About

Cara Finnegan is a writer, teacher, and historian of photography. Finnegan's ideas about photography have been featured in a variety of publications in the fields of Communication and U.S. History, as well as in popular media outlets such as CBS, the New York Times​, the BBC, Chicago Public Radio, Vox, and Reuters. She is also affiliated with Reading the Pictures, a non-profit site dedicated to the analysis of news photos and media imagery.

Finnegan is currently completing a book on the history of American presidents' engagements with photography from its inception to the digital age.

She is Professor of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a former fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities (2016-17).

Featured Work

Making Photography Matter: A Viewer's History from the Civil War to the Great Depression

2015

Studies of photography's historical viewers are rare, and with good reason: it is not easy to access the experiences of historical viewers. Finnegan tackles this problem by seeking out those moments when viewers shared their responses to photographs with others in their communities. She analyzes letters, newspaper and magazine articles, books, and comments left at exhibits to show how viewers mobilized their beliefs about photography into political arguments about war, child labor, economic depression, and shifting national identity.

Other Works

  • "Birth of a Resort: The Chase Hotel and the Rise of Lakeside Tourism, " Minnesota History magazine

    2009

  • Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture

    2008

  • Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA Photographs

    2003

Awards and Recognition

  • National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow
  • National Communication Association book award for Making Photography Matter
  • National Communication Association book award for Picturing Poverty

Press and Media Mentions