Essay Six: Paumgarten and DeGhett and Outside Source
Format and Requirements: 4-5 pages, double-spaced, Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins, no cover page For this assignment you will consider how photographs shape the way we understand and empathize with the issues and events that affect our world. Building on your previous readings by Paumgarten and DeGhett, as well as your previous essays on the ethics of camera culture, you will consider what makes photographs such powerful and provocative storytellers: what role do photographs play, and should they play, in telling our stories? How should we balance the line between empathy and exploitation – in other words, where does our desire to humanize an event or issue through close-up photographic encounters meet our reverence for the dignity and privacy of those involved? In order to investigate these questions you will collect a set of public photographs of an event or issue that you believe shapes public understanding of it. You will then analyze these images in order to make an argument about how they shape our understanding of that issue or event.
Assignment Objectives:
• Make an argument about the role that photographs play in how we learn about and ultimately empathize with an event or issue.
• Analyze a set of images (2-4) of your choosing, considering the composition as well as the ethics of the images: what’s included in the photographs and what’s left out, how does that shape the story the images tell, and why?
• Incorporate at least one of the readings by DeGhett and Paumgarten to help you consider the ethics of how we create, use and distribute such images. What makes photographs such an important part of the stories we tell? How do they help us understand an issue or event in unique ways? What are the risks that these photographs take? How should be balance empathy with exploitation?
• Incorporate up to 1-2 additional outside sources to help you understand your selected images and the issue or event they reference. Criteria for Evaluation:
• Argument: Argument directly and fully answers the prompt; is clearly stated early in the paper; is original, compelling and logical, avoiding absolute claims
• Evidence: Appropriate amount of relevant, accurate, and justifiably interpreted quotation. Quotations are thoroughly introduced, explained, analyzed, and connected to argument. Possible counter-arguments are considered.
• Organization: Paragraphs maintain argumentative focus, exclude extraneous information, appear in a logical order, and transition smoothly. Introduction sets forth argument and goals of essay. Conclusion opens up avenues for future research.
• Audience: Consistent, academic tone. Appropriate amount of contextual information, anticipating audience questions. Addresses significant issues and makes them important to audience.
• Grammar and Format: Errors in grammar, spelling, and usage limited or non-existent. Correct MLA format, including proper quotation citation.
