Pictures in the Middle: The Use of Photos and Other Illustrations in Biographies

Throughout my career as a librarian, one activity that I have enjoyed is looking at picture in the middle of biographies and memoirs. They evoke in me a feeling similar to finding old pictures in a drawer in my mother's house. I can become transfixed. This can easily happen at the library when I find new books sitting on a cart right out of technical processing, when I am working on reference questions, or when I am weeding collections. I find myself gazing at the photos of the subjects in their youth, then doing whatever made them famous, and finally in old age. There is often more to see than just famous people - there are old clothes, old cars, and interesting locations. I am hooked by these glossy pages.

At a recent book discussion, one of the club members said that her favorite thing about biographies were the pictures in the middle. I understood, but I was suddenly conscious of all the biographies that I have examined in the past three years that did not have picture-in-the-middle sections. I wondered why I had not thought about the change - if there really has been a change.

So I decided to do a little investigating. I have been looking at many biographies published in 2009 anyway, so I created a spreadsheet to keep track of how these books deal with pictures. I used only third person biographies for the study, no memoirs. I discovered two common ways to use pictures in biographies: 1) group pictures into inserted sections, often on glossy paper, or 2) distribute the pictures throughout the text with no glossy paper. There are two other less common ways to use pictures: 3) insert a single picture on glossy paper with a blank back in a few strategic spots in a book (common a hundred years ago), or 4) fill the books with photos and minimal text. The fourth method really makes a different type of book, a photobiography.

Looking at 66 biographies from 2009, I found:

• 40 books (61 %) with inserted picture sections
• 20 books (30 %) with pictures spread throughout the text
• 2 books (3 %) with single inserted pages
• 2 books were photobiographies (3 %)
• 4 books had no illustrations (6 %)

This adds to more than 100 % because Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock by Henry Adams had both a color insert section and black-and-white photos distributed through the text, while Rehnquist by Herman J. Obermayer had both distributed photos as well a few single page/single photo inserts on glossy paper.

Seeing that more than half of the biographies still had picture sections in the middle, I wondered if I had really been right in thinking there were more in the past. I decided to go back twenty years and look at biographies from 1989.

At the Downers Grove Public Library in Illinois, I was able to find 46 biographies published in 1989:

• 36 book (79 %) had picture sections
• 6 books (13 %) had pictures spread through the text
• 1 book (2 %) had no photos
• 4 books were photobiographies (8 %)

Again, the total is greater than 100 % because Mozart: The Golden Years by H.C. Robbins Landon had both color illustrations in an inserted section as well as black and white illustrations throughout the text.

My sample size may not be large enough to be definitive, but it appears to me that there has been a shift in the way biographies include photos. The method that has gained popularity is incorporating pictures into the text, but separate picture sections are still found in more than half of today's biographies. It will be interesting to see if the trend continues with more emphasis on reducing printing costs. Glossy sections must cost more, and digital publishing makes it easier to insert photos into the text.

For now we should enjoy looking at six to twelve glossy photo-rich pages in the middle of the book while we can.

For those wanting to check my math, here are the books:

2009 Biographies

With Insert Sections

1. Aces High: The Heroic Saga of the Two Top-Scoring Aces of World War II
2. Ayn Rand and the World She Made
3. Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown
4. Barack and Michelle
5. Bowie
6. Butcher: Anatomy of a Mafia Psychopath
7. Cheever: A Life
8. Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
9. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
10. Eureka Man
11. Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schreiver and the Ultimate Weapon
12. First Tycoon
13. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor
14. Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King
15. Heroes & Villains: Inside the Minds of the Greatest Warriors in History
16. How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood
17. Last Man Standing: The Ascent of James Dimon and JPMorgan Chase
18. Last of His Kind
19. LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay
20. Molly Ivins: A Rebel's Life
21. Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain
22. Neverland: J.M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan
23. Paul McCartney: A Life
24. Pink Lady: The Many Lives of Helen Gahagan Douglas
25. Poe: A Life Cut Short
26. Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life
27. Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe
28. Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne
29. Strange Eventful History: Ellen Terry, Henry Irving…
30. Strangest Man
31. Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith
32. Trotsky: A Biography
33. Unmasked: Final Years of Michael Jackson
34. Wildflower: An Extraordinary Life and Untimely Death in Africa
35. Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Franes Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience
36. Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth
37. Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I
38. Mistress of the Monarchy: The Life of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster
39. Secret Life of Louis XIV
40. Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock

With Photos Spread Through Text

1. Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys
2. Bolter
3. Civil War Wives
4. Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time
5. Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced and Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship
6. Evelyn Brent: The Life and Films of Hollywood's Lady Crook
7. Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants
8. Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age
9. Jacques Cousteau
10. Joseph II
11. Love Pirate and the Bandit's Son
12. Most Evil: Avenger, Zodiac, and the Further Serial Murders of Dr. George Hill Hodel
13. Mrs. Lincoln: A Life
14. Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong
15. Rehnquist
16. Sisters of the Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels
17. Scandals
18. U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth
19. Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington
20. Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America

Single Page Inserts

1. Beyond the Miracle Worker
2. Rehnquist

Photobiographies

1. Amelia Earhart: The Thrill of It
2. Great and Only Barnum

No Photos

1. Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife
2. Louisa May Alcott
3. The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals
4. Thoreau You Don't Know

1989 Biographies

With Insert Sections

1. Bad Intentions: The Mike Tyson Story
2. Bennie Goodman and the Swing Era
3. The Benny Hill Story
4. The Bridesmaids: Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, and Six Intimate Friends
5. Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart
6. Catherine the Great: Life and Legend
7. Dale Carnegie: The Man Who Influenced Millions
8. Dracula: Prince of Many Faces: His Life and Times
9. Dylan: A Biography
10. Fred Allen: His Life and Wit
11. George Bush: An Intimate Portrait
12. Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life
13. Grand Obsession: Madame Curie and Her World
14. He's a Rebel (about Phil Spector)
15. Hitler: The Path to Power
16. The Hustons
17. If This Was Happiness: A Biography of Rita Hayworth
18. Iron Lady: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher
19. Knight of the Night: The Life of Johnny Carson (not glossy paper)
20. The Landry Legend
21. Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography
22. Life and Death of Andy Warhol
23. Linus Pauling: A Man and His Science
24. Mary Pickford: America's Sweetheart
25. Misha: The Mikhail Baryshnikov Story
26. Mozart: The Golden Years
27. No Name on the Bullet: A Biography of Audie Murphy
28. The Princess and the Duchess
29. The Quest for El Cid
30. Royalty Revealed (about the Windsors)
31. The Secrets of Houdini
32. Sheens: Martin, Charlie, and Emilio Estevez
33. The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart
34. Stanny: The Gilded Life of Stanford White
35. Stonewall Jackson: Portrait of a Soldier
36. W.C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes

With Photos Spread Through Text

1. The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright
2. Harold, the People's Mayor
3. Jane Addams
4. Louise Brooks
5. Luther: Man Between God and the Devil
6. Mozart: The Golden Years

Photobiographies

1. Andrew Lloyd Webber
2. Bruce Lee Story
3. Rasputan: Rascal Master
4. The Vanderbilts

No Photos

1. The Borgias