2nd Rough Draft

Through the years, many things change and many things stay the same. One example of this that almost everyone should be able to relate to is school. This is a prime example because during the years, there are aspects of school that change, but yet the main idea in education stays the same, meaning that no matter what year it is, or what state you're in, school aim to give the best education possible and are found teaching the important things kids need to know in life. My particular image is of a classroom in the 1940's. There were aspects of the image that I could pick apart and analyze just from looking at it, and then there were more things I learned that related to the image after doing some research. When you look into an image through the eyes of the time period, you look at it a little differently. After accounting for the historical context of the photograph, your perspective as the viewer changes. Once you put the picture in the context of the year and overall situation, more things start to make sense. It usually changes your perception from when you first looked at it, but there might be some things that stay the same as your previous conceptions.

My first overall idea of the picture was that it is a class of children in the olden days in a music class or performance. This image was found under the categories of classrooms, and also children signing. They are looking over to the side at either their teacher or word lyrics. The image didn't have much information given to us with the picture. We were told that the photographer was Robert Lee and that the picture is from October of 1940. Therefore, we are lead to infer what is happening on our own.

When I first looked at this image prior to picking it, I thought it contained a lot of qualities our book holds. Some of the clearly evident ones were dealing with the colors and lighting, vectors of attention and overall idea of what is going on in the picture. The first thing that stuck out to me was the fact that all the children are looking to their left, or the right side of the image. As we've learned from Compose, Advocate and Design, the photographer obviously wants us to realize the vectors of attention is directed towards the left with the looks of the children. What is interesting with this image is that the children's attention is all directed to something we can't see. We are left to imagine what they are all looking at.

The overall affect of the image color wise is that it is pretty dark with a light shining down on the kids in the front middle. A thought about the light is that it is shining down on the kids that are fully paying attention, shadowing the boy and girl on the right side that aren't as focused. The photographer might want the focus to be more on the correctly behaved children. Therefore, we feel that behavior is carried out to the audience's perception of the kids. When analyzing the children, many things come up. Overall they look pretty content. Most are smiling or else if they aren't they don't look upset. The little girl in the front on the end is the only one that is distracted and not similarly focused like the rest of the class. If we were to compare the behaviors of these children to the children in a class today, I think there would be a difference in the focus levels. The picture of this class seems to fit the norm of a focused classroom of kids.



The formation of the kids is in a riser sort of fashion. It could alternately be set up for a performance, or like a rehearsal. There is a variety in the boys and girls- they aren't in any sort of alternating pattern or rows. They are dressed like the time period they are in, 1940's. They are dressed in nicer outfits than we would expect for school today. They all look happily focused.



After looking more into the background and history of this image, we can get a deeper feel for what is going on in these children's situations. We are reminded about the war that just ended a couple months before this picture was probably taken. This image was taken in October in 1940, so they were lucky to be back in school.



At this time, the schools were segregated. When I first looked at the image, that didn't even cross my mind, but when re-looking over the image, we see that is indeed the case. As mentioned before, only one girl really looks distracted, expressing that schools and teachers were quite strict in this time period. When you look at the background behind the children it is definitely fitting for the time period. It has a weird pattern that looks as if it were a piece of fabric being used at a background. The background is almost a contrast to the set up of the kids. The background is pretty busy and jumbled where the children are quite orderly and organized. When we think about classrooms these days, we usually picture bright colors and an overall fun aspect.



The darkness of the room correlates with the hard times that just happened during this time period. Their surrounding lives had just gotten out of war, but in the image they are still smiling which is uplifting to the audience knowing that they survived and are pushing through the hard times. After all, youth is a good way to motivated people through seeing their hope. We see that kids can still be happy and learning in this type of environment as well as the type that we are more used to.

When we think about the ethos of this photograph, we find it a bit difficult to understand the story of all the kids because we can't see them talking, but we can go off of their gestures happening when the photo was captured. Most of the kids have their hands folded or behind them, showing a bit of innocence. Their manner of dress can also adhere to the ethos. They look more proper than students today because of their dresses and nice outfits. This helps show the seriousness in school and the style of the time period. Their hand placements could also aid to the seriousness, in that they aren't messing around putting bunny ears on other students, but instead are following the rule of keeping their hands to themselves.

When considering logos, we look at the overall arrangement, the way the arguments fit together to make the whole, and also the patterns. This is like what was discussed earlier with the formation of the kids in the riser format possibly ready for a performance. The arguments fit together to express the overall situation being that these are children at school in the 1940's in what appears to be a music class. The patterns are within the image through the background, the children and the consistent vectors of attention.

Finally, we look at the pathos. we realize that we can't physically know everything about the image. We wish we could study the breathing, singing, verbal communication rather than just still body language. It's almost as if we wish we were able to be standing in the real life scene of the picture being able to take in everything by encountering the situation first hand. But since that can't happen, we are left to our imagination, critical thinking, and interpreting skills to make a story for our images.

When we are given the freedom to examine an image and create a story of our own, it is interesting to see our takes on the image not knowing at all what the photographer wanted us or assumed we would take away from it. We study each aspect of rhetoric terms our book contains and build a strong interpretation on our own, never knowing if it compliments what is the reality of the image or not. This image is relevant to the life of viewers because it lets us revisit a time period and see the changes and similarities that we are familiar with today.

Works Cited

"American Elementary Schools in the 1940's." 1940s Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Oct. 2009.
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"Farming in the 1940s." Wessels Living History. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Oct. 2009.
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"School Clothes: United States Individual Experiences." Historical Boys Clothing. N.p., 1 July 2008.
Web. 4 Oct. 2009.