Develop an argument that considers how your photo (and its use by the family) confirms, alters, or denies one or more of the claims that West makes about snapshot photography.
Requirements: as long as it needed
Please complete this forum post in preparation for our in-class workshop. The purpose of this is that we begin developing our arguments in advance of the final essay deadline and have something concrete that you’ve generated during our workshop. I look forward to reading what you post!
Your goal with the Snapshot Essay is to develop an original, critical interpretation of the family snapshot you’ve selected. Your argument should use Nancy West’s Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia and/or Marvin Heiferman’s “Now Is Then” to help you notice something distinctive about the representation of family in your image.
You are strongly advised to draft/edit/revise your post offline and then post to it to this forum.
In this forum, please:
Start a New Thread: Title your thread the working title that you have for your snapshot essay. Titles are a key way to help cue your audience to the main themes of your essay and the position you’re taking in your argument. For this essay, it would be best if the title make clear what aspect of West’s book you were using in your analysis.
Summary of Argument: Post a brief summary of the main argument in the West and/or Heiferman reading that your critical interpretation is based on. This summary should be around 400–500 words long. It should include multiple quotes from the reading(s). Those quotes should be cited parenthetically and, because quotes don’t prove themselves, your interpretative voice should unpack the quotations for your reader. Don’t settle for a surface-level understanding of West’s and/or Heiferman’s argument or a half-right interpretation; now is the time to dig in and figure out exactly what West/Heiferman is/are arguing.
Visual Analysis: Then, give us a paragraph in which you analyze your image. What details are interesting in the image? What do you notice and what might you do with what you’re noticing in your analysis? This can be speculative in nature, and could range from 200–300 words. The best analysis will integrate concepts from the semiotic toolkit or terms fro the Helmers reading in your analysis.
Attached Image: Finally, make sure you attach the image that you’re analyzing to your post! We need to be able to see the snapshot you’re analyzing during the workshop, so we want it here. You will receive a 0 for the workshop if you don’t attach an image and attach it properly so that it displays inline.
In-class Workshop: Show up and fully participate in our class on Thursday.
ProTips:
The “Quotation Sandwiches” handout should help you practice both setting up and unpacking quotations in your post.
Ideally, your use of quotations from West and/or Heiferman will identify a theme that is carried throughout a section or chapter of her book (or, in some cases, a theme that spans multiple chapters). As such, it’s your job as a critic to explain how different moments in the reading relate to each other.
The picture I picked:
Essay 1: The Snapshot
Select a photograph from a family photo online and analyze it. Your photo should be a “snapshot” of any “family.” Use Nancy West’s Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia to define snapshot and define family in whatever way it means to you. Indeed, you might want to use this reflection to think about how your image relates to representative/normative notions of family. format will be graded. Your reflection should be about 1,200–1,500 words, double-spaced, and in a 12-point font with numbered pages and one-inch margins. Include your image in the file and cite all sources.
1. Central Thesis/Argument (105 Points: for insight; for evidence used; for accuracy)
Develop an argument that considers how your photo (and its use by the family) confirms, alters, or denies
one or more of the claims that West makes about snapshot photography. Your thesis should apply an
argument in West’s book to your snapshot. Claims that you might use include, but are not limited to:
• snapshot photography has become integrated
into every aspect of private life;
• snapshot photography works in tandem with
other forms of conspicuous consumption like
vacations, leisure activity, etc.;
• snapshot photography is a means for enacting
membership in the middle class;
• snapshot photography is used to systematically
erase painful or unpleasant events from memory;
• snapshot photography frames people/events in
nostalgia, a happy memory of an idealized past;
• snapshot photography is constructed as a form of
play while it helps leisure manage the heavy
emotional burden assigned to it in our society;
• snapshot photography is used to define
normative masculine and feminine roles within
middle-class culture;
• snapshot photography is used to define
childhood in a manner that serves the parent’s
psychological needs;
• snapshot photography influences how we learn
to love
Your analysis should include an explanation of the particular claim(s) that you choose and an equally
careful explanation of how your photograph relates to the claim(s). Rather than throwing out a lot of
options, select one or two of West’s claims to explore in depth and prove your argument with evidence.
At the same time, this is an essay where you can (and should) offer a critical judgment of your
relationship to the snapshot. Descriptions of the family, the people/event depicted, and subsequent use of the photo are helpful, but only as they are relevant to the photo’s meaning/significance for you and the family. This paper should not be devoted to communicating “insider’s knowledge” of your personal life.
Insight………Does your central argument exhibit thought-provoking analysis (not just description)?
Evidence……Have you selected apt quotations from the reading(s) you’re using? Have you fully
and clearly explained how those quotes illustrate ideas in your analysis?
Accuracy……Do you explain your argument with precision? Do you pay attention to the details of
key concepts and theories? Does your analysis, in fact, prove what you assert it does?
2. Visual Textual Analysis
Focus on features of the image using visual analysis (e.g., Helmers, semiotics). Account for how the
snapshot’s details fit (or don’t) with the picture as whole or the narrative that accompanies the photo (e.g.,
the story of family life that the snapshot presumes to tell). Be precise. Consider what is not in the image. As
West states, “what isn’t represented in the photo often possesses more meaning than what is” (xiv).
3. Style and Mechanics
Your writing should be graceful have a sense of joy that is the result of multiple revisions. Mechanics
should be free of errors and typos. Cite all sources in a standard format (e.g., APA, Chicago, or MLA).
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