Includes bibliographical references and index.

Newswork, History, and Photographic Evidence: A Visual Analysis of a 1930s Newsroom / Hanno Hardt, Bonnie Brennen -- Fact, Public Opinion, and Persuasion: The Rise of the Visual in Journalism and Advertising / Robert L. Craig -- The President Is Dead: American News Photography and the New Long Journalism / Kevin G. Barnhurst, John C. Nerone -- Reflections on an Editor / John Erickson -- From the Image of Record to the Image of Memory: Holocaust Photography, Then and Now / Barbie Zelizer -- The Great War Photographs: Constructing Myths of History and Photojournalism / Michael Griffin -- Objective Representation: Photographs as Facts / Dona Schwartz -- Fact, Fiction, or Fantasy: Canada and the War to End All Wars / David R. Spencer -- The Family of Man: Readings of an Exhibition / Monique Berlier -- Photographing Newswork: From the Archives of the New York World-Telegram & Sun / Hanno Hardt.

This wide-ranging collection explores the relations between photojournalism and history, investigating how photographs shape both what we remember and how we remember. Contributors discuss dramatic changes in the press's coverage of presidential death from McKinley through Kennedy and examine the selective use of picture postcards in World War I to support the particular image of the war effort that the government wished to cultivate. Other essays examine divergent public reactions to Edward Steichen's Family of Man exhibition and the curious distillation of enormous collections of war photographs--from the Civil War, the Holocaust, and other cataclysmic events--into a handful of images that have become cultural icons.

Ranging from the rise of photojournalism in the 1930s and its idealization of American life to the issue of authenticity in documentary photography, Picturing the Past provides valuable insight into how photographs influence collective memory, generate a sense of national community, and reinforce prevailing social, cultural, and political values.