Krystle Elaine Stricklin

From 1898 to 1913, the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars brought a host of US servicemen, journalists, explorers, and photographers to the island shores of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Intervening in Cuba’s struggle for independence, the US achieved swift military victories in the Caribbean after which Spain ceded control of their long-held island territories, while a brutal guerilla war continued in the Philippines well into the twentieth century. During this time, the government and the popular press used photographs of violence and death to showcase the might of the American military and to bolster support for overseas expansionism. Macabre scenes of military executions, battlefield corpses, soldiers’ graves, and unearthed human bones appeared in books, magazines, and as postcards to be shared among citizens eager to learn about the new “Greater America,” as the country was being described by the press. While these public images had an overt propagandistic purpose, many private images of violence and death appeared in photo albums and scrapbooks created by men and women who were using photographs in highly subjective and dynamic ways to reconcile their personal experiences with state- and public-sponsored narratives of the wars.

A guiding goal of my research is to reevaluate the photographic record of the wars by considering these vernacular albums, which are tactile, intimate objects with dynamic arrangements of photographs and text, in context with the social and cultural significance of imperial violence and death. The dearth of scholarship on photo albums and scrapbooks belies the central roles these objects played in mediating wartime experiences at home and abroad. By investigating how these images and albums negotiated between private and public histories, this dissertation offers a new understanding of how photography served as the medium through which individuals came to understand and participate in America’s burgeoning empire. One of the main purposes of this study is to analyze how people adapted and experimented with established methods of album-making to generate their own means to contend with the unprecedented challenges of this war and to satisfy the human impulse to record, organize, and preserve our experiences.