When Writing your Paper:•Give full titles of your photographs, spell your photographer’s name CORRECTLY! Do not refer to the photographer by their first name, ALWAYS write their full name at first mention, then you may refer to their last name.
o EX: Dorothea Lange was a photographer working for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange’s most famous photograph is Migrant Mother.
•Use descriptions! A good description of a photograph will help support your analysis, observations, and conclusions.•Remember how to structure your paper:
o Strong Introduction that grabs the reader and introduces your thesis
o Body with several paragraphs (each paragraph supports a point you’re making)
o Thoughtful summary and/or conclusion that restates your thesis statement
•State what you’ve learned about the photographer and their work and how it reinforces your original perception and understanding or how you discovered new aspects of the image that you did not initially grasp.
•Consider how the work of the photographer fits into the social or cultural influences of the period in which it was made. These ideas will help you to analyze the context of the photographs you describe.
oEX: Photographs Lange made for the FSA during the Great Depression in the United States had a specific intention to raise awareness of the plight of desperate farmers by documenting their lives and environment.
•Comparison can be an effective method of analyzing photographs. If you write about photographs made recently, you may want to compare it to a similar type of photograph made at an earlier time (or vice versa) and discuss the influence and/or differences. You could also compare your photographer’s work to other photographers working at the same time, or perhaps were influenced by your photographer. In researching the photographs, it should become clear what these influences and contrasts are. Do not force a comparison that is awkward or incorrect.Opportunity for Corrections:If you hand in your paper on time, you will have the chance to make corrections on your returned paper. I will mark it with corrections, you will make the necessary corrections and resubmit the corrected paper. I will then adjust your grade based on the corrections. Resources:
