This paper focuses on the revolutionary use of photojournalism in Leslie’s Weekly and Harper’s Weekly from 1899 to 1901 during the Philippine- American War, in particular at the Battle of Caloocan.1 I discuss the context of visual journalism and social realism from the Civil War to the 1890s as well as the shift from caricature illustrations to realism in photography and articles. I trace the “commodity racism” involved in American consumerism during the Philippine-American War that paralleled the voyeuristic consumption of the Filipino dead and the development of a gendered and classed American nationalism. As American culture shifted more towards a focus on the individual and personhood in amateur photography and social realism, Filipino bodies were nevertheless treated as objects and trophies of war and caricatured as savages in visual representations.