This book collects original research essays to explore the diverse uses of photographs and photography in oral history, from the use of photos as memory triggers to their deployment in the telling of life stories. The book's contributors include both oral historians and photography scholars and critics.

Table of Contents

Mary Brockmeyer's Wedding Picture: Exploring the Intersection of Photographs and Oral History Interviews; A.Freund & A.Thiessen 'When I was a Girl ...': Women Talking About their Girlhood Photo Collections; P.Tinkler Imaging Family Memories: My Mum, Her Photographs, Our Memories; J.Wilton Remembering, Forgetting and Feeling with Photographs; L.Mannik Listening to Pictures: Photographs and Oral History among Inuit Youths and Elders; C.Payne Using Press Photographs in the Construction of Political Life Stories; M.Schiebel & Y.Robel Piercing the Punctum: Oral History and the 'Prick' of Photography; K.M.Ryan Family Photographs as Traces of Americanization; M.Thompson Family Photographs and Migrant Memories: Representing Women's Lives; A.Thomson From Witness to Participant: Making Subversive Documentary; A.Bersch & L.Grant Photographs from the Shoebox; J.E.Marles Committed Eye: Photographs, Oral Sources, and Historical Narrative; A.M.Mauad

About the Author

ALEXANDER FREUND Chair in German-Canadian Studies at the University of Winnipeg, Canada. ALISTAIR THOMSON Professor of History at Monash University, Australia.

Reviews

"The sensitive use of photographs by these oral historians has drawn fascinating, sometimes spellbinding, tales from both the tellers and the listeners. This is an important collection that will instruct and inspire future research at the crossroads of photography, orality, memory, and history."--Martha Langford, author of "Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums" and "Scissors, Paper, Stone: Expressions of Memory in Contemporary Photographic Art"
"An evocative, much-needed international collection exploring the fascinating intersection between the oral and visual. Twelve pointed and diverse case studies, framed by an extensive introductory essay, map a surprisingly rich terrain. One axis involves reflections on photo-elicitation as a helpful but far-from-straightforward interview technique. Another involves issues of memory and interpretation in oral history, issues complicated in provocative ways by the counterpoint with photographic eviden