Pictures abound in history classrooms and teachers use them in many different ways. They add--often literally--some colour to the past, helping us to imagine what different worlds were like. Pictures can be used quite legitimately in this way to fire imagination and stimulate interest. But we can also use them to develop important skills of visual…

When pupils study interpretations or representations of the past which are neither from their own period nor from the period being interpreted/represented, they are having to employ sophisticated knowledge and skill. Jane Card describes this as "double vision": the pupils must think about "the period depicted" (in this case the…