is open, signifying that the treaty is the way forward, and zoom of the camera weighs the house more clearly than the people on the steps. This picture is undeniably reconciliationist, the open door, subject matter, symmetry, and hierarchy of the people, and omission of blacks imply harmony through coming together and gloss over the issues sidelined by that view.