Images can tell powerful stories. One iconic photograph can symbolize an entire era. But if we expand the frame and examine the moment in which it was taken, a very different story can emerge. In this series of documentary shorts, Harvard University historian Dr. Vincent Brown meets with curators, photographers and other experts to challenge common assumptions about iconic American images.
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Major funding for THE BIGGER PICTURE was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funding was provided by the Anderson Family Charitable Fund, the Tamara L. Harris Foundation,...
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About the Host
Vincent Brown is Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University, and the co-founder of Timestamp Media. His research, writing, teaching, and other creative endeavors are focused on the political dimensions of cultural practice in the African Diaspora, with a particular emphasis on the early modern Atlantic world.
Brown is the author of numerous articles and reviews in scholarly journals; he is Principal Investigator and Curator for the animated thematic map Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761: A Cartographic Narrative (2013); he was Producer and Director of Research for the award-wining television documentary Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness (2009), broadcast nationally on season 11 of the PBS series Independent Lens; and he is the executive producer and host of THE BIGGER PICTURE, co-produced with WNET for PBS Digital Studios.
Professor Brown’s first book, The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (2008), was co-winner of the 2009 Merle Curti Award and received the 2009 James A. Rawley Prize and the 2008-09 Louis Gottschalk Prize. His most recent book is Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (2020), which was awarded eight prizes -- the Anisfield-Wolf Award, the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Harriet Tubman Prize, the James A. Rawley Prize, the P. Sterling Stuckey Prize, the Elsa Goveia Prize, the Oscar Kenshur Prize, and the Phillis Wheatley Book Award for Non-Fiction Research -- and was a finalist for five others, including the international Cundill History Prize.
Co-Producers
Behind the scenes with Vincent Brown, host of THE BIGGER PICTURE, as he interviews Lincoln expert Harold Holzer in the Great Hall of The Cooper Union.
1/14
Timestamp Media/The WNET Group
Ann M. Shumard, senior curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, shows THE BIGGER PICTURE host Vincent Brown a carte de visite of Mathew Brady’s iconic portrait of Abraham Lincoln.
2/14
Timestamp Media/The WNET Group
Vincent Brown, host of THE BIGGER PICTURE, in conversation with Maria Lopez-Nuñez, director of environmental justice and community development at the Ironbound Community Corporation in Newark, NJ.
3/14
Timestamp Media/The WNET Group
Behind the scenes with Vincent Brown, host of THE BIGGER PICTURE, as he interviews curator Jennifer Levasseur at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.
4/14
Timestamp Media/The WNET Group
Behind the scenes with Vincent Brown, host of THE BIGGER PICTURE, as he interviews photographer Thomas E. Franklin about his iconic September 11th photo, “Raising the Flag at Ground Zero.”
5/14
Timestamp Media/The WNET Group
Vincent Brown, host of THE BIGGER PICTURE, views Thomas E. Franklin’s “Raising the Flag at Ground Zero” photograph, on display at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
6/14
Timestamp Media/The WNET Group
Vincent Brown, host of THE BIGGER PICTURE, in conversation with Michelle Patterson, historian at Mount St. Mary’s University and co-editor of "Travels with Frances Densmore."
7/14
Timestamp Media/The WNET Group
Educator and artist Jesse DesRosier, a member of the Blackfeet Nation and descendent of Mountain Chief’s band.
8/14
Timestamp Media/The WNET Group
Vincent Brown, host of THE BIGGER PICTURE, inspects a model of the Kaiser Wilhelm II — the ocean liner Alfred Stieglitz was traveling on in 1907 when he took his now-iconic photograph, “The Steerage.”
9/14
Timestamp Media/The WNET Group
Vincent Brown, host of The Bigger Picture, speaks to historian Mae Ngai about Alfred Stieglitz’s “The Steerage” and what migration to and from America in the early 1900s would have really looked like.
10/14
Timestamp Media/The WNET Group
Academic, author, and activist Angela Y. Davis speaks with Vincent Brown, host of THE BIGGER PICTURE, about her FBI Wanted poster and the evolution of her image during the 1970s.
11/14
Vanessa Vigil for Timestamp Media/The WNET Group
Behind the scenes with Vincent Brown, host of THE BIGGER PICTURE, and historian Elizabeth Hinton, who curated “Angela Davis: Freed by the People” at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute in 2019.
12/14
Timestamp Media/The WNET Group
Vincent Brown, host of THE BIGGER PICTURE, discusses Gordon Parks’ “American Gothic” with art historian Sarah Elizabeth Lewis at the Harvard Art Museums.
13/14
Timestamp Media/The WNET Group
Vincent Brown, host of THE BIGGER PICTURE, in conversation with photographer Andre D. Wagner, whose own work is heavily influenced by that of Gordon Parks.
14/14
Timestamp Media/The WNET Group
Major funding for THE BIGGER PICTURE was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funding was provided by the Anderson Family Charitable Fund, the Tamara L. Harris Foundation,...