50 Interesting Historical Pictures That Might Teach You Something New About Our World

Talking to Bored Panda about historical pictures, professor, writer, and amateur homesteader Joshua Wilkey said "I think photography can be an essential and powerful tool for understanding history, but I [also] think it is also necessary to view all photographs with a critical eye."

"While we might be accustomed to skepticism of photos in the age of Photoshop, photo editing isn't the only thing that should give us pause."

The historian provided a few very helpful questions we can ask ourselves when analyzing such images. The first one: is the photo lacking context? Or what is happening outside of the frame?

"There's always the chance that the viewer is seeing an intentionally skewed perspective," Wilkey highlighted. "A picture might be worth a thousand words, but sometimes it takes a thousand words to explain the context of a single photo.

As avid Bored Panda readers probably know, pictures can be very strange without context.

The second question: is the photo representative? In other words, can the photo indicate something bigger than itself?

"For example, the internet has, for years, made fun of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un for marveling at seemingly cool but likely fake things like modern and well-stocked grocery stores," Wilkey added. "These photos are meant to be representative images portraying for Kim's people and for foreigners that North Korea is a modern and well-nourished society. [But] the reality is a bit different."

While these concepts can apply to virtually any photograph, they become vital when we're viewing one as evidence.

"They are important for historical photographs because of the power and usefulness of photography in political propaganda."

North Korea is a great example of a regime that uses photography for propaganda, but Wilkey said that the Soviet Union and the US were well versed in the subject too, particularly during the Cold War and the Space Race.

"Another good example of government using photography to achieve a political end was the Farm Service Administration's use of photography to document the impact of the Great Depression as a means of garnering support for the New Deal," Wilkey then said.

"Roosevelt's opponents argued it was political propaganda, while his proponents argued it was an accurate depiction of what was happening. Ultimately, most scholars have concluded that, while it accomplished political ends, it was indeed an accurate portrayal of reality."