Learning Goals
- Understand the different genres of Jewish portraits
- Understand the kinds of questions scholars ask about portraits
- Understand the kinds of evidence portraits can provide
- Understand how race and portraiture are intertwined
- Understand common misconceptions about race and portraiture
- Understand how digital tools can help us see portraits across portraits that aren’t always visible to the human eye
The Image Analysis Tutorial offers two ways to explore the images in the Loeb Jewish Portrait Database. This database is “The world’s most extensive online gallery of portraits made of American Jews in the Colonial and Antebellum [Early-Nineteenth-Century] Periods” and features three main kinds of images: Paintings, Silhouettes, and Photographs. The study guide is designed to introduce you to these genres and to give you ideas about how to make arguments either about individual portraits or the collection as a whole. The skills you gain using this tutorial can then be applied to the portraits included in Jews Across the Americas (chapters 21, 27, 34, 39, 40, 43, 45, 47, 60, 76, 104, 107, 113).
Beginning Image Analysis:
- Introduction to Genres
- Analyzing Paintings
- Analyzing Silhouettes
- Analyzing Early Photographs
- Jews and Race