How Do We Make History Out of Pictures?

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 1) define specific cultures and eras, 2) affect the development and reception of thoughts, ideas, or concepts, and 3) influence and give meaning to the visual art