Cover not available
Part of
Photography in Children's Literature
Edited by Elina Druker and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 17] 2023
► pp. 67–91

Chapter 3
As ‘objectively’ as possible. On truth and objectivity in photographic early-concept books

The case of The First Picture Book and The Second Picture Book by Mary Steichen and Edward Steichen

Photographic picturebooks appear to have a special relationship to reality. In contrast to paintings and drawings, photos are often said to convey true and objective information about the world. Drawing on recent work in picture theory and the philosophy of pictures, the question is posed as to what extent this general picture is correct. This chapter contributes to the theoretical debate by analyzing The First Picture Book (1930) by Mary Steichen Calderone and Edward Steichen (phot.), viewed as a photographic archetype. Moreover, the differences to The Second Picture Book (1931) by the same authors are worked out. The main thesis of this chapter is that photographic early-concept books serve the purpose of implicitly teaching children about the representational nature of pictures. This is the basis for children’s understanding of picturebooks in general.

Article outline
  • Truth and photographs
  • Objectivity and photographs
  • Compositionality in photographic picturebooks and the impact of texts
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 September 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.17.03mei
References

Primary sources

Adams, George A. & Henning, Paul
1947 First Things. A Picture Book in Natural Color Photographs. New York: Platt & Munk.Google Scholar
Henning, Paul
1946a Black and White Lies. A Book of Puzzle Photographs for all Ages. London: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
1946b Beautiful Things Around You. A Picture Book in Color Photography. London: Hachette.Google Scholar
Hoban, Tana
1970 Shapes and Things. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sougez, Emmanuel
1932 Regarde! Paris: Éditions H. Jonquières.Google Scholar
Steichen Calderone, Mary & Steichen, Edward
1991 [1930] The First Picture Book. Everyday Things for Babies. Reprint with an afterword by John Updike. New York: Fotofolio-Whitney.Google Scholar
Steichen Martin, Mary & Steichen, Edward
1931 The Second Picture Book. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.Google Scholar

Secondary sources

Abell, Catharine
2005 Pictorial Implicature. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63.1: 55–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Abell, Catharine, Atencia-Linares, Paloma, McIver, Dominic & Costello, Lopes Diarmuid
2018 The New Theory of Photography: Critical Examination and Responses. Aisthesis 11.2: 207–234.Google Scholar
Bátori, Zsolt
2018 Photographic Manipulation and Photographic Deception. Aisthesis 11.2: 35–47.Google Scholar
Börjesson, Kristin & Meibauer, Jörg
(eds.) 2021 Pragmatikerwerb und Kinderliteratur. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Carston, Robyn
2010 Explicit/Implicit Distinction. Aspects of utterance meaning. In The Pragmatics Encyclopedia, Louise Cummings (ed.), 154–162. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Costello, Diarmuid
2018 What is Abstraction in Photography? British Journal of Aesthetics 58.4: 385–400. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gombrich, Ernst
1960 Art and Illusion. London: Phaidon.Google Scholar
Grice, Paul
1989 Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Grzankowski, Alex
2015 Pictures Have Propositional Content. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6: 151–163. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Korsmeyer, Carolyn
1985 Pictorial Assertion. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43: 257–265. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kress, Gunther & van Leeuwen, Theo
1996 Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina
2019 Lying and the arts. In The Oxford Handbook of Lying, Jörg Meibauer (ed.), 553–564. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina & Meibauer, Jörg
2005 First Pictures, Early Concepts: Early Concept Books. The Lion and the Unicorn 29: 324–347. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 Early-concept books: Acquiring nominal and verbal concepts. In Emergent Literacy. Children’s books from 0 to 3, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (ed.), 91–114. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 Picturebooks and early literacy. How do picturebooks support early conceptual and narrative development? In Learning from Picturebooks. Perspectives from child development and literacy studies, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, Jörg Meibauer, Kerstin Nachtigäller & Katharina Rohlfing (eds.), 13–32. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018 Early-Concept Books and Concept Books. In The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (ed.), 149–157. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina, Meibauer, Jörg, Nachtigäller, Kerstin & Rohlfing, Katharina
(eds.) 2015 Learning from picturebooks. Perspectives from child development and literacy studies. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Künne, Wolfgang
2003 Conceptions of Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kulvicki, John
2014 Images. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Løvland, Anne
2016 Talking about something real: The concept of truth in multimodal non-fiction books for young people. Prose Studies 38.2: 172–187. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Markman, Ellen
1994 Constraints children place on word meaning. In Language Acquisition. Core Readings, Paul Bloom (ed.), 154–173. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,Google Scholar
Meibauer, Jörg
2017 Pragmatics and children’s literature. In Doing Pragmatics Interculturally: Cognitive, Philosophical and Socio-pragmatic Perspectives, Rachel Giora & Michael Haugh (eds.), 371–387. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Neier, Agnes & Pedri, Nancy
2020 The Not-So-Hard Truths of Photography, or, Exposing the Untruths of Photography. Image [&] Narrative 21.2: 1–10.Google Scholar
Nöth, Winfried
1997 Can pictures lie? In Semiotics of the Media. State of the Art, Projects, and Perspectives, Winfried Nöth (ed.), 133–146. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
op de Beeck, Nathalie
2010 Suspended Animation. Children’s Picture Books and the Fairy Tale of Modernity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Priem, Karin
2015 Facts for Babies: Visual Experiments at the Intersection of Art, Science and Consumerism in Education. Sisyphus. Journal of Education 3.1: 18–37.Google Scholar
Searle, John R.
1969 Speech Acts. An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1979 The logical status of fictional discourse. In Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, John R. Searle, 58–75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steichen, Edward
1963 A Life in Photography. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Thomas, Glyn V., Nye, Rebecca & Robinson, Elizabeth J.
1994 How Children View Pictures: Children’s Responses to Pictures as Things in Themselves and as Representations of Something Else. Cognitive Development 9: 141–164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Torr, Jane
2023 Reading Picture Books with Infants and Toddlers: Learning through Language. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Updike, John
1991 The Steichen’s Book of First Things. In The First Picture Book. Everyday Things for Babies. Reprint with an Afterword by John Updike, Mary Steichen Calderone & Edward Steichen (1991 [1930]), 57–66. New York: Fotofolio-Whitney.Google Scholar
Viebahn, Emanuel
2019 Lying with Pictures. British Journal of Aesthetics 59: 243–257. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walden, Scott
2005 Objectivity in Photography. British Journal of Aesthetics 45.3: 258–272. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wattenberg, Jane
2018 Picturebooks and Photography. In The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (ed.), 302–314. London: Routledge,Google Scholar
Werner, Annette
2011 Color perception in infants and young children: The significance of color in picturebooks. In Emergent Literacy. Children’s books from 0 to 3, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (ed.), 39–54. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar