by T. Scott Randolph

Created on: July 08, 2009

In theory the historian should be a photographer. They tell the story of an event that happened. Kind of like Friday on Dragnet (I don't remember if he was a Sgt. or Det.) "Just the facts". True to life, like so many theories, on paper they look outstanding. In practice they don't work out so well.

If you are actually able to witness an event, or study one from the past with a complete unbiased approach (which I don't believe is possible, everyone makes an opinion) you can tell the facts of what happened. By doing that you will take out the human element. Why did the person behave that way? What events led up to it?

These details give us the whole picture, or paint the picture. If you don't explain the environment in which an event happened then it can and probably will be taken out of context. Take language for example. There are words that have several meanings. If the word is just written by itself, you will have no idea which of its meanings you should use. Now when you put that word into a sentence, and then a paragraph you have created a context to define it. The same is true for any particular event. You need to know what is going on around the event. The emotional state people were in at the time. What was the acceptable attitudes for that time period?

When we do this, we are walking a fine line. It is important to give an all around accurate description, but is it possible to do it without interjecting your own ideas on the subject? I live in the late 20th early 21st centuries, can I accurately put myself into the mind set of a group of people that were living 1000 years ago? If I have a child today, chances are everything will be fine. It will be healthy, grow to adulthood and have children of it's own. Throughout most of history this was just not a guaranteed occurrence. Up until recently, more likely than not, that child would never make it to its teen. My point is, we are products of our time. How we judge the past will be reflected in that fact. I have yet to meet the person that can have absolutely no opinion on any given subject. You may not care, but you will still have an opinion.

So back to the original question, like all historians (even though I went to school to teach it, I consider myself an amatuer because it isn't my career) I tend to ramble off point about side notes etc. To "photograph" history is telling the truth of the matter. As humans we are a very emotional animal. Those emotions must be taken into account to tell the story. Because of that I believe we are "painters" of history.

Let's just try to keep it in the nature of Monet or Rembrandt and not in the style of Dali. I love Dali's art, but a melting clock version of WWII isn't what we are after.

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