Visual Historical Methods: Problems, Prospects, Applications

Perlmutter, David D.

doi:10.1080/01615440.1994.10594231

Cited by 19 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…The process is more mythologizing than reporting. The fact that a popular "image" can be symbolic, stand for something (e.g., a place, event, idea, feeling, political stance), is uncontroversial in the study of history, entertainment media, and politics (Perlmutter, 1994). We use the term "generic news icon" to refer to icons who fall into repeated iterations or genres, where people may recall the type but not necessarily (or in addition to) one special instance of it: starving child in Africa, protester being beaten by police, political leaders shaking hands.…”

Section: News Photographs As Iconsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These iconic images are prominent quantitatively (in a number of occurrences across many sites over time) and in their location within the news stream (front page of the newspaper, lead of the newscast). More to the point, they are metonymic—such that one thing stands for something else, to recall larger historical events (Perlmutter, 1994). These are tropes that stand in for World War II, “Black Power” protests against racism at the 1968 Olympics, the 1989 Tiananmen protests and crackdown in Beijing, Black Lives Matters protests, and so on.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Influence-Network Model of the Photojournalistic Icon

Dahmen

Mielczarek

Perlmutter

2018

Journalism & Communication Monographs

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Iconic images are those that rise to the forefront of our collective, visual public consciousness to become the defining, enduring image of an event: a naked Vietnamese girl screaming out in pain following a napalm attack, U.S. Marines raising the American flag at Iwo Jima, and a German dirigible engulfed in flames and falling to the ground. Iconic images have a discursive value that helps citizens navigate and understand the political and social contexts of complex events. Traditionally, news photographs became iconic largely through their prominent placement on the front pages of elite newspapers across the globe. But, undeniably, in the age of digital news, mobile phones/tablets, and social media, the media component has changed the equation for the formation of iconic imagery and collective visual consciousness. With the speed, ease of access, and abundance of information sources available in the current age, a volume of images can now represent a significant (or not so significant) event. This monograph traces the development of iconic image literature and then proposes a model termed the “influence-network model of the photojournalistic icon,” which predicts how photographs of events become iconic (or not).

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Section: News Photographs As Iconsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence-Network Model of the Photojournalistic Icon

Dahmen

Mielczarek

Perlmutter

2018

Journalism & Communication Monographs

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“…They suggest a method of visual historiography and display visual history (cf. Perlmutter, 1994). It is of great importance, then, for communication researchers to dissect the production, content, and reception of such socially important ideas, words, and images.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manufacturing visions of society and history in textbooks

Perlmutter

1997

Journal of Communication

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Interviews with personnel involved in designing secondary-school social-science textbooks, and the findings of previous research in the sociology of work in mass media organizations, reveal three, often complementary, domains of control that influence textbook visual content: (a) industrial-the meaning, relevance, and historical or social significance of an image directed through captioning and accuracy guidelines; (b) commercial-marketing pressures that make aesthetic appeal of great importance to the textbook's production success; and (c) social-interest groups that influence the visual components of the textbook, but because of space limitations the game is zero-sum. This study finds that, in all, the textbook vision of society is homogenized and sanitized to reduce the risk of controversy.

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“…39 Guides to visual methodologies were already becoming available in the 1990s, 40 and 'the visual' has since become a significant growth area, used widely in anthropology, cultural studies, film and media studies, sociology and visual communication, as well as history and the history of art. Articles, monographs, and visual essays have proliferated, with more coming out each year.…”

Section: Interdisciplinary Approaches To Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%