We had some senior students in yesterday exploring veracity, omission and bias in primary sources and we ended up having an interesting discussion about the perception people have of reliability in relation to visual texts- namely the two images you can see above.
So, students examined a range of sources (six in total) and asked themselves the following questions:
- What is it? Describe your source.
- How old do you think it is?
- Who might have produced it and why?
- How useful is this source as evidence?
The first image you can see above is of a painting titled “I have got it”. It was painted by the Viennese born artist and teacher Johann Joseph Eugene von Guérard, (1811- 1901). Von Guérard arrived in Australia (Geelong) in 1852 and almost immediately headed to the Ballarat goldfields. He spent the next sixteen months prospecting for gold in the Ballarat region, and while there, made many pencil and pen and ink sketches of the goldfields and the mining districts around Ballarat. His attempts at prospecting were ultimately unsuccessful.
The second image is a photograph taken in 1944 and it shows men being released from the Italian Internment Camp No 9 in Loveday, SA. These men were released after Italy surrendered. During both two world wars, people thought to be a threat to national security were detained in camps across Australia. Many were adult males who shared the nationality of Australia’s war-time enemies. Although there were some enemy sympathisers, most were recent migrants caught by public hostility towards enemy aliens. Camp 9 – Loveday Internment Camp comprised Camp HQ and 40 buildings and a compound rectangular in shape, including a hospital. The compound was able to hold 1000 persons. It commenced operating on the 12th August 1940. The first Italian prisoner arrived on 11 June 1941.
The students started questioning which of these sources is more reliable- the painting or the photograph? They concluded that both of these sources, by themselves, are potentially quite unreliable. Von Guérard’s image is a deliberate, selected construction that, as the students said, is almost propaganda: it presents the goldfields as a clean, harmonious place where wealth aplenty awaits the upright prospector. The photograph of the Loveday Internment Camp is also a construction, but manipulation of this image is not necessarily obvious- the historian could be taken in by the assumption that the camera never lies.
I’m hopeful the students left the Museum reminded that one source is never enough to base research upon and that all sources must be critically examined.
Hi Ange. Thanks for putting up this posting. It’s great that you’re doing this sort of critical thinking with senior students. I am doing a phd on how kids learn history in museums and interviewed other education officers at NMA in July this year. I don’t think I met you then. I was wondering, could I use your posting in my research? If so, would it also be possible to tell me from which state the kids came and which year they are in? Dave Arnold knows my research and gave me permission to conduct the interviews. I look forward to your reply.