ources of information, resulting in a cohesive sum wholly different from any of its parts. This reconstructive process is a perilous one, fraught with potential for misinterpretation and/or misuse of the facts. The ambiguity of the “facts” themselves are clearly problematic, but more so are the ways those facts are discovered and subsequently presented. How does a historian know when he has reached genuine testimony of an event that transpired before he himself had even existed? Pictures can lie, and printed matter can be partisan - though commonly accepted as being true likenesses of their subjects, photographs and portraits (the former more so than the latter), are actually only indicative of what either the subject or the artist wanted others to see. Bearing this caveat in mind, pictures then become subject to the same scrutiny as any other piece of evidence, so much so that examining the angle, focus, location and pose of pictures becomes more revealing than perhaps the picture itself. Think about it: why was this subject or information deemed important enough to paint or take a picture of, and by whom? For what purpose and/or audience was it intended, and how if at all, did that intention differ from it’s actual use? What was going on around the subject that didn’t get captured in the picture? With any of these questions left unanswered, it becomes apparent that though a picture may well be worth a thousand words, they can still only tell half the story.Clearly then, the historian must approach his search for knowledge with a critical eye for potentially misleading information. However, in stripping away the layers of subjectivity that were superimposed on the “facts” by times, places and people before him, can he simultaneously assure that these layers are not replaced with his own assumptions and interpretations in the process? The very search for objective evidence, however noble in intent, n...
