Teaching with Photographs

All too often, historians use photographs simply to illustrate what they’ve already learned from other sources. But how can we use photographs as primary sources in and of themselves to understand the past? In this interactive webinar, we’ll consider photographs as material objects, thinking about what their physical form can tell us about how they were made and used. Together, we’ll look at some oft-used photographs from American history, thinking about the stories they can tell us. Finally, I hope we can look together at some photographs submitted by webinar participants, thinking about how we could approach them with our students.