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• Students will consider the role of the photograph in creating historical records and shaping public sentiment about war. • Students will compare and contrast the photographic and written journalism of past and present wars. • Students will explore the role of the photographer and the photojournalist in documenting and representing historical and contemporary wartime events. • Students will explore how photographic and media-related technology has affected perceptions of historical and contemporary wartime events.
Art:21 Web Site • German Brutality & Roman Sensuality – Collier Schorr interview & clip • Dachau, 1974 – Beryl Korot art work • Deep South – Sally Mann art work Additional Web Sites • http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june03/embeds_04-01.html Transcript from Online NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, War Stories • http://www.pbs.org/ktca/americanphotography/features/war.html American Photography, A Century of War Images • http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwphome.html Library of Congress, Selected Photographs from the Civil War • http://icarus.shu.edu/HyperNewsV/get/vp/military.html Vietnam War Photographs by E. Kenneth Hoffman • http://www.ichiban1.org/html/photography.htm 1st Battalion, 50th Infantry Vietnam War Photographs • http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsowhome.html American Memory, Library of Congress Photographs from 1935-1945 • http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsachtml/fsowhome.html American Memory, Library of Congress, Photographs from 1935-1945 • http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/about.aspx?item=about_firstamd The First Amendment Center Classroom Materials • Microfiche newspapers archived at your local library • Current Newspapers and News Magazines (choose a range of local and national papers)
• What are the visual images we have of war and where do we get these images from? • What is the difference between a photograph in the news and a photograph in art? • What is the difference between a photographer and a photojournalist? • Can a photograph be fictional? Are photographs truthful? • How do photographs represent particular points of view? • What is the role of the photojournalist in times of tragedy and conflict? What is the role of the artist? • Are photojournalists and artists bound by the same restrictions responsibilities and rules? Are they protected by the same freedoms?
Photojournalist Archive – What Do We Know About War? Have students collect images from different newspapers that provide images of current wartime events from anywhere in the world. To avoid overlap suggest that students contribute images from specific newspapers or parts of the world. Create a classroom exhibit of the images and discuss the role of the photograph in documenting war. Create a group definition and description of the role of the photojournalism. (Time: One to Two 45 minute sessions) Sally Mann, the Deep South Series and Beryl Korot , Daschau, 1974 Living and working in Lexington, Virginia Mann’s series of landscape photographs, Deep South, create eerie, almost haunted images of lushly overgrown and unpopulated rural fields and ruined houses. Mann’s photographic process and imagery recall the ghosts still lurking in the American psyche about the American Civil War and its battles. In her work Daschau, 1974 Korot used video images made by the artist in Germany while following tourists in the notorious Nazi concentration camp. Presented on a video loop, the work cycles endlessly as the camera scans the site for the people that come to Dachau these days: tourists. Have students look at images of both Korot’s and Mann’s work and have them write or discuss what they see and the significance of the titles of each of the works. Ask them about what happened at these two very different places during the American Civil War and during World War II. After reading about each of the artists’ intentions and motivations for making these works, ask students what the significance is of making a work of art that revisits these places from a contemporary perspective. What are the different works’ relationships to surveillance and how is surveillance related to photojournalism? (Time: One 45 minute session) Collier Schorr & The Soldier Photographs View the Art:21 segment on artist Collier Schorr talking about her ongoing project photographing contemporary German boys in various military uniforms read the interview German Brutality & Roman Sensuality: Pictures of Soldiers in the Landscape and discuss her quote, “...I didn’t want the most incredibly heroic picture and I didn’t want the most guilty, pathetic picture. I wanted a picture that allowed them to experience their history without all the film reels that they had ever seen.” Have students talk about the relationship between the body of work she is creating and the photographs they cut out of the newspaper. Discuss the photograph as an image that can be constructed from real life and as an image that captures real life. What is the difference between these two ideas? Is one more valid or more truthful than the other? What is a voyeur and how might this term relate to Schorr’s photographs? Discuss the relationships between the terms surveillance, voyeurism, and photojournalism. (Time: One 45 minute session) Who is Leni Riefenstahl? Who is Leni Riefenstahl, the photographer Collier mentions in the following quote, “I’m not making Leni Riefenstahl’s pictures. I’m not making something that’s about the façade, I’m making something that’s about removing the security, removing the myth and then being left with something that is more human and more approachable.” Have students research this photographer comparing Riefenstahl's Web site to other Web sites that offer a different biography of events in Leni’s life. Have students discuss Collier’s quote: What is Collier saying in this quote? How does this relate to photographs made by photojournalists? What is the façade that she is referencing? What is the myth she refers to? (Time: One to two 45 minute sessions) Photographs from Around the World Introduce images on the Internet and/or in books which depict the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, and the more recent images of War. Compare and contrast the images from a single war or compare and contrast images from a range of historical wars and critique the ways in which the photographic image has changed. Ask students to describe the kind of information they receive from the images. What kinds of information are missing from the images? Who created these images? Which side of the conflict were they on? Have students suggest what the written or oral narrative might be to accompany the image. (Time: One 45 minute session) The Photograph and the Text Together Have students research actual written or oral documentation of events that they see portrayed in photographs (particular battles, particular war heroes or figures, particular settings or landscapes in textbook descriptions) using accompanying newspaper articles, personal memoirs from soldiers, etc. How does their research reinforce or re-conceive the events depicted in the photograph? (Time: One 45 minute session) To Disclose or Not to Disclose The basic foundation of our democracy is the First Amendment that guarantees freedom of expression. However, some leaders assert that to execute effective foreign policy in a dangerous world, public opinion should be protected or mediated, shielding high level decisions from public scrutiny if necessary. Discuss with your students the pros and cons of this idea. Does a well-informed citizenry that promotes and demands participation by all of its members enhance national security, or is the world so dangerous and complicated that to ensure national security we must censure certain information? How does this debate relate to the role of the photojournalist or the artist? Refer to the First Amendment, the U.N. Declaration of Freedom of Information and the National Security Act of 947; Executive Order 1233. Have students create a new description of the role of the photojournalist and list the responsibilities of providing images that others use to determine the events of war. Who are they responsible to? What are they responsible for creating? How do they represent multiple perspectives, sides, and points of view for a single event? What do these responsibilities say about history that is represented by singular images in textbooks or newspapers? (Time: One 45 minute session) Making Journalistic Choices Have students write an essay on a particular photograph from one of the wars they have viewed images from. Ask them to write about the event presented in the photograph from their own perspective, incorporating both independent research as well as their own initial responses and assumptions from the first time they saw the image. Have students choose a contemporary or historic conflict or event, either locally or abroad. Have them create a photojournalistic record of the events of that war or conflict by combining found or altered images taken from magazines, written essays and/or captions for their selected images, and/or additional drawings or sketches. (Time: Two to three 45 minute sessions)
• Have students written essays and created photographic records that take into account multiple perspectives and the way in which historic and contemporary photographic documentation is constructed? • Have students demonstrated an understanding of the difference between documenting history and interpreting history? • Have students demonstrated an understanding of the similarities and differences between a photographer and a photojournalist? • Have students creatively made their own interpretation of representing historic and/or current events? Find out if this lesson plan correlates to your state's education standards! On PBS TeacherSource do a search for "Art in the 21st Century" and click on the Standards Match icon.
While this lesson uses the artists Do-Ho Suh, Eleanor Antin, and Collier Schorr and their relationships to wartime events as its starting point, this lesson could be modified for different artists and wars, forming a unit with other lessons such as: Confronting Conflict Wartime Voices Honoring Heroes & History Did you use this lesson or generate your own activities based on ideas inspired by the lesson? Submit student art work, new lesson plans, and your comments to Art:21 and have them posted on the site. Help the Online Lesson Library grow!
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