The Bigger Picture show's poster

This Photo Isn’t What It Looks Like

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.

This Photo Isn’t What It Looks Like

Season 1 Episode 4 | 11m 26s | CC

Host Vincent Brown challenges a common assumption about a photo of ethnographer Frances Densmore and Piegan Blackfeet tribe leader Mountain Chief: that Densmore is recording a “dying culture.” Brown visits the Library of Congress to hear an original recording of Mountain Chief and travels to Montana to discuss the vitality of Blackfeet culture today with artist and teacher Jesse DesRosier.

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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, the William Talbott Hillman Foundation, the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for the digital production of THE BIGGER PICTURE was provided by Chasing the Dream – a public media initiative from The WNET Group, reporting on poverty, opportunity, and justice in America, and supported by The JPB Foundation, The Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund, and Sue and Edgar Wachenheim, III.