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(University of London International Programmes)

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(The Camera Never Lies - The Use of Images)

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[Dr Emmett Sullivan] Clearly the skills which are required to interpret a photograph or a film

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are not bespoke purely to those two visual mediums.

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And in fact it has been a part of a broader canvas, if you forgive the pun, of historical resarch

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to look at images and the importance of images over time.

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We can gain a great deal from seeing what was represented to a culture or society

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and how that in itself reflected on their opinions.

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You can get it through maps, pictures, drawings, and the built environment.

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Now consider the importance of the portrait, the painted portrait.

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Very staged, looking directly at the object,

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the subject itself to be surrounded by belongings or in a particular setting,

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which is significant to the person concerned.

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That will allow in an individual to make a statement through the way that they're painted,

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but also the historian to go back and interrogate that for those meanings,

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and to help shed some light on their status and their perspective in society.

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Or consider cartoons.

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Being able to take the the mickey, make fun of politicians of the time, to satirize them,

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to make comment about their status beyond simply a deconstruction of their speeches,

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their debates or their law-making.

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All of this has been used widely by historians

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and will be areas of interpretation which are familiar to the public.

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And its true in the 20th century as much as any other time.

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We use images from paintings and other representations

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to take significance from a particular image or moment.

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When we come to any image, there is slightly a concern about what we are seeing.

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If it's painted, we know that it's posed, we know that it's been taken over time.

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One of the questions that's been put forward about the use of photographs as historical record

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is what happened the millisection before?

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What happened the millisecond after?

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What's happened to the left and the right, to above and below the frame?

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We are having captured one moment historically.

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And to use a slightly flippant example,

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if you go back to Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind,

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midway through the discussion it's raised: if there are so many millions of photographs taken,

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why have none ever shown a UFO?

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Now I know that's a slightly ridiculous and fictitious example, but the principle applies.

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If you look at the now, the 21st Century,

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the number of images which are taken - CCTV, mobile phones, etc. etc. -

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yet key incidents in history are never recorded in that manner.

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So, we need to think about the prevalence of the image

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against what that image actually means, at the time that it is taken.

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And I'd just like you to just pause and think about images which have resonated for you,

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Your own personal histories, your family, 
etcetera.,

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and the circumstances around those.

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How much are you invested in an image

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because of the memories that it triggers as much as what it actually shows?

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(University of London International Programmes)