| The dissertation looks at amateur photography within a cultural-historical framework. Specifically, it uses a case-study approach to explore the visual records left by photographers---the majority of whom are amateurs---in a community of Belgian immigrants in rural Wisconsin between 1880 and 1950. The visual historical text is examined to see how a relatively unknown group of settlers perceived themselves, their families, their rural community, and the time period in which they lived.; Three major premises guide this work. First, photographs are cultural artifacts whose creation and interpretation are subject to culturally defined rules and conventions. Adopting this perspective, the dissertation views photographs as the results of specific choices of the photographer and his or her subjects within a specific cultural, social, and historical context. Second, amateur photography is a medium in its own right, and the visual records produced by nonprofessionals constitute informative statements about the lives of the photographer and the photograph's subjects. Third, because each photograph is by nature historical, a body of related images placed within historical context can help form a valid narrative for study of past mentalities.; In addition to using vernacular photographs, the study draws from a variety of sources, such as newspapers, censuses, immigrant letters, oral history, and consular reports. The photographs are also discussed in relationship to better known depictions of immigrant experience and rural life by professional artists, among whom Andrew Dahl, Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, F.S.A. photographers, and Jean-Francois Millet.; By focusing on photographs, this project addresses several scholarly needs, including more research on amateur photography as a medium of communication, more systematic use of photographs as a means of recovering history, and further study of rural settlements of European immigrants. In addition, it makes specific contributions to the field of women's studies (many of the photographers were farm women), while the emphasis on Belgian-Americans (a little known ethnic group) constitutes a departure from scholarship that to date, with few exceptions, has dealt principally with more dominant immigrant groups. |
