Classroom Activities:
Using Photographs & Photography as
Writing Prompts

Photographs and photography can provide lots of opportunities for developing expository, narrative, and persuasive writing skills, as well as preparing for the CMT, CAPT, and A.P. U.S. History exams. Try using one of the following writing prompts in your classroom to develop observation and analysis skills or consider the significance of photography in shaping American history.

Writing about photographs:

• Choose one photograph from Connecticut History Online that you find interesting and examine it. Notice the setting (indoors vs. outdoors, weather, city vs. country, objects in the picture,) people (activities that they are doing, dress, hair, expressions, gestures, age,) and other clues that might tell you something about the picture. Now use words to describe the image so that a person could visualize it without ever seeing the photograph.
• Find an image of children at work on Connecticut History Online and use it as evidence to argue one side of the child labor debate: why children should be allowed to work, or why children should not be allowed to work.
• Choose one photograph from Connecticut History Online that you find interesting and examine it. Write the story of what has happened leading up to the moment at which the picture was snapped.

Writing about photography:

• If you only had one photograph of yourself taken during your lifetime, what would you do with it and why?
• You are a daguerreotypist (one of the earliest photographers) in Connecticut in 1840. Convince a prospective client why he/she should have a portrait taken.
• Which is more important for understanding history, photographic evidence or written evidence? Why?
• How do you think that photography has changed how we remember (or memorialize) people or events?

Writing about the role of photography in American history:

• You are a photographer in 1938. Explain to a government official why it is important that you travel across the country taking pictures of the effects of the Depression on the American people. Is it more or less important than other government-funded projects at this time and why?
• You are a Civil War photographer, and in the course of your work you have moved a dead soldier from one location to another to make for a more dramatic picture. Write a letter to the editor of your newspaper arguing why, even though the image was manipulated, they should run it.