The Visual Cultures of Childhood: Film and Television from The Magic Lantern To Teen Vloggers [Hardcover]

Some of the most iconic images of the twentieth century are of children: Dorothea Langes Migrant Mother, depicting farm worker Frances Owens Thompson with three of her children; six-year-old Ruby Bridges, flanked by U.S. marshals, walking down the steps of an all-white elementary school she desegregated; Hu?nh C?ng ?ts photograph of nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing a South Vietnamese napalm bombing. These iconic images with their juxtaposition of the innocent (in the sense of not culpable) figure of the child and the guilty perpetrators of violence (both structural and interpersonal) are arresting. The power of the image of the child to arrest the spectator, to demand a response from her has given the representation of children a central place in the history of visual culture for social reform. This book analyses a range of forms and genres from social reform documentary through feature films and onto small and mobile media to address two core questions: What difference does it make to the message who the producer is? and How has the place of children and youth changed in visual public culture?Karen Wells is Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Geography, Birkbeck, University of London.

In The Visual Cultures of Childhood, Wells (human geography, Univ. of London, UK) uses photography, film, and digital media to examine the image of children in visual culture. Wells writes that the power of the image of the child to arrest the spectator ... has given the representation of children a central place in the history of visual culture for social reform (p. 1). Emphasizing US primary sources, Wells examines children and youth in social-reform documentary film, international nongovernmental organization campaign and sponsorship films, coming-of-age films by African American directors, LGBTQ films that are LGB written and/or directed, and coming-of-age working-class youth films in the Western genre. . . Wells also examines YouTube content producedl³Ð