Influence of Illustrations in Newspaper on Social Movements
INFLUENCE OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS ON SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Anu Jagga-Narang
The invention of printing changed the way in which people received information and
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manifested the world of illustrations in the first ‘visual’ age of the nineteenth century. Herbert
Ingram, a Nottingham bookseller and printer, founded the Illustrated London News, the first
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illustrated journal, in 1842 . The use of visual illustrations and graphics developed in American
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press through the Victorian newspaper in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century .
The history of illustrations in nineteenth century periodicals or weekly newspapers,
accentuates their validity as a form of journalism.
History of illustrations in American press
In the 1830s, in England and the United States, newspaper and magazine publishers
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began to experiment with the use of illustrations . The illustrations started at a tentative pace, but
by the mid-nineteenth century the popular pictorial landscape had changed entirely. Frank
Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper and Harper's Weekly were the two of the most popular illustrated
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periodicals in United States that had exemplified the proliferation of imagery published . They
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were both weeklies, printed in New York, and were national in circulation . Many statistic suggest
that adding illustrations and condensed news stories increased the demand for illustrated
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newspapers and grew the circulation to million copies . Joseph Pulitzer, owner of the New York
World, was a pioneer of innovation in the American press. At first, Pulitzer intended to eliminate
illustrations from the newspaper, perhaps feeling that illustrations lowered the dignity of a
newspaper. He soon changed course and hired portrait artists and cartoonist. According to
Robert Taft’s history of American photography, these changes “marked the beginning of the
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modern era of newspaper illustrations” . Started in 1873, The Daily Graphic is believed to be the
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first illustrated daily newspaper that pioneered the tabloid field .
Technology & techniques used for illustrations
The process to get the illustrations in the newspapers was challenging. The technology
available to the illustrators included woodcuts, wood engravings, metal engravings, and
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lithography . An artist was a key to the illustration that expressed the scene to the readers. The
artist on the field would collect images and then send them to the chief artist in-house. The chief
artist or an engraver would then develop every illustration of a news story by arranging the
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sketches and engraving them in continuous pieces bound together . Illustrations were used to re8
enforce the text and were created to provide special effects for the readers. The images, and the
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content accompanying the images were both representations of real person, places and events .
Value of illustrations
The illustrations were used to amplify the text, adding emphasis and emotion to the
accompanied textual account. The use of illustrations not only advanced and relied on the literacy
of the readers of daily newspapers but also provided visual aid to illiterate consumers.
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Illustrations, being a visual medium, were widely used in the social movements because the
messages spread by the movements were essentially visual phenomena – from the clothes the
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activists wear to the posters they use to mobilize the protests . The news stories and illustrations
of social movements made a tremendous impact on its readers, as it arose emotions, mobilized
resources, and communicated symbolic information. These images not only shaped the events to
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address illiterate audience, but, in some instances, also spurred revolt .
Selected examples
Following are some selected examples of illustrations of social movements:
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Figure 1 : "The Woman Who Dared."
Front cover of the New York Daily Graphic 1:81 (June 5, 1873).
This Daily Graphic front cover lauded Susan B Anthony for her arrest due to the Women Suffrage
Movement. The artist in this graphic appears to be depicting a woman who strongly stood for a
cause and went to jail for it. The characters in the background appear to show artist’s inclination
towards women equality and strength. The editorial accompanied with the graphic accorded Miss
Anthony, "Whenever women rule the hour, they must acknowledge the person of Miss Anthony,
the pioneer who first pursued the way they sought."
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Figure 2 : “Women bring all Voters into the world. Let Women Vote”
This pro-suffrage poster from the North Carolina Museum of History's collection, attempted to
remind men who already had the vote where they came from.
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Figure 3 : 'An Evening Scene in Madison Park.–The "Tramps" Free Lodging-place', Frank
Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 21 July 1877, p. 341.
In the midst of the worst economic depression of its time, in 1877, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated
Newspaper published this picture with the text warning the people of homelessness, depicting
people sleeping in the park.
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While some illustrations were encouraging and popularized the movements, others
appeared condescending. Some artists manipulated the meaning of the revolution metaphor for
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their own mischievous ideas . For example:
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Figure 4 : "When the ladies have votes the best looking man will be their choice for chairing the
candidate." Front cover of Frank Leslie's Budget of Fun 110 (May 1867).
Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun chose to stereotype women in opposition to the suffrage movement
with captions indicating that if women have votes, best looking candidates will win the elections.
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Future of graphics in newspapers:
The use of illustrations in the newspaper changed the habits of the masses by
abbreviating the moments in which the news was being read. The tedious and arduous process
of printing illustrations on the newspapers presented the need to improvise photojournalism, and
resulted in the implementation of the photographic halftone. The photographs emphasized the
details in limited range of gray tone with shading in regular, repetitive patterns; all in a mechanical
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rendering at first reproduced as engravings, and later as halftones . The emergence of
photographs in the Illustrated London News during the Crimean war in the mid-nineteenth century,
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pioneered the birth of early photojournalism . The pictures of the 1913 march during the Suffrage
movement that occurred on March 3 changed the American political landscape, leading to the
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Nineteenth Amendment, seven years later .
The technological progress and accelerated use of photography has since promoted
presidential campaigns, publicized wars, advanced social movements, and enhanced the role of
photojournalists. Fast forward 150 years, the emergence of digital photography and citizen
journalism offers new realm of opportunities and threats that has drastically changed the social
movement platform.
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References:
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John De Freitas, L. (1991). The Society and Illustration during Two Centuries. RSA Journal, 139(5418),
405-411. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41375552
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Illustrated London news. (2001). The companion to British history, Routledge. London, United Kingdom:
Routledge. Retrieved from
http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?qurl=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.credoreference.com.remote.baruch.cu
ny.edu%2Fcontent%2Fentry%2Froutcbh%2Fillustrated_london_news%2F0
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Barnhurst, K., & Nerone, J. (2000). Civic Picturing vs. Realist Photojournalism the Regime of Illustrated
News, 1856-1901. Design Issues, 16(1), 59-79. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1511930
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Brown, J. (2004). History and the Web, From the Illustrated Newspaper to Cyberspace: Visual
Technologies and Interaction in the Nineteenth and Twenty-First Centuries. Rethinking History, 8(2).
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McClung Lee, A. (2000). From Press to People. In American Journalism: 1690-1940: Daily Newspaper
America Pt1 (0415228913th ed., Vol. 1, p. 275). Routledge.
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Crowley, D., & Heyer, P. (2007). Chapter 18. The New Journalism. In Communication in History (5th ed.,
pp. 138-140). Pearson Education.
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McClung Lee, A. (2000). From Press to People. In American Journalism: 1690-1940: Daily Newspaper
America Pt1 (0415228913th ed., Vol. 1, p. 274). Routledge.
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E. Park, R. (1923). The Natural History of Newspaper. American Journal of Sociology, 29(3), 273-289.
Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2764232
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Mattoni, A., & Teune, S. (2014, January 1). Visions of protests. A media-historic perspective on images in
social movements. Sociology Compass, 876-887.
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Adams, J. (2002). Art in Social Movements: Shantytown Women's Protest in Pinochet's Chile. Sociological
Forum, 17(1), 21-56. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/685086
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"The Woman Who Dared." Front cover of the New York Daily Graphic 1:81 (June 5, 1873). Retrieved from
http://www.common-place.org/vol-07/no-03/bunker/
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“Women bring all Voters into the world. Let Women Vote”. Retrieved from
http://ncmuseumofhistory.org/Women_in_NC_History/Session1TheImportanceofWomensHistory.aspx
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'An Evening Scene in Madison Park.–The "Tramps" Free Lodging-place', Frank Leslie's Illustrated
Newspaper, 21 July 1877, p. 341. Retrieved from http://chnm.gmu.edu/images/brown_fig13.jpg
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The Art of Condescension. (2007, April 1). Retrieved from http://www.common-place.org/vol-07/no03/bunker/
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"When the ladies have votes the best looking man will be their choice for chairing the candidate." Front
cover of Frank Leslie's Budget of Fun 110 (May 1867). Retrieved from http://www.common-place.org/vol07/no-03/bunker/
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Hayward, K., & Presdee, M. (2010). Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image. Routledge. p. 38. 17
Seeing Suffrage: The Washington Suffrage Parade of 1913, Its Pictures, and Its Effect on the American
Political Landscape. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.seeingsuffrage.com/the-book-2/#.VQmgU47F-YA
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