Photographs contain a wealth of information which may be used effectively in historical research. Visual images may be used as evidence, for illustration, for comparison and contrast, and for analytical purposes. Somewhat perplexing is the relatively minimal use of photographs as primary sources in historical inquiry concerning schooling. Many visual clues exist which can help to explain the activities, methods, resources and quality of schooling, and the people involved in schooling, in selected locations. Visual clues may be coordinated with text and with other artifacts to present a more complete picture of schooling in a specific time and place than text alone can provide. Photographs provide opportunities to compare systems of schooling and to engage in longitudinal analysis of a single school system. They can be useful in helping to investigate elements of schooling that may have elevated selected school systems to exemplary levels. The presence of a large collection of educationally related photographs reveals opportunities for utilization which are not present with individual photographs or small groups of photographs. The potential uses of photographs as primary sources for inquiry are not limited to professional historians, but may be taught to, and used by students, as well. This study shows benefits and possibilities of utilizing photographic images as primary sources in historical research in education, and in teaching historical research methods, through the use of examples contained in the Albert W. Achterberg Collection of photographs. The collection was developed during the period of 1940-1999 over an 8,000 square mile area in south-central Nebraska and features a school system in the town of Holdrege, Nebraska.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The Iranian artist Shirin Neshat has been living in self-imposed exile since the late 1970s, as she chose not to return to her home country following the ‘79 Islamic Revolution. Through her works Neshat examines Iran before and after the revolution and follows political and civil transformations through strong photographs of women in her country of birth.  My own use of the term exile deals with the analysis of the state of exile in relation to artistic work as a globalized and underlying motivation for art and artists. The new definition of exile is analyzed in relation with the artist’s photographs and the verbal and visual statements. The verbal and visual photographs in the work of Neshat are related to the term exile through different allegories and metaphors that are to be found in lyricist Rumi’s classical poetry, the Bible and the Quran. The artist’s use of the visual photographs where women appear with hijab covering their hair and with weapons in their hands- in some pictures without any audience at all, in others decorated with different calligraphic texts- are combined with the verbal photograph which is created through music (song) and language. The verbal and visual statements complete one another in a united effort to visualize exile as a term, therefore every attempt to separate these two a part, will inevitably deprive the audience of the statement itself, which is in this case the psychoanalytical inner exile. One does not have to be outside her home to feel the state of exile; it can be felt mentally even if one is at home. The inner exile is a global experience. This form of exile is born when the community is categorized from two extremes, with one side of the equation possessing power and the other being classified as weak and ”the other”. I use the status of women in Iran as an example in my investigation, where women are at home but are still very much outside of it, alienated for their gender (sex).

The Swedish photographer and artist Eva Klasson, based in Paris in the 1970s, gained attention for her series of black-and-white photography of her own naked body, which opened up for an international artistic career in the late 1970s. Despite a promising career she however abandoned photography and disappeared from the artistic sphere only a few years after her debut. There has been a renewed interest in Klasson’s work in Sweden the last decade where she has been exhibited at museums and galleries. Today she is represented at art museums and institutions including Moderna Museet, The Modern Museum of Art, in Stockholm. She is now presented as a pioneer and a forerunner to the later generation of Swedish women artists working with photo based art and staged photography in the 1990s. This historiographical study revisits Klasson’s work, career and reception in order to examine the prevalent understanding of the artist and her work. There is limited previous research on Klasson. This empirical study is therefore based on Klasson’s works that I have examined first hand at Moderna Museet and Borås konstmuseum. By tracing Klasson’s career and examining the contemporary reception in France and in Sweden one can see that Klasson not only enjoyed wider attention in France than in Sweden but also that she was received and understood differently in the two countries. Today’s prevalent reading of Klasson is to a large extent based on the contemporary reception, which disregards important aspects of her work. By discussing Klasson’s body of work in relation to photography of similar subject matter and aesthetics it become clear that one cannot only discuss her work in terms of photography. It is evident that Klasson’s work comprises of subtle elements that have largely been ignored so far. The prevalent understanding of Klasson also shows to be based on a narrow selection of her work. I argue that Klasson’s working method and artistic expression is formulaic. This becomes evident in the examination of her artist book, Le troisième angle (1976), which set off her artistic career. The artist’s book also forms a background against which this artistic project originally had been formulated and brings new light to Klasson and her work. Her two following series, Ombilic (1977) and Parasites (1978), are modeled on the artist’s book. Therefore these three series, following the same strategy, must be regarded in relation to one another. Furthermore I argue that one needs to pay attention to all parts of her artistic production that together comprise the works. In doing so, this essay, with its historiographical scope, suggests and opens up to new and alternative readings of Klasson’s work.