Arcadian Visions of the Past Mark Rice

Two examples from three of the books published about Rochester will serve to illustrate how Arcadia's visions of the past play out in one particular place. In many ways, Rochester is a fairly typical medium-sized northeastern city. Its economy boomed through the late nineteenth century and into the first half of the twentieth century but has since been in decline. Its population has also shrunk, with workers moving into successively farther suburbs or to the newer Sunbelt cities. The declining fortunes of cities like Rochester can easily provoke nostalgia for a past seen either as more prosperous or more unified, and the "Images of America" books published about Rochester seem intended to strike these "mystic chords of memory." The titles about the city include Rochester's Downtown, Rochester's Dutchtown, Rochester's South Wedge, Rochester's Lakeside Resorts and Amusement Parks, Rochester Labor and Leisure, Rochester's Leaders and their Legacies, and Rochester's Historic East Avenue District.

The photographer Allan Sekula states, "the photograph, as it stands alone, presents merely the possibility of meaning" (Sekula 7). Indeed, in the "Images of America" books, photographs can talk on a multitude of meanings, depending on how they are used. In more than one instance, an individual photograph appears in multiple books written about Rochester, with different authors putting the photograph to different uses. For example, in Rochester Labor and Leisure, Donovan Shilling captions a photograph of a row of riverfront buildings: "Perched above the Genesee River is this row of venerable Front Street shops. One shop owned by Archie Lipsky Poultry, at 60 Front Street, had the advantage of the river for disposing of chicken feathers. The Reynolds Arcade and the former Genesee Community Bank Building are in the background" (24). The book doesn't specifically say that the poultry shop is included in row of buildings shown in the photograph, or whether the shop was even in business when the photograph was taken, but that kind of historical veracity is not deemed necessary. Instead, the photograph is used to visually build an anecdote about the specific activity of a single business owner. It may be that Shilling wanted to recount the anecdote about Archie Lipsky and had to find an image to anchor the story. As it is presented, there is no clear connection between Shilling's text and what the image actually shows.

Shirley Cox Husted and Ruth Rosenberg-Naparsteck use the same photograph in a slightly cropped format for a very different purpose in Rochester Neighborhoods: "Riverside tenements demonstrate the constant need for better housing for the poor. As new buildings are erected, areas with older structures eventually become low-rent areas where absentee landlords neglect to improve their deteriorating property" (37). Their approach is more sociological than is Shilling's, and their caption hints at a historically grounded struggle between tenants and landlords for acceptable housing at affordable prices. Nevertheless, Husted and Rosenberg-Naparsteck are constrained from diving very far into this analysis. For one, the emphasis on heritage over historical analysis routinely seen in the "Images of America" books may present obstacles for authors who want to spend some of the limited page length on topics that their readers might find troubling. The formal demands of the book add another obstacle to attempts to deepen analysis. With text largely limited to the captions of photographs, authors of the "Images of America" books are frequently constrained to raising a topic, showing it briefly, and then moving on to another topic.

Reading these two Rochester captions alongside each other, the photograph's meaning becomes confused. Neither book makes a clear effort to ground the image in its original context, and, as the art historian Estelle Jussim reminds us: "Without context-the context of other photographs, the context of the economic and political realities of the time, plus the context in verbal terms of how the image related to those realities-there can be little chance that a single picture can convey . . . its intended meaning" (Jussim 110). Is the photograph used in these two books one of thriving-albeit precariously perched-commercial buildings, or is it a photograph of dilapidated housing? Is the photograph quaint or is it troubling? Are the buildings in the background to be seen only as names, or are we to read them as evidence of patterns of urban growth and decline? The answer, of course, depends on which Arcadia book one reads. There are still other, equally important, questions that go answered. Who took the photograph? When was it taken? Why was it taken?

Even if it is impossible to trace the original context of this photograph, there are established methodological approaches to the study of historical photographs of buildings and street scenes, as well as to professional portraits, to newspaper photographs, and to the amateur snapshots that make up the bulk of the "Images of America" books. In his 1984 study of urban photography, Silver Cities, Peter Bacon Hales provides a useful framework for understanding and interpreting many of the kinds of historical photographs found in the pages of the "Images of America" series. Hales points out that photographers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries "defined and ordered their contemporaries' understanding of the urban environment, its perils and potentials. Their vision of the city became the heritage of modern America." In order to accurately understand historical photographs it is important to understand these photographers because, as Hales points out, they "were cultural messengers, and their messages both reflected and defined how Americans saw their cities" (3).

Recognizing that all photographs are the result of tensions and negotiations between their makers and their intended audience, that different kinds of photographs are made for different reasons, and that all photographs are artifacts of the technological capabilities of their day, it becomes clear that the photographs used in the "Images of America" books are far from being the objective, transparent windows into the past that they claim. In the time they were made; in the time when they found their ways into the archives from which the authors drew them; and in their current use in the books, the photographs remain embedded in an ongoing struggle for the power to represent, and, as a result, to shape Americans' understanding of the past. Hales goes on to argue that the "urban photographic tradition in America had been born out of a tremendous cultural need-the need for an essentially agrarian republic to come to terms with the process of industrialization and urbanization which was rapidly engulfing it and threatening the myths which sustained and defined the culture" (280). Significantly, it is this same transition from rural to urban that Arcadia Publishing uses in its website, as I described above. Far from presenting such a shift as full of cultural uncertainty, in the "Images of America" books that period of American history is now comfortably remote and useful for a marketable nostalgia.

By treating historical photographs as objective statements about the past and that they elucidate in their brief captions, the authors of the "Images of America" books have wide latitude in influencing how readers will understand the images. Authors also anchor how they want the photographs to be understood by the ways in which they sequence the photographs. For example, Shilling precedes the photograph discussed above with an image that shows the façade of a Front Street business and a caption noting that the street "had enormous character," and he follows the photograph with another façade view from Front Street. In his book, then, the photograph comes to be understood as something like a topographical view, a simple recording of an urban block, Front Street seen from behind and from the front, a collection of businesses that Shilling colors with his captions.

Husted and Rosenberg-Naparsteck also use the photograph as an indicator of the city's riverfront heritage, but with more emphasis on the social impact of urban change. In Rochester Neighborhoods, the image that precedes the one in question is a much more recent photograph of a tour boat coursing through the Genesee River. The subsequent photograph is of another row of dilapidated buildings in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Similar to the language used in the caption for the Front Street photograph, the authors note: "Buildings near the canal were among Rochester's first buildings and were therefore the first to deteriorate after the canal was relocated." Together, then, the sequence of photographs and their accompanying captions tells readers that Rochester's early history was tied to the Genesee River and the Erie Canal, that the older districts deteriorated because the canal was relocated, and that in recent years the main role of the river and canal is to serve tourism. That tourism has become one of the ways that civic leaders have tried to stanch the recent economic bleeding of industrial cities like Rochester goes unexplored here.

As this analysis of the use of a single photograph in two books makes clear, historical photographs in the "Images of America" books serve primarily as visual examples or evidence for author-chosen meaning. On the surface this is not surprising; given both the readiness with which many people embrace the notion of photographic objectivity, and the implicit trust that forms the basis of the relationship between the author and her or his readers. In a supposedly historical context, however, the result is the weakening of the photographs' usefulness for achieving a richer understanding of the past. After all, if a photograph can mean whatever the author wants it to mean, then it doesn't really mean anything at all. With this in mind, it becomes evident that despite marketing the books as pictorial histories, the information that gives any real historical meaning at all in the "Images of America" books is primarily textual, relegating the photographs to illustrations of the points that the authors make in their captions. The captions are necessarily short, however, leaving the authors in a bind: neither the images nor the text allow them to go into significant historical analysis because both the images and their captions are largely "snapshot" descriptions.

Arcadia Publishing tries to downplay this tension between photograph and text in its promotional and marketing materials. As one of the company's flyers states: "Each book is complete with over 200 rare, vintage images from the early days of photography chronicling a particular city, town or region. Each photograph is accompanied by in-depth historical information" ("Images of America"). The use of the words "rare" and "vintage" here suggests a precious quality to the images and, by extension, to the books themselves; this description, however, is a bit misleading, and is used primarily as a marketing device. As seen in the photograph of the tour boat in the Genesee River, recently made photographs are routinely printed alongside older photographs, sometimes juxtaposed to make a rhetorical statement about the changes found in the community, and sometimes shown in a manner demonstrating continuity and enduring community values. For example, Richland includes many photographs of high school activities from the 1970s, and shows some individuals that I recall from my own childhood. The book even includes photographs from as recent as 2001 — hardly the stuff of "rare, vintage images." The books on Rochester similarly include very recent photographs alongside the much older photographs.

Reading Arcadia's books soon reveals that the promotional claim of "in-depth historical information" accompanying each photograph exaggerates the rigorousness of the historical methodology employed by some of the authors. As noted previously, Arcadia Publishing does not fact-check the books it publishes, nor does it engage in an external peer-review process, as is done with scholarly history books. As seen in the photograph used both by Shilling and by Husted and Rosenberg-Naparsteck, the anecdotal approach taken by many authors frequently turns to speculation that, while perhaps lively and enjoyable, has little to do with historical analysis. To give another example, Shilling writes about a photograph of a group of young women posed by an early model automobile in his book Rochester's Lakeside Resorts and Amusement Parks: "The dancing, partying, and great bands attracted many of the area's lasses to the Elmheart's dance hall or the ballroom of the Manitou Beach Park. This trio of young ladies can't wait for the evening festivities to begin. Perhaps they each found some male companion who enjoyed ukulele music" (49). Shilling's caption is pure speculation and has no grounding in the photograph itself beyond what Shilling has projected onto it. Employing a voice that seems intended to spark pleasant recollections of supposedly more innocent times, Shilling presumes to know what the women are thinking and feeling. However, as Martha Sandweiss reminds us: "It is easy to imagine that we understand the expression on a subject's face. . . . And yet, of course, we cannot. The instinctive empathy we can feel for photographic subjects can push us to assume more than we can truly know about the actual subject of the image" (6). Shilling cannot even say for certain where the photograph was made, but he uses it to represent a particular kind of place and assigns the women a particular role to play in the evening he has imagined. Shilling's breezy captions may make for fun imaginings, but they hardly qualify as history.

These are important matters despite the temptation to smile and shrug at the laxness of this kind of history. Arcadia Publishing has an increasingly prominent role in shaping the way that many Americans understand the histories of their local communities. The company's steady growth suggests that Arcadia will not be slowing down as a publishing phenomenon anytime soon. Indeed, it may give rise to competitors following similar approaches to the past, further complicating the roles played by archival photographs in contemporary pictorial histories. Moreover, the notion of "archival photographs" may become increasingly complicated as a result of Arcadia's success. While the "Images of America" books draw from existing archives of photographs, the series is becoming an archive in its own right. That is, while each book in the series is its own product, the uniformity of the books and the expansiveness of the title list make it likely that students and historians will turn to the books as ready sources of historical photographs for further study. Indeed, Arcadia Publishing may well become one of the largest archives of historical photographs in the United States.

The historian, Robin Kelsey, writes: "The producers of archives have . . . claimed and defended the completeness, authenticity, and reliability of their holdings" (5). While Arcadia Publishing has not yet reached a level of "completeness" (in terms of amassing photographic histories of every community in the United States), their business model leans in that direction. Moreover, the company already suggests that their books offer authenticity and reliability. This is a problem. As the artist and writer, Shawn Michelle Smith, writes:

Even as it purports simply to supply evidence, or to document historical occurrences, the archive maps the cultural terrain it claims to describe. In other words, the archive constructs the knowledge it would seem only to register or make evident. . . . Once an archive is compiled, it makes a claim on history; it exists as a record of the past. The archive is a vehicle of memory, and as it becomes the trace on which an historical record is founded, it makes some people, places, things, ideas, and events visible, while relegating others, through its signifying absences, to invisibility. (7-8)

From this, we can see that while the "Images of America" books can be quite successful in evoking pleasant ideas of the past, Arcadia Publishing limits the range of historical understanding available to the books' readers. As a result, the "Images of America" books may, in fact, erase the past as much as they illuminate it.

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Mark Rice is Chair of the Department of American Studies at St. John Fisher College.