Imaging the French Revolution Discussion
Imaging the French Revolution Discussion
               
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1. Are images vital sources of historical knowledge that have been insufficiently exploited?
 
images as sources Lynn Hunt, 5-31-03, 5:48 PM
RE: images as sources Wayne Hanley, 6-6-03, 9:29 AM
RE: Images as Sources (June 22, 2003) Barbara Day-Hickman, 6-22-03, 4:40 PM
reading images Lynn Hunt, 6-23-03, 10:44 PM
historical knowledge Vivian Cameron, 7-5-03,
5:15 PM
Some belated comments Warren Roberts, 7-9-03,
10:53 AM
A postscript Warren Roberts 7-9-03, 11:28 AM
More on images as sources Joan B. Landes, 7-12-03,
2:33 PM
RE: More on images as sources Vivian Cameron
7-26-03, 4:22 PM

Subject: RE: More on images as sources
Posted By: Vivian Cameron
Date Posted: 7-26-03, 4:22 PM

Joan’s comments are a welcome response to some of the problems I, as an art historian, had with some of the questions. First, for the art historian, the image is the primary document. That visual text then is read in conjunction with written texts that can identify characters, events, actions, and the like, but the visual image is privileged over the textual evidence. Second, as I state in my reply to question 5, regardless of the intent of the author, images, just like texts, will always have multiple interpretations, which are affirmed, contested, refined, reframed. Third, these multiple interpretations are dependent upon an audience of diverse spectators, each individually different because of the multiple combinations of class, gender, race, religion, knowledge, education, family background, psychology, etc. To discover the enormous diversity of interpretations, one has only to read the multiple reactions to a single work recorded in the Salon criticism of the eighteenth century.
 
 
 
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