Intimate Apparel
We will be conducting visual research for costumes; specifically for the work "Intimate Apparel" by Lynn Nottage. Below is a link to the text.
Visual Research Resources
How do you find credible visual research?
It's a lot like looking for journal articles and books; establish the authority, relevancy, and credibility of the work and you should be safe to utilize the image. The best way to accomplish this is to search trusted providers; libraries and museums are your friends! Here are some online resources that you can trust:
- ArtStor
ArtStor provides high quality, accurate, and authoritative images for your research. Use the images available on this database to view the fine details of period photos. View images of people, objects, clothing, and events. - Artstor Public Collections"Approximately 1 million freely accessible images, videos, documents, and audio files from library special collections, faculty research, and institutional history materials, as well as hundreds of thousands of open access images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art." - JSTOR
- Digital Public Library of America
"DPLA brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science." -- DPLA - Duke University - Ad*Access
"Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955. - Duke University Libraries - Library of Congress - Prints and Photographs Online Catalog
Unique in their scope and richness, the picture collections number more than 16 million images. These include photographs, historical prints, posters, cartoons, documentary drawings, fine prints, and architectural and engineering designs. While international in scope, the collections are particularly strong in materials documenting the history of the United States and the lives, interests, and achievements of the American people. - The Metropolitan Museum of Art"The Metropolitan Museum of Art collects, studies, conserves, and presents significant works of art across all times and cultures in order to connect people to creativity, knowledge, and ideas." Use the search tool at the top right of the site to search for images of clothing and historical artifacts.
- National Portrait Gallery
"Founded in 1856, the aim of the National Portrait Gallery, London is to promote through the medium of portraits the appreciation and understanding of the people who have made and are making British history and culture, and to promote the appreciation and understanding of portraiture in all media. Increasingly the Collections are being made available on the Internet, with some 120,700 items available as at March 2009, made up of some 11,100 Primary Collection portraits and more than 109,500 from the Reference Collections, with 58,100 illustrated." - National Portrait Gallery - The New York Public Library - Digital Collections
This site is a living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more. - Wikimedia Commons
A collection of 57,273,604 freely usable media files.
Instructional Videos
- ArtStorArtStor provides high quality, accurate, and authoritative images for your research. Use the images available on this database to view the fine details of period photos. View images of people, objects, clothing, and events. Play the video, then double click to view in full screen.
Intimate Apparel
Accuracy of Images
When performing visual research, it is critical that you establish the credibility of the image.
Look at the following image. What do you think is happening? Within which time period was this picture taken?
On Pinterest, the photo is identified as "Orthodox Jews burn hametz in preparation for Passover in the Williamsburg section of New York. Hametz, or leavened foods, are not permitted to be eaten during Passover."
On the site CommonSense, the photo is identified as "On April 20, 1657, freedom of religion was granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (which was later renamed New York City)."
On the Carolyn Yeager podcast site, the photo is identified as "Jewish tribalism. Orthodox Jews burn hametz in preparation for Passover in the Williamsburg section of New York. Hametz, or leavened foods, are not permitted to be eaten during Passover."
A slide presentation found online identified the photo as "La comunità degli ebrei ortodossi di (The community of Orthodox Jews of) Williamsburg, NYC, circa 1950."
The VINnews website idenitifed the image as "London – Britain’s Jewish population is expanding for the first time since World War II, notably due to the growth of large families of ultra-orthodox members of the faith, according to research out today [2008]."
Another site, a blog, identified the photo as "...one of Jewish Orthodox men who were discussing Talmudic matters, and who wore stereotypical Hasidic (conservative) garments and hats. This photo was taken during the late 1800s, and took place in New York."
Every time I do a Google search for the same image located on a different website, I get a new set of results with similar but different identifications for the photo. The truth is, we don't really know where this picture originated. We can't confirm who took the picture, who is in the picture, what is happening in the picture, or when the picture was taken. Therefore, since we can't confirm the relevancy or accuracy of this image, we should not utilize it in our research.