Finding pictures

Finding images to use for this assignment was, in one sense, not difficult at all, because I had relatively few to choose from. That being said, it was difficult to actually track anything down that worked well for the effect I was trying to achieve. I used the websites of the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and ArchivesUSA, as well as resorting to images used in Wikipedia entries. The entry titled "Build with Good Bricks" is a scan of an image I found on microfilm at the Library of Congress. That was one of the initial images I knew I was going to use, but choosing the rest was difficult.

The animated map of colonialism was one I was most conflicted about using, because to get the animation to work, I had to link to the actual file, instead of it being embedded directly in my blog; because it is easily the most vague and abstract of the images I used; but also because of its source, has legitimacy (and perhaps accuracy) issues. These issues however, for the purpose of the point I am trying to make, I feel are within reasonable parameters to warrant the image's use to show that colonialism was (and perhaps still is) a considerably problematic issue in the world, especially in areas represented at the Bandung Conference.

The most frustrating part of this exercise was negotiating the Blogger software to make my entries appear as they should. I had to upload the images two (and in some cases three) times before everything appeared as it should and in the correct order. My own technological ignorance aside, however, the process of thinking through this project - how to visually depict something that I am much more used to saying in words, gave me increased respect for the actual possibility of doing credible and worthwhile work presented in an online fashion.