History Literacy and Visual Informational Texts: Scrutinizing Photographs Beyond their Borders

State and national initiatives prescribe, among other things, increases in students’ reading of informational texts and uses of diverse literacies.  History educators must purposefully integrate informational texts with literacy strategies that facilitate historical thinking.  Students are to analyze and scrutinize, not simply read or view.  This paper refines previously suggested photograph analysis methods to consider a photographer’s influence both within  and  beyond the photograph’s borders.  Our modification centers on the diverse, and hitherto unexplored, ways in which the photographer influences the viewer’s understanding of the photograph and the historical event that is captured.  We offer informational texts and discipline-appropriate methods as ancillaries.