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Boots, Hands, & Photojournalism

Abby Wendle

Photojournalists illustrate the news. But a researcher who studies news photos said they also do much more than that.

“I think it (photojournalism) also schools a citizenry on how to see and to be seen as citizens, particularly in a mass society where we will never see the vast majority of other citizens that we share our identity with,” said John Lucaites, Professor of Rhetoric and Public Culture at Indiana University. 

Luciates does the research with Robert Hairman of Northwestern University.  Lucaites spoke about their findings during a presentation at Western Illinois University, where he was honored as the Department of Communications’ Wayne N. Thompson Scholar.

Credit Rich Egger
“When you look at your family photo albums, it is probably not the case that you will find any photographs that are simply of somebody’s foot or their hands. Those photographs might get taken but they don’t make it into the family album,” said John Lucaites.

“One of the things we discovered is that photojournalists have a penchant – maybe an odd penchant – to take photographs of hands and feet,” said Lucaites.

He said there is no definitive reason why photojournalists do this. He said one possible explanation has to do with the idea that the hands and feet are not linked to a person’s individual personality in the same way as faces, names, and even clothing.

“It’s a way of thinking about the everyman or the everywoman,” Lucaites said.

“And so there’s a sense in which hands and feet become fragmented representations of the body politic.  It allows us to think about the citizenry and body politic without reducing it to the personality of the individual.”

Lucaites said he and Hairman have an archive of two or three thousand such images.  He said they’ve had to stop collecting them, though examples can still be found every day in newspapers and on websites.

Rich is TSPR's News Director.