short essay assignment

This short essay assignment will require you to analyze images of urban areas utilizing both the cities, change, and conflict textbook and Howard Becker’s article “Photography and Sociology.” To successfully complete the essay you will need to follow several steps: There will be links to pictures . Choose one series of photographs to analyze (for example, use Berenice Abbott’s “Changing New York” or Sze Tsung Leong’s “History Images,” but not images from both). Chose a smaller subset of images (10-15) within the series to examine. (This means that you will focus on a maximum of 10-15 individual photos.) ) Examine the photos using the techniques recommended by Becker on page 7 of his article. What kinds of “stories” are contained within the images? What can you learn about urban life by carefully analyzing these images?

The 3-5 page essay will describe the series of images you examined, explain what you learned from them, and will attempt to contextualize and explain them with information from the textbook (Cities, Change and Conflict). Concretely, that means your essay should contain the following information: 

• A description of the series of images you examined. What series did you choose, and what images within that series did you analyze? What “stories” do these photos tell? 

• Do these “stories” tell you anything about the nature of urban life in that area? In other words, what do the photos tell you about what urban life is/was like in the particular area or region photographed? 

• Do these stories seem to lend evidence to any of the sociological theories or information we’ve read in Kleniewski so far? (Chapters 1-7, 9-11, 13)? If so, what? If not, why not? 

• A “works cited” page. This page should include Kleniewski’s book, as well as the individual titles of all of the photographs that you analyzed. You should also include the photographer’s name, if that information is available. You can model your citation style after the bibliography in Kleniewski (pages 379-408). 

The final essay should be typed, double-spaced, and proofread/grammar-checked before it is handed in.