Visualizing History was the most interesting assignment to date for me. I have no graphic or visual arts background so it was with some trepidation that I approached the task. But, I said to myself, the web is nothing if not visual so how hard can this be? The answer is that it wasn’t very hard, but I have begun to pick up a new skill.
To begin with I picked a subject familiar to me, The Normandy Invasion. Popular books and movies aside, there are many rich collections of photographs and documents readily available on the net to convey, perhaps too graphically for some, the events of 6 June 1944. I have the advantage of a life-long fascination with the Normandy Campaign, as the child of a Normandy airborne veteran, and I have walked the battlefields with my father. I do not necessarily have a more discerning eye than some, but this background helped me cull through many sites and photographs quickly.
Bearing in mind the dire consequences of using images not in the public domain, the five I selected came from the National Archives. This is really not much of a limitation because having looked at a dozen or more sites NARA was really quite good. If I needed to illustrate a coffee table volume I might have to look elsewhere, but for the purpose of “Visualizing History” there were more than enough. I did choose two images, numbers 2 and 4, which are very well known because they are really spectacular photographs. (Obviously that’s why they are printed so often – that and they are in the public domain) The shot of Nancy Reagan that is number 5 was chosen for contrast in that it is a color image, and a more recent one to emphasize the continuing importance, and pain, of that June day in 1944.
