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STUDIES IN QUALITATIVE METHODOLOGY VOLUME 7
SEEING IS BELIEVING? APPROACHES TO
VISUAL RESEARCH
EDITED BY
CHRISTOPHER J. POLE
University of Leicester, UK
2004
Amsterdam – Boston – Heidelberg – London – New York – Oxford Paris – San Diego – San Francisco – Singapore – Sydney – Tokyo
SEEING IS BELIEVING? APPROACHES
TO VISUAL RESEARCH
STUDIES IN QUALITATIVE
METHODOLOGY
Series Editor: Robert G. Burgess
Volume 1: Conducting Qualitative Research
Volume 2: Reflection on Field Experience
Volume 3: Learning about Fieldwork
Volume 4: Issues in Qualitative Research
Volume 5: Computing and Qualitative Research
Series Editors: Robert G. Burgess and Chris J. Pole
Volume 6: Cross-Cultural Case Study
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CONTENTS
VISUAL RESEARCH: POTENTIAL AND OVERVIEW Christopher J. Pole 1
HISTORY THROUGH THE LENS: EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY
John Martin and Ruth Martin 9
SNAP HAPPY: TOWARD A SOCIOLOGY OF “EVERYDAY ” PHOTOGRAPHY
Barbara Harrison 23
RECORDING THE “HABITUS” Tim Dant 41
PERFORMANCE, SELF-REPRESENTATION AND NARRATIVE: INTERVIEWING WITH VIDEO
Sarah Pink 61
ON USING VISUAL DATA ACROSS THE RESEARCH PROCESS: SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS FROM A SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY OF PEOPLE’S INDEPENDENT LEARNING IN TIMES OF EDUCATIONAL CHANGE
Pat Allatt and Caroline Dixon 79
IMAGES, INTERVIEWS AND INTERPRETATIONS: MAKING CONNECTIONS IN VISUAL RESEARCH
Alan Felstead, Nick Jewson and Sally Walters 105
v
vi
POWER, INEQUALITY, CHANGE AND UNCERTAINTY: VIEWING THE WORLD THROUGH THE DEVELOPMENT PRISM
Matt Smith and John Donnelly 123
USING VISUALS TO RELEASE PUPILS’ VOICES: EMOTIONAL PATHWAYS INTO ENHANCING THINKING AND REFLECTING ON LEARNING
Andrea Raggl and Michael Schratz 147
THE USE OF THE VISUAL MEDIUM FOR PROGRAM EVALUATION
Rosalind Hurworth 163
ABOUT THE AUTHORS 183
VISUAL RESEARCH: POTENTIAL
AND OVERVIEW
Christopher J. Pole
In assembling a collection of papers which address issues relating to the visual
image as the medium through which we might come to know the social world,
we are in a sense, merely drawing on something that most of us do and take for
granted during all of our waking hours. For most of us, the world in which we
live is experienced through our capacity to see and to make sense of what we see.
At its most fundamental, visual research draws on our basic capacity to interpret
the world through our sense of sight. In this respect, for those of us who are not
in anyway visually impaired visual research might be seen to be little more than
something that we do all the time in order to go about our everyday lives. We
might also argue that all or at least the great majority of social research relies on
our capacity to interpret and to make sense of visual images. This is true not only in
cases where methods of observation and participant observation are used, but also
in respect of the need to read written data of various kinds, to interpret statistics
and merely to orient ourselves within any given research location. Whilst there is
no intention here to deny or overlook the contribution that blind or partially sighted
researchers may make to our understanding of social life through their work with
the written medium or through their capacity to give accounts of their personal
experiences of research sites and locations via other, perhaps more developed,
senses such as hearing, touch and smell, it remains a fact that most social research
relies on the capacity of the researcher to see and to interpret on the basis of what
is seen.
Seeing is Believing? Approaches to Visual Research
Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Volume 7, 1–7
Copyright © 2004 by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1042-3192/doi:10.1016/S1042-3192(04)07001-6
1
2 CHRISTOPHER J. POLE
Although it may be true to claim that visual research is just an extension of the
act of seeing, what we do all the time, this would be to privilege the visual over the
research. Indeed, we might make similar claims for other approaches to research
which are based on participation, interviews or conversational techniques. These
may draw on activities in which we all engage every day, however, the point is,
that as we go about our lives we do not usually deploy them in such a way which
consciously yields data for research. In this, visual research is no different. For
example, as parents, although we may participate in parent-teacher committees or
attend school concerts we do not ordinarily use these occasions as opportunities
for research. For the sociologist of education, however, they may well offer rich
sources of data, but for the average parent, participation is on the basis of their role
as mother or father and not as social researcher. Similarly, whilst it is likely that
most of us take photographs from time to time, which may very well be of great
interest and use to social researchers of many kinds and for all manner of reasons, on
pressing the camera shutter we would not usually have this in mind. In this respect,
visual research is similar to many data collection methods at the disposal of the
social researcher in that, it draws on familiar activities that we take for granted and
perhaps fail to realise their potential as rich sources of information about the social
world. However, what the contributions to this volume show is that although visual
research may be rooted in the ordinary and the everyday, its potential as a research
method goes much further than this. Moreover, the contributors present a number
of challenges to what we might regard as data and how we analyse and make
use of visual data in a context which continues to privilege the written medium.
They also pose challenging questions about perspective, truth, reliability, inclusion
and omission in the context of using the visual as a medium for knowing about
the social.
In seeking a working definition of visual research which is useful in the context
of the contributions to this book, we need to be mindful of the different sources of
visual information available to us not just as social actors but as social researchers.
In relation to documentary sources Plummer (1983) tells us that the world is awash
with documents with the potential to yield interesting and important insights into
social life. The same could be said of visual research. For example, we have
already spoken of photographs but as Martin and Martin demonstrate in Chapter
two of this collection, we should bear in mind that photography is a relatively
recent technological development. With the invention of photography dating back
only 160 years or so, with the development of a chemical process which allowed
the capture of images on glass plates and merely some forty years since further
technological developments gave birth to the kind of cheap and easy photography
that we now take for granted, photography is only useful as a source of information
about the relatively recent past and the present day. Even within this timescale it is
Visual Research: Potential and Overview 3
further limited to those societies and people who have ready access to the required
technology. Indeed, in chapter three, Harrison outlines some of the technological
changes that have taken place in the field of photography during its relatively
short history and alongside this she discusses some of the changing conventions
of photography in respect of what is deemed to be appropriate subject matter for
photographers. Although the technological changes that have occurred might be
seen as a liberation or democratization of photography as it has become a familiar
aspect of social life for many people, Harrison argues that everyday photography is
not really about everyday experiences. The conventions of social respectability and
appropriateness, together with a taken for granted approach to everyday activities
which means that we see the regular and the ordinary as mundane and, therefore,
not worthy of photography, results in aspects of the social which remain, bye
and large, un-photographed. One might speculate, for example, on the reaction
of mourners at a funeral to the presence of a photographer, or on the likelihood
of deliberately taking photographs of the process of housework or of the family
watching the television. In each of these cases photography seems unlikely.
Moreover, whilst those of us in the so called developed world are able to deposit
films at any number of specialist processing shops, chemists or photographers’
studios, collect high quality prints an hour later, and have the means of paying
for them, in other parts of the world this would not be possible and photography
remains an unusual and seldom practised activity. Moreover, if, for example we
wished to know about the lives of sixteenth century Dutch Merchants it would
clearly be pointless looking through photographic collections found in galleries in
Amsterdam. A more productive method would be to scour the walls of the Rijhlks
Museum and study the paintings of the Dutch Masters. Although much more
limited in what they include, paintings may perform a similar research function to
some photographs in that they offer a window on the past, of a particular moment.
Also like photographs, however, we should remember that paintings will reflect
only what either the painter or his/her client wish them to include. As Aries (1962)
points out, if we were to study Medieval art, until about the twelfth century in an
attempt to examine the social composition of society we could reasonably conclude
that it was only comprised of adults. Jenks (1996) make a similar point.
It is in fact the case that the figurative painting of the Middle Ages is notable for its dearth of
depictions of children. They were apparently considered of such little importance that they did
not warrant representation in a unique and particular form. (p. 64)
Aries’ and Jenk’s observations highlight a further issue in respect of the capacity
of visual representations to provide useful information about aspects of social life
without reference to other sources of information. This is a concern of Becker
(1974) for whom the photograph can only ever have meaning if the social context
4 CHRISTOPHER J. POLE
in which it is taken is known. Clearly the paintings referred to by Aries and Jenks
do not tell the whole story and to understand what they say about aspects of
society in the Middle Ages we need to know something of the context in which
they were commissioned and produced. Children clearly did exist before the
twelfth century but the interesting question to pose here is why they were deemed
inappropriate or unnecessary for inclusion in painting of the day. In this instance,
visual representations not only yield a supply of historical data but also prompt a
line of questioning about what is not included in the representation and the reasons
why.
In addition to photographs and paintings we could also include film,
video, drawings and cartoons, a whole array of web-based sources, graffiti,
advertisements, clothing and packaging in our definition of visual data. We might
also extend this to include artefacts and architecture, rural landscapes and many
other spaces. In fact, if we take an inclusive definition to visual sources, which
incorporates anything we experience through the visual medium, then the list of
what the visual researcher might legitimately regard as a source of data would be
virtually endless. In fact, it might be so wide ranging as to render it more of a
description of possibilities than a definition of a research approach. In seeking to
characterise visual research, therefore, we need to go beyond the possible source
of the data to include the ways in which the researcher works with the source and
the data it might yield. In this sense, it is about method and methodology, in so
far as visual research relies on more than merely collecting and displaying visual
images (Prosser & Schwartz, 1998). Again, this may be something that we all have
experience of, the classic example being the family photograph album (Musello,
1979; Pole & Morrison, 2003; Scott, 1990). Whilst collections of photographs,
etchings or paintings may be interesting, things of aesthetic beauty or a means of
recording and chronicling the past, this does not mean that collection, cataloguing
or the very existence of the visual constitutes research.
In considering the place of the visual in research methods and methodology it
may be helpful to consider two different aspects of the role of the image. These are
the significance of the image to people’s lives and the way in which the researcher
uses and interacts with the visual image in order to understand that significance. If
we take the example of architecture or even more broadly of the built environment,
then the way that people use buildings or spaces as they go about their daily lives
(Lee, 2000; Webb et al., 1966) may say a great deal not only about those buildings
and spaces but also about those people and their lives. Visual research depends
on the researcher’s capacity to make sense of the interface between people and
the image (Grint & Woolgar, 1997). For example, whilst for some the opulence
of the Foyer of a grand hotel may be enticing and inviting, for others in may
be threatening, exclusionary and forbidding. Similarly, the décor and layout of a
Visual Research: Potential and Overview 5
particular shop may appear intriguing and exciting for some potential customers,
whilst for others it may appear to be intimidating or vulgar. To understand the
space we need to know more than what it looks like. We need to understand a
whole range of issues which might relate to the kind of clientele the shop or the
hotel wishes to attract, the cost of its goods and services and location. Similarly
we also need to know about the social characteristics of those who find the spaces
inviting and of those who find them intimidating in terms, for example of social
class, gender, ethnicity and age. The significance of the space in these examples
and therefore of the way in which the visual image is interpreted relies on the
interaction of the social with the material.
In the two examples discussed above we are dealing with the significance of
images which have been created for the construction of particular kinds of spaces.
Whilst it may be argued that the way in which the spaces are experienced and
indeed the social impact of the spaces is mediated through a visual experience
and are, therefore, relevant to this discussion of visual research, they may not be
what is immediately brought to mind in this context. However, the chapter by Dant
in this collection, although concerned largely with the capacity of video to yield
socially significant data, builds on some of his earlier ideas (Dant, 1999) to engage
with the relationship between individuals and artefacts. Issues of material culture
are addressed in respect of cars and car maintenance. The use of video recordings
allows Dant to interrogate the relationship between the material and the social not
only in terms of the visual but also in terms of feel, touch and movement. Dant
argues that the video camera, which offers the capacity to constantly play and
replay sequences of images, facilitates a level of analysis not available via still
photography or forms of observation. Similarly, but in the context of very different
subject matter, Chapter five by Pink also discusses the use of video technology
to engage with ideas about the social significance of living spaces as she tours
peoples homes and invites them to provide a commentary on what they regard
as significant about them, which Pink simultaneously films. In this way, although
as with Dant, the visual record is made by the researcher rather than those being
researched, it is the researched who decide what appears on the video. For Pink,
the act of making the video is an integral aspect of the process by which decisions
are made about what is significant about the home and what is not.
Images of the home are also included in the chapter by Allatt and Dickson.
However, here the images, some of which are taken from video recordings made
by young people of secondary school age, are used not in a literal sense to convey
a representation of the home, but as context for the authors’ focus on the social
geography of independent learning amongst A level students in the North of
England. In addition, photography is extended to the locality, education institutions
and other aspects of the lives of the young people. Whilst images of the locality in
6 CHRISTOPHER J. POLE
which the research was conducted are used to illustrate and add detail to the chapter
in a way which would not be possible via more conventional textual representation,
the authors also argue that an important role for the visual in social research is to
bring the audience closer to the research. In doing this, the images included in the
chapter go beyond a mere supporting role, which is often the fate of visual material
(Bolton et al., 2001) in accounts of social research, combining what Chaplin (1994)
identified as both representations of culture and representations about culture, to
situate the experiences of the young people in terms of geography, social and
cultural capital.
Chapter seven by Felstead, Jewson and Walters also includes images of the home,
however, here the concern is with the home as a site of work. Images of bedrooms,
sitting rooms and purposely equipped studies provide the focus for a discussion
of shifting work spaces. Again, like Allatt and Dixon the authors subscribe to the
view that pictures can often say more than words and also facilitate the sharing of
data between members of the research team who may not have been able to visit
the research site. However, the chapter which is in the form of an auto-critique
also discusses some of the problems and disappointments associated with visual
research. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of theoretically
grounding visual research, as it is this which will distinguish visual sociology from
photojournalism. In this sense, Chapter eight by Smith and Donnelly demonstrates
a similar perspective, albeit on the basis of very different subject matter. Their
discussion focuses on the connections between visual sociology and sociology of
development. They argue that photographs exhibit a moral voice that invites us, as
the viewer, to reflect on the circumstances in which people find themselves and their
conditions for survival. Ultimately, this chapter points to the problematic nature
of the relationship between the sociology of development, images of development
and the meanings attributed to those images by the viewer. Working through a case
study, the chapter offers critical insight into the role of the visual in the context of
contemporary theories and practice of development.
Chapters nine and ten are concerned with the use of visual research methods in
the context of education. Moreover, in different ways they both discuss the potential
for visual data to contribute to processes of evaluation. Raggl and Schratz argue that
visual methods allow the researcher to look into the inner world of the school in a
way which is freed from some of the constraints imposed by language. They argue
that photographs capture a more holistic perspective and also have the capacity to
facilitate self-evaluation. Whist the focus in this chapter is clearly on schools and
processes of learning many of the issues raised by Raggl and Schratz are applicable
to other settings and to processes of evaluation therein. For Hurworth in Chap. 10,
photo-evaluation provides an opportunity to demonstrate the impact of particular
actions in before and after shots, or to provide a longitudinal view of social action
Visual Research: Potential and Overview 7
within a particular location or setting. Hurworth raises important questions about
the use of photography in a positivistic sense warning against their use merely as
a means of providing literal representation. Like the earlier chapter by Felstead et
al., she emphasizes the need for photography and evaluation to be located in firm
theoretical foundations.
Overall, this volume seeks not only to offer insight into the process of using the
visual medium as the primary source of data, but also to argue the distinctiveness
of visual research. In commissioning and editing these contributions across a
reasonably disparate range of topics, the intention has been to demonstrate that
visual research is more than simply an additional source of information at the
disposal of the researcher. The contributions show that visual research has the
capacity to offer a different way of understanding the social world. The authors in
this volume have shown how visual methods provide access to different aspects
of the social world, not possible by other means and have also demonstrated
how social life is frequently situated, shaped and given social significance by
the interaction of individuals with artefacts and spaces.
REFERENCES
Aries, P. (1962). Centuries of childhood. London: Cape.
Becker, H. (1974). Photography and sociology. Studies of the Anthropology of Visual Communication,
1, 3–26.
Bolton, A., Pole, C., & Mizen, P. (2001). Picture this: Researching child workers. Sociology, 35(2),
501–518.
Chaplin, E. (1994). Sociology and visual representation. London: Routledge.
Dant, T. (1999). Material culture in the social world: Values, activities, lifestyles. Buckingham: Open
University Press.
Grint, K., & Woolgar, S. (1997) The machine at work: Technology, work and organization. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Jenks, C. (1996) Childhood. London: Routledge.
Lee, R. (2000) Unobtrusive methods in social research. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Musello, C. (1979) Family photographs. In: J. Wagner (Ed.), Images of Information. Beverley Hills:
Sage.
Plummer, K. (1983). Documents of life: An introduction to the problems and literature of a humanistic
method. London: Allen & Unwin.
Pole, C., & Morrison, M. (2003). Ethnography for education. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Prosser, J., & Schwartz, D. (1998). Photographs within the sociological research process. In: J. Prosser
(Ed.), Image-based Research: A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers. London: Falmer Press.
Scott, J. (1990). A matter of record. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Webb, E., Campbell, D. et al. (1966). Unobtrusive measures: Nonreactive measures in the social
sciences. Chicago: Rand McNally.
HISTORY THROUGH THE LENS:
EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY
John Martin and Ruth Martin
Traditionally, historians have focused primarily on written accounts as their main
source of material. Until relatively recently other forms of evidence have received
scant attention from mainstream researchers. This has been particularly true for
oral history; personal recollections have been largely neglected. It is even more
so for photographic evidence. Academics have all but ignored the adage “one
picture is worth a thousand words.” Contemporary photographs have tended to
be overlooked as serious sources of information. Apart from a limited number of
specialised books, the trend has been to use only the occasional photograph as
garnish to a section of text. More often than not they are only on the dust cover to
entice the casual browser.
This chapter will focus on the use of photographs in respect of the social and
cultural impact of the Asian community on Leicester, Asian Leicester (Martin
& Singh, 2002) assembles a collection of photographs chronicling the lives of
Asian settlers; their work, leisure, festivals; creative arts, religious institutions,
environmental impact and involvement in local civic live. It portrays the experience
of ordinary members of the Asian community; industrial workers, teachers,
shopkeepers, businessmen, broadcasters, local politicians, community leaders and
women’s groups. The research provides unique insights into these largely neglected
dimensions of life in Asian Britain today. This chapter will focus the examining
the early development of photography, the merits of using this medium in research,
copyright issues, and the use of photography as propaganda.
Seeing is Believing? Approaches to Visual Research
Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Volume 7, 9–22
Copyright © 2004 by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1042-3192/doi:10.1016/S1042-3192(04)07002-8
9
10 JOHN MARTIN AND RUTH MARTIN
THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY
There are several contenders for the title of being the “pioneer of photography,”
of which in France, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (1787–1851) is the most
internationally famous. In Britain, it is widely accepted that although William
Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) was not the first to produce photographs, he had a
major contribution to the development of photography.
Daguerre announced his development of the camera “daguerreotype” on
the 7 January 1839, after having developed a number of different processes
over the previous decade partly in conjunction with Joseph Nicephore Niépce
(1765–1833). Within the French government, Francois Arago (1786–1853)
realised the importance of this new procedure and in particular that it would
revolutionise the task of copying the Egyptian hieroglyphics, as he claimed that
with the daguerreotype “a single man would suffice to bring this vast labour to a
happy conclusion” which “cover the great monuments at Thebes, Memphis and
Carnac” that would otherwise “require scores of years and legions of artists.”1
Arago persuaded Hippolyte Bayard (1807–1887) to postpone publishing the details
of his own invention led to him being denied the chance of being credited as the
inventor of photography, even though he held a photographic exhibition of his
extensive works on 24 June 1839.
In contrast, Fox Talbot M. P. publicly announced his method of “photogenic
drawing” at the Royal Institution, on the 25 January 1839 and also wrote to Francois
Arago, Daguerre’s wealthy and influential political ally, explaining that he himself
had been the inventor of photography. At this stage, he was not aware that the two
processes were fundamentally different; as daguerreotypes had sharper focus than
the calotype and tended to show the imperfections of the printing paper, but had
the advantage of being reproducible.
The nineteenth century saw significant technological advancements in the field
of photography; although many historians may have difficulty in obtaining or
utilising photographs from the beginning of this period effectively. The limited
nature of the cameras in having exposure times of over thirty minutes meant that
“nature in motion could not reproduce itself,” as “all which moved or walked
did not appear in the drawing.”2 The long exposure times meant portraits were
characterised by the rather stilted expressions. Another drawback that precipitated
the scarcity of photographs was the expense. In 1839, a camera obscura and other
instruments were purchased by William Henry Fox Talbot for seven pounds and
fifteen shillings. The typical servant’s wage would have averaged between ten and
twenty pounds a year.3 Additionally, the use of chemicals of the calotype process
in the early Victorian era, which had the disadvantage that the prints tended to
fade rapidly, meant that few photographs, taken during this pioneering age, have
survived intact.
History Through the Lens 11
However, photography was revolutionised by the development of the wet
collodion process in 1851 by Frederick Scott Archer. This new process was more
sensitive to light than the calotype process, so exposure times were dramatically
reduced to as little as two to three seconds enabling the taking of less stilted pictures
of individuals. This enabled a new and more realistic dimension for this art form
that had previously been confined to still scenes or people. More importantly the
new process that used a glass base which meant sharply focused images could be
produced. As the new process was never patented, so photography became more
cheaper and more widely adopted; especially as the price of a paper print was less
than a tenth of the cost of the Daguerreotype process.
Many of the more sophisticated photographs in terms of technical quality were
taken by professionals, which were becoming increasingly numerous as early as
the 1870s. By this time, the bulk of their work was portraiture using fixed props,
painted backgrounds and often artificial lighting in studios as a result of the need to
“sensitise the plate almost immediately before exposure and expose and process it
whilst the emulsion was still moist.”4 However, there was occasionally the prospect
of producing multiple sets of prints with a postcard format, if photographers were
willing to brave the outside environment. As a result of the need to use a heavy
tripod mounted field camera and have an accessible area to process the photos
there are a limited number of images from the outside from this era. Additionally,
photographers even in the great outdoors tended to concentrate on formal group
compositions such as haymakers often wearing their Sunday best clothes that
would not have been worn in normal working conditions.
The popularisation of this as an art form was further transformed by the
development of small visiting card portraits (Carte-de-Visite photography). A
system devised by a Parisian photographer Andre Disderi (1819–1889) who in
1854 patented a way of taking a number of photographs on one plate. In England,
this heralded a boom in collecting portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert,
as well as other leading members of aristocratic society. Its popularity as a new art
form led to many families commissioning the production of their own carte-de-
visite for the prestige of seeing themselves on miniature photographs. These light,
cheap and easy to produce photographs became highly treasured collectable items
in an age where other forms of entertainment were absent. Cartes-de-visite were
albumen prints using egg whites in the development process. The props used in
these prints reflect the predetermined fashions of the age initially with balustrades
and curtains; followed by columns bridges and stiles and later in the century, palm
trees and bicycles. Quantity rather than quality however, tended to prevail, although
there are some impressive exceptions. It has been estimated that in England alone
in the 1860s, around four hundred million portrait photographs were sold each
year. Hundreds of thousands of photographs from this period have survived both in
collections and archives, as well as in attics, many of which are still un-catalogued.
12 JOHN MARTIN AND RUTH MARTIN
Another important source of visual evidence is the postcard, which became popular
at the start of the twentieth century. However, the growth in amateur photography,
and the corresponding increase in the number of photographs occurred in the 1880s,
expanding considerably the visual resources available for historians. This occurred
as a result of further technological advancements in the form of the development of
the dry plate coated with gelatine and silver salts, which were more than 60 times
more sensitive than the mixture on the wet collodion plates. The plates could be
bought ready-made and produced instantaneous photographs that did not need to
be processed immediately after use. This marked the beginning of a recognisably
modern technique of photography.
THE MERITS OF USING PHOTOGRAPHY IN RESEARCH
Although most historians tended to neglect photographs as a valuable research tool
until the mid twentieth century, anthropologists were using photography and photo-
interviewing as a “visual notebook . . . to document aspects of society” (Banks,
1995) from the late nineteenth century. These early investigations have provided
a wealth of material on sociological issues, for example Franz Boas’ study of the
customs of the inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands, which can now be analysed
as an informative record of the area’s social history. The development of more
effective methods of photo-elicitation has occurred in order to extract historical
information from participants, particularly for oral history studies. Its success
has been shown through Collier’s belief that whereas “picture interviews were
flooded with encyclopaedic community information . . . in the exclusively verbal
interviews, communication difficulties and memory blocks inhibited the flow of
information” (Collier, 1979). This is known as cue-dependent memory, where
information cannot be remembered until appropriate prompts are given. Although
this has the drawback that it might lead suggestible participants to exaggerate the
magnitude of their reflections, it may provide a larger sample of respondents.
When giving lectures, photographs are effective tools for communication, as
they tend to spark the audience’s interest in the subject, as well as portraying
unfamiliar ideas and objects more vividly. For example, in Asian Leicester,
photographs of the different styles of places of worship, such as the finery inside
the Shree Swaminarayan Temple and the outside of the Al-Bukhari Mosque
would have been difficult to describe, and would have led to subjective, differing
interpretations across the audience (see Figs 1 and 2).
The inclusion of photographs has the advantage of being more memorable for
the audience; as the simultaneous use of words and photographs have greater depth
of analysis and lead to a “longer lasting, stronger memory trace” in comparison
History Through the Lens 13
Fig. 1. The Al-Bukhari Mosque, Loughborough Road, Opened in 1985 and was the Second
Purpose-Built Mosque in Leicester (Leicester Mercury).
Fig. 2. Deities at the Shree Swaminarayan Temple in Loughborough Road, 1992
(Vasant Kalyani).
14 JOHN MARTIN AND RUTH MARTIN
with “shallower levels of analysis” (Eysenck & Flanagan, 2000, p. 46) using only
words. This Level of Processing psychological theory can also be used to explain
the importance of photographs, which visually have a much greater impact on the
reader, in comparison with the written word.
CLASSIFYING PHOTOGRAPHS
In history, there have been classic examples of people not recognising the
importance of carefully storing and classifying photographic records. For example,
Winter (1971) in notes with dismay the way a large collection of negatives was
left in the cottage of an important nineteenth century photographer after his death.
These were then used by the new occupants to build cloches for lettuces one row
of plates being thrust into the earth each side of a row of lettuces while another
row of plates was placed neatly over the top.
The belated efforts to classify photographs in an indexing system, in order to
make them available to a wider audience are in stark contrast to the effective
systems categorising books in libraries, pioneered by the Dewey Decimal
Classification system (D.D.C.). This has arisen out of recognition of the need
to appreciate the value of photographs as historical sources and the subsequent
development of some impressive indexed database collections. One of these is the
Helix Project, which has been pioneered by De Montfort University and has more
than 50,000 images that can be accessed via subscription by U.K. universities via
the EDINA service. The indexing system allows access in terms of subject, but
also by multiple word indexes as well as in terms of the photographer. Access of
this type can enable the user to find relevant images more efficiently and quickly.
Additionally, some photographic archives can be accessed via the Internet, such
as Pathe Newspapers,5 which contains 12 million still images. The index searches
using place names, keywords of categories such as sport or politics, surnames
and even the type of shot, for example close-up, mid-shot or long-shot. Moreover,
at present there is no universally agreed single standard for defining images as
themes or key words are used that lead to a more rigorous search in order to avoid
overlooking useful images.
Furthermore, many smaller or financially poorer collections may be more
difficult to search, as a result of the fact that the process of key-wording photographs
is at least as expensive as the digitalisation of the photographs. As Arms (1999)
noted, “describing pictorial images accurately is time consuming and expensive.
Unlike a book, which usually has a title page on which basic information is
recorded an image does not describe itself.” The recognition of this difficulty
has led to the development of the Getty keyword system, which is based on more
History Through the Lens 15
than 1,500 key word descriptions, which not only encompass themes and topics,
but also moods and emotions; – something which is not usually found in most
academically orientated image collections. The question of cost has also led to
the National Council of Archives to devote time to assisting others in attaining
National Lottery Funding.
The development of techniques for restoring old or damaged photographs
has also had beneficial effects on this medium. The least expensive process is
copying restoration, which incorporates photographic copying and duplication
of the image, reducing or increasing the contrast in the prints. This is generally
used to lighten stains and to enhance old photographs. Other techniques include
chemical restoration, which is mainly used for black and white, faded photographs.
They can be redeveloped with greater contrast and clarity, after silver compound
chemicals have been added to the image and oxidised. The most expensive and
technologically advanced technique is Electronic Image Enhancement (E. I. E.),
where the picture is digitised and discolorations and flaws are removed by a
computer operative.
In order to contact possible collections of amateur photographs for the Asian
Leicester project, we organised a meeting advertising our project via the local
press and radio at which we invited representatives of the community to attend
with their photographs. The Leicester Mercury, the local newspaper for the City
proved invaluable in this respect being willing to include articles about our project
and advertising the initial meeting. Radio Leicester was also extremely useful being
willing to allow us to give a series of talks about our project and to answer readers’
queries that helped to solicit another valuable source of enquiries. Through this
process, we realised that few people recognise the significance of their photographs
as an historical source of evidence and that cataloguing photographs is undertaken
by a small minority; as a result there is a potential treasure trove of archival material
lying at the bottom of drawers, in attics and in cupboards, where the owners do not
appreciate its potential. Many of these photographs also require further detailed
investigation to obtain the necessary background information.
COPYRIGHT
Photographs, as with other forms of media images are protected by copyright.
Which determines whether or not it is possible to use a particular photograph,
even in an academic text. The most important piece of legislation in the nineteenth
century was the 1862 Copyright Act, which led to the deposit of hundreds of
thousands photographs at Stationers Hall in the City of London. The 1862 Act
was intended to protect photographers’ commercial interests by enabling them to
16 JOHN MARTIN AND RUTH MARTIN
register the photograph in order to prevent unauthorised reproduction or publication
by others. In the region of 250,000 photographs were recorded in the sixty years
that the Act was in force and during this crucial period, every photograph which
a photographer or editor considered important in Britain and its Empire was
registered in London. The geographical spread of these photographs was virtually
unlimited and included photographs of life in the South Seas, the Arctic, China and
literally every part of the globe, as explorers with their cameras braved inhospitable
terrains in their efforts to record and bring home images of previously unseen areas
of the world.
This archive constitutes a uniquely valuable source for historians of the modern
media, providing an insight into what photographers living in the Victorian
and Edwardian ages considered important, as unlike other archives it is the
photographers themselves, who selected the contents of the archive by the very act
of registration. It was possible for anyone to register their photographs provided
they were covered by the Act and were willing to pay a small fee Consequently
there were no cultural or archival directors who decided what went in and want
was excluded.
Crucially, as there were no policy makers to decide if the photographs
were art, or were socially significant, the subject matter of the collections is
of almost unimaginable breadth. The choice of subject was even more wide-
ranging, covering the whole social spectrum, ranging from members of the Royal
Family, politicians and actors to malnourished and poverty-stricken individuals
at the other extreme. The registering system was however brought to an abrupt
end in 1912 when photographs no longer had to be recorded for copyright
purposes.
Hiley (1983) has remarked that he researched this archive for more than two
months in the 1980s. In order to view the archives it was necessary to laboriously
unfold the paper forms that were tied into bundles. Attached to these forms with
glue were fragile original photographs, many of which were folded and required
extremely careful handling. However, since Hiley’s research, the photographs, now
in the care of the National Archieve, have become so fragile that public access to
this source is now severely restricted.
Opening up the Copyright records via the digitalisation of the images will enable
scholars to research the way photography, as the first of the modern mass media,
has influenced society. These invaluable copyright records provide a quantitative
index to the commercial photographs in circulation after 1862 (Plunkett, 2003)
and Statistical analysis of the publication of these photographs year by year has,
for example, revealed the changing popularity of the different members of the
Royal Family and politicians such as the Prime Minister William Gladstone and
even of stage actresses such as Ellen Terry. However, copyright is potentially
History Through the Lens 17
still a minefield. For example, even though individuals may have a photograph of
themselves they do not necessarily possess the copyright, being unable to grant
permission for the photograph to be reproduced and published. Photographers own
copyright whilst alive which is retained by their estate for seventy years after their
death. As a result, it is possible to inadvertently infringe copyright even when the
photographer is long since dead.
USING PHOTOGRAPHS
There are two principal and frequently used methods of writing a text that utilises
photographic images. The first is to compile the written text and then search for
photographs to support the thesis. This has the major drawback that it may be
difficult to find relevant illustrations and may also lead to the neglect of other
important aspects of the topic. An alternative method would be to find as many
photographs on the general topic as possible, and then organise them into sub-
sections in order to write about them. However, this has the disadvantage of being
more time-consuming; as there is a surplus of photos that needs to be assessed.
Therefore, writing text without photographs, we found that the most effective
compromise when writing Asian Leicester was to have definite ideas about the
important sections and kept an open mind about the photographs, which would
then reveal any other important ideas not yet considered.
It is also a fact that the vast majority of individuals who possess what might
be deemed suitable photographs for research purposes, have not usually retained
written details, relating the names of people and the specific events depicted therein.
As such, they will be limited in the scope of information which they are able to
convey. In addition, where there is the intention to display the photographs writing
appropriate captions can be a challenge, requiring painstaking investigations into
the actual events. We found this particularly true in collecting agrarian history
photographs, as upon stopping at a village in mid-Wales we discovered a number
of very attractive prints depicting aspects of rural life being offered for sale. The
most interesting was a charabanc loaded with children, about to embark on their
annual Sunday school outing. Sadly, as with so many photographs of this type
there was no date or even place which could help to contextualise the photograph.
Additionally, dating is a major problem even in terms of identifying who is on the
photograph and what is implied, as often people’s recollections of who is included
and even of the year may be vague. More important, it is problematic to attribute
the motives of the photographer and subjects.
Deciding which photographs to include and which to exclude can be a difficult
balancing act which may unintentionally flatter or demonise certain individuals.
18 JOHN MARTIN AND RUTH MARTIN
For the Asian Leicester project we established a small working party to offer
advice and guidance on the photographs which were to be included. However, the
inclusion of “good” photographs because of their technical merits or highlighting of
key events, does not necessarily produce a comprehensive survey of the community
under investigation. We found this to be particularly true in our research which
we recognised from the onset could not provide a comprehensive survey of the
community, and that organisations, individuals and places have been omitted that
are an integral part of the city.
WAYS TO ANALYSE PHOTOGRAPHS
Photographs can often be likened to anonymous archival records produced
under unknown circumstances. Consequently, their interpretation may need to be
approached with a degree of caution in an effort to take account of the perspectives
both of those responsible for taking the photographs and of those responsible for
their selection and inclusion in the study. Here the work of Barthes (1982) and
more recently is useful.
Barthes introduces the concept of the “studium” and the “punctum,” where the
former denotes the interest that the individual shows towards the photographs in
attempting to determine their underlying meaning. In contrast, the “punctum” is
the recognition of the meaning contained within the photographs. Furthermore, in
his 1961 essay “The Photographic Message,” he outlines the two varying depths
of meaning of photographs. The “denotative” refers to the objective, impartial and
literal substance and meaning within the photograph, whereas the “connotative” is
the subjective interpretation placed upon the photograph, which varies particularly
in respect of its culture, time period and ideology.
Furthermore, Burke argues that photographic images should be regarded as
extensions of the social contexts in which they were created, rather than simply
as reflections of the place and time in which they were created. This should
arise from the placing of photographs within a contextual framework, where
viewing a sequence of images provided a more reliable insight than individual
photographs. It also enables the researcher greater ease of interpretation and
analysis. For example, in Asian Leicester, the effect of the social and political
context is evident in the photographs of the 1950s, as there were relatively
few of them, as cameras and photographs were still comparatively expensive
in a country where people were struggling to cope with the aftermath of post-
war austerity. Additionally, and atypically in comparison to the wider society
there was the tendency to record family groups rather than formal events, which
is explained by the Asian communities commissioning photographs to send
History Through the Lens 19
back to their families in India. It was not until the 1960s when the post-war
boom and full employment enabled photography to become within reach of
the masses.
A further issues in respect of analysis relates to the social process under which
images are made. For example historians need to keep in mind the opposite
tendencies of image-makers to satirise or idealise the world that they attempt
to represent; as they face the problem of distinguishing between representations
of the typical and images of the eccentric. For example, it is well documented
that fashionable artists especially miniaturists who made their living painting
their subjects frequently pandered to the sitters whims and traded on deceit, as
the demands of people for a good likeness and an attractive portrait were not
always compatible. Moreover, although the camera may be expected to reveal
the sitter with uncompromising truth, dispelling cherished illusions of youth and
beauty, there are of course many techniques for amending photographs, not only
for aesthetic reasons, but also to portray a particular image. The old adage that
one picture is worth a thousand words is true in the sense that a single image may
have a more dramatic imprint than a text and may be more memorable. However,
it should be qualified by the fact that we do not necessarily know which thousand
words it is intended to replace. The same photograph looked at in isolation may
also convey an entirely different message to one person than another and more
importantly may be used to convey a message, which was not necessarily intended
by the photographer.
PROPAGANDA AND THE PHOTOGRAPH
Another difficulty that needs to be overcome by researchers when using visual
research tools is that they portray the subjective reality perceived and arranged
by the photographer, and sometimes by the subjects. A example of this arose in
the United States of America, during the race for the Democrat party nomination
for President. In February 2004, a photograph was discovered of the frontrunner,
John Kerry at an anti-Vietnam war rally in the 1970s, sitting next to the actress
Jane Fonda, who had been reviled by many in the U.S. as a result of her visit to
North Vietnam whilst the war contined. The photograph was seen by many via
the internet and was also printed in British tabloids. The photograph was only
discovered to be a forgery, when the original photographer of Kerry (Light, 2004)
came forward to the press to reveal how it was his “photograph with an image
of Jane Fonda dropped in.” This example offers a salutary lesson in the ways in
which the manipulation of photography has the potential to mislead the course of
history. Byrne believes that “all images that appear in the press are manipulated in
20 JOHN MARTIN AND RUTH MARTIN
one way, shape or form, whether they’re by choice – by that image being chosen
over another – or by cropping, or by digital manipulation” and as long as you are
somewhat aware of the fact, then there’s not so much to be afraid of. Understanding
the potential pitfalls, it might be argued that this has led to a higher recognition
by the public that photographs are literally a snap shot, a fossilised moment in
time which need not be representative of the period or could even be contrived. An
important example here being the debate over the veracity of photos purporting to
show British servicemen torturing Iraqi prisoners in April 2004.
Brady (1980) (cited in Berger, 1980, p. 52) believes that the manipulation of
photographical images can be seen in history, as “the very ‘truthfulness’ of the
medium encouraged its deliberate use as a means of propaganda.” This is evident
even as early as the American Civil war, where wet collodion plates were developed
in darkrooms on wheels. A leading photographer, Brady’s, depiction of this
watershed event was undertaken by a corps of photographers, whom he employed
to provide an instant pictorial history of the war. The photographs led to a series
of popular exhibitions. In New York, where the audience also bought pictures for
their own albums at home. His photographs were never intended to document hard
facts, but were a means of visually portraying the collective sentiments and popular
perceptions about this landmark event6 although even some of these photographs
were staged. The First World War was the first conflict where photographers
were officially attached to the armed forces, although they were not allowed to
take photographs of troops in action under fire. Therefore the vast majority of
the pictures showing troops advancing were in practice re-enactments undertaken
simply for the benefit of the photographer. Consequently, the real horrors of life on
the Western Front were not emphasised in the photographs, for example, they did
not tend to show dead bodies, and the plight of the soldiers was not publicised in
this period. This was to wait until photographers began to accompany brigades in
the Second World War and the Korean War. Perhaps even more significantly, the
Vietnam War was the first war in which independent photographers were allowed
to operate freely, and the as Isaacs and Downing (1998) contend American people
were “fed a nightly diet of news that showed scenes of carnage and destruction,”
as opposed to the Korean War, where photographs and film had been “taken by
official military cameramen” (p. 223).
CONCLUSION
Although the process of photography evolved from two independent investigations
in the nineteenth century, it is only relatively recently that this particular role
and function of this art form has been examined, and interest in photographs
History Through the Lens 21
has grown beyond the merely nostalgic into an important reference source for
anyone interested in historical and social research. There has concurrently been a
massive increase in awareness of the data needed to analyse sources, in particular
dating the photograph and knowing the photographer and the motivations behind
it, which have come about partly as a result of its inclusion in the history curricula
of schools and universities. Therefore, this wide audience’s revived interest in
photographs as an historical source seems almost certainly to continue for the
foreseeable future.
However, photographs are still relatively under-used as a means of data
collection and analysis, which may result from their perceived difficulty of use.
Those wishing to search for and use written materials in research have the assistance
of librarians and information assistants and fully indexed, computerised systems,
whilst in contrast, many photographs are in smaller, private collections that are
harder to discover and access. With the advent of more advanced techniques
for photograph restoration and also new forms of indexing and more recently
digitalisation of prints, it is much easier to search for, and locate relevant
photographs. Undeniably, photographs present the range of problems common
to all single source data collection methods. They require interpretation to show
for what reason they were taken and, where possible, to establish by whom they
were taken and when. In spite of these difficulties, photographs constitute valuable
evidence not only for historians but also for social scientists across a broad gambit
of disciplines. Photographs provide a fascinating starting point for looking at the
past, although they often come no nearer to the definitive version of it than any other
source. Corroboration from other evidence is essential for placing photographic
sources in the context, through which we can understand history. Appreciating the
history of photography, the inherent bias which may exist, the subliminal messages
which they can convey can significantly assist us to unlock the potential benefits
which this still largely neglected medium is able to offer.
NOTES
1. http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/arago.htm. 2. Article from La Gazette de France (7th January 1839) http://www.rleggat.com/
photohistory/history/. 3. http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/cameraob.htm. 4. “Development and use of the collodion process” in Photography, Art of, p. 311,
Encyclopaedia Britannica, No. 14. 1975. 5. www.britishpathe.com. 6. For a detailed critique of Brady’s photographs see Sullivan, G. E. In the Wake of
Battle: The Civil War Images Of Matthew Brady, Prestel, 2004.
22 JOHN MARTIN AND RUTH MARTIN
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like thank Professor Gurharpal Singh, Mike Hiley and David
Clarke, for their assistance with the chapter and the with the Asian Leicester project.
REFERENCES
Arms, C. (1999). Getting the picture: Observations from the library of congress on providing online
access to pictorial images. Library Trends, 48(2), Fall.
Banks, M. (1995). Visual research methods. In: Social Research Update by the Department of Sociology
(p. 1). University of Surrey, Guildford, www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/sru/SRU11/SRU11.html.
Barthes (1961). The photographic message. In: S. Sontag (Ed.), A Barthes Reader (1983). London:
Jonathan Cape.
Barthes (1982). Camera Lucida: Reflections on photography. London: Jonathan Cape.
Berger, J. (1980). About looking. Writers’ & Readers’ Publishing Co-op.
Collier (1979). p. 281 cited in R. Hurworth, Photo-Interviewing for research, Issue 40 in Social Research
Update. Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford, www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/
sru/SRU40.html.
Eysenck, M., & Flanagan, C. (2000). Psychology for AS Level, Hove, Psychology.
Isaacs, J., & Downing, T. (1998). Cold war. London.
Light, M. (2004). Centre for Photography at University of California quoted in http://news.bbc.co.uk/
1/hi/world/americas/3499775.stm.
Martin, J., & Singh, G. (2002). Asian Leicester. Stroud: Sutton Publishing.
Plunkett, J. (2003). Queen Victoria: First media monarch. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Winter, G. (1971). A country camera 1844–1914. Newton Abbot: David & Charles.
SNAP HAPPY: TOWARD A SOCIOLOGY
OF “EVERYDAY” PHOTOGRAPHY
Barbara Harrison
INTRODUCTION
In 1984 the number of photographs taken by people in the U.K. broke the 1 million
mark and 75% of all households had a camera. By the end of the millennium
(1999) people in Britain spent over 1 billion on cameras, film and processing and
the number of photographs taken had exceeded 3 billion.1 There is little doubt
that most people are familiar with cameras, and the majority will be engaged in
forms of photographic practice as amateurs, that is as a “pastime” or hobby or as
an adjunct to events, activities and leisure in their everyday lives.
This chapter aims to provide a sociological conceptualisation of the role of
photographs in people’s everyday lives, with a particular focus on what I have called
“everyday” photography. It arises out of a more general interest in photography as
a social and cultural practice over time, and initially this took me in two directions.
Using a Foucauldian approach I have explored the role of photographic practices
and their resultant images, alongside other forms of visualisation, as aspects of
power/knowledge in particular social institutions or settings (such as medicine for
example) (Harrison & Aranda, 1999). If, as a number of writers (Green, 1985; Tagg,
1988) have argued, photography is a component in the acquisition of knowledge
and the exercise of power then it might also be a means of resistance. The idea
of power/resistance within the context of people’s everyday use of photographs
seems also worth considering and, more recently, I have returned to this theme in the
context of thinking about photographs as visual narratives and counter-narratives
Seeing is Believing? Approaches to Visual Research
Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Volume 7, 23–39
Copyright © 2004 by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1042-3192/doi:10.1016/S1042-3192(04)07003-X
23
24 BARBARA HARRISON
(Harrison, 2002a, in press). A second focus has been a methodological one. Here, I
have suggested that photographs and cameras can provide both a topic and resource
for sociological investigation (Harrison, 1996, 2002b).
In the context of considering the methodological uses and value of cameras and
photographic images, it seemed important to understand in more depth these social
and cultural practices in relation to the production and consumption of photographs.
An important aspect of this was to investigate how such practices function in the
context of people’s everyday lives, taking up the kinds of questions that Bourdieu
(1990) and Chalfen (1987) addressed in their work on “everyday” photography but
now in new contexts and time frames. I have over recent years been undertaking
field work which is exploring many of the themes which this chapter addresses.
The analysis presented here draws mainly on secondary material, but also ideas
which are emerging from the field work, although it will not include data as such.
The aim is to highlight some dimensions of a sociology of “everyday” photography
as a basis for thinking about how we use or could use photographic media for other
purposes.
WHAT IS “EVERYDAY” PHOTOGRAPHY?
First some clarification of what constitutes the concept of “everyday” photography.
This draws on a familiar sociological concept of “everyday,” as in everyday life,
in two important respects. First, we can think of everyday life as the “rhythms and
routines of daily existence” (Bennett, 2002, p. x) but equally over time the everyday
involved the idea that some days are indeed distinguishable from others and that
what had previously been essentially the private domain became more visible in
the public. Second, in terms of agency we have increasingly become interested in
those practices that are “ordinary,” “lay” and able to be performed by everyone,
and the way in which these articulate. The primary orientation of the analysis
here is “ordinary” people’s consumption and production of photographic images
in everyday life and throughout the life course, but there are different ways in
which people participate in these processes of consumption and production. In this
context we find that a number of dimensions of the “everyday” are present. Taking
production first, “everyday” photography is distinguishable from professional
photography where it is a means of livelihood/work, and/or part of “art worlds,”
and will usually have involved some degree of training. “Everyday” photography
is therefore one kind of amateur photography. But amateur is itself not necessarily
“everyday” either, and may share components of the professional. Indeed some
writers argue (Slater, 1991) amateur producers of images do have different levels
of photographic skills from the “snapshotter” (a term Slater uses to describe
Snap Happy: Toward a Sociology of “Everyday” Photography 25
himself as an everyday photographer). In addition, some “amateurs” have very
different reasons for engaging in photographic practice at all. There is a difference
between the camera-club enthusiast, or the skilled amateur who develops their own
photographs on the one hand, and the person who buys the throwaway camera on
holiday so that they have a few photographic mementos of an occasion on the other.
Equally, those working professionally in photographic or other visual media, may
distinguish this practice from that which they engage in outside of work contexts.
Again these practitioners in the everyday context may be differentiated by levels
of skill.
In terms of consumption the concept of “everyday” photography reveals similar
complexities. We might commonly think of photographs which can be seen in
forms of domestic display and family albums, as forms of personal and even private
archives, but which may also serve purposes beyond this domain to more public
audiences. Certainly the archiving of family photographs, as Holland (1991, p. 1)
points out is “an act of faith in the future” and looking back become “an act
of recognition of the past”; thus there is the idea that these will have audiences
beyond the present. A common element in the way people relate to their personal
or inherited collections of photographs is that they are the temporary custodians of
images for others in future time. Amateur and professional image production, in
the sense outlined above, are also important aspects of “everyday” consumption.
A wide variety of images are consumed, and there is a specific place, normatively
defined, for formally constructed and professional productions in a variety of social
contexts, such as wedding, school and portrait photographs.
Before leaving these issues of definition, and therefore the constitution of the
boundaries of what this chapter will discuss, it is important to stress that individuals
will at any particular time occupy a certain kind of relationship to production
processes and to any image or set of images. Meanings of photographs will change,
and the processes of memory, history making, narration and self-actualisation, are
ongoing features of personal and social relations with photographs. The degree of
proximity to production and consumption will vary, and will have consequences
for the uses/purposes and sense that is made of these forms of representation. At
one time one can be the subject of the photographer, at another the producer and
director, just as one can be looking at photographs where the self features, and
on other occasions those of people whom one does not recognise in any personal
sense. The production of a photographic image, may be direct, as in the taking of
the photograph by depressing the shutter, or it may be indirect, in that one is the
subject or one of a number of subjects within it. There are also those occasions
when one is directed to take a photograph so that the photographer can themselves
become a subject within the image (a common occurrence in holiday photography
for example).
26 BARBARA HARRISON
There are also a range of interesting questions around who takes photographs,
and therefore who will be absent from particular images, as well as who makes
decisions about selection, storage and display. It is not uncommon to find there
is a division of labour such that in a partner relationship, one decides what is
taken, another takes the photograph, and one takes on selection and display
decisions. The extent to which gender, class or age determine these relationships
of production and consumption, are interesting questions also because they
will be relevant also in the use of photography with research participants. Thus
these forms of relationships, including those with others as well as the self,
require investigation. Finally, we need to consider possible changes in productive
relations and in the use of images as the technologies available to the “everyday”
or “lay” photographer allow the images to be deleted, manipulated combined
with other materials and variously stored. I will return to this issue later in the
chapter.
CAMERAS: THE IMPACT OF CHANGING
TECHNOLOGY IN EVERYDAY CONTEXTS
Sociologists and social historians with an interest in visual and textual
discourses (e.g. Jordanova, 1987) have emphasised the importance of technological
developments to the nature of, and forms of, discourse, and it is also important
to issues of documentary survival. Two aspects of camera technology need to
be emphasised here. First, the process involved in taking a photograph. The
early history of photographic practice in knowledge production, which is also
an underlying premise of much documentary photography, has privileged the
camera with a form of objective observation, a “realism” that follows from
depiction as a consequence of a mechanical rather than human process. While
such a epistemological privileging of camera technology is now questioned, there
are elements of such assumptions which I argue continue to feature in social
understandings of, and personal orientations to, photographic imagery. A holiday
photograph can provide some evidential support to the narrated story of the holiday,
and attest to particular qualities and experiences, or we use the photograph to attest
to the accuracy of our memory. At the same time, a rejection of the idea that camera
images reflect certain “truths” has provided a starting point for an orientation
in which any meaning and certainly alternative meanings are derivable from a
photographic image. Indeed the possibility for multiple meanings has become a
selling point for cameras, and provides for the possibility that any photographic
image has the capacity for generating different stories. (An advertisement for
Canon in 2002, for example, is of a photograph of a woman between two American
Snap Happy: Toward a Sociology of “Everyday” Photography 27
police officers, with the question Actress? Inmate? Recruit? and the caption Write
your own Story.)
Second, ideas about what cameras produce, and how people themselves can do
that production has been a continuing feature of the technological development
of cameras for a mass market. The marketing of photography from the end of
the nineteenth century was linked to the increasing consumption of other goods
and services for the domestic sphere. In this respect, what might be called the
“industrialisation of holidays,” occurred alongside the increasing consumption
of cameras and film. Before the 1880s as Slater (1991) points out, it was either
a specialist craft skill or a committed and mainly bourgeois amateur who took
photographs. Many commentators attribute the “Box-Brownie” with the change
that allowed for “everyday” photographic practice, but Slater argues that more
important than the camera were the advances in film technology and this was what
Eastman himself concentrated on at Kodak. A film that could be prepared and
processed allowing a number of exposures, all independently of the photographer,
was what was needed. Roll film and a camera already loaded that was then sent
back for processing, were available by 1890, and became the means of selling
photography itself. The idea that all one needed to do was “point and press” has
remained a cornerstone of developments in camera technology in the twentieth
century: continuing with “instamatic” cameras, in making the loading of film
simple and infallible, in the degree to which the SLR camera comes with automatic
features, and videos that are small, light and with automatic features, while the rise
of digital technologies dispenses with the need for film and allows instantaneous
decisions to be made about deletion or preservation. It is Slater’s (1991) contention,
that cameras are simply a means of selling film and processing, and this is reflected
in their greater proportion of sales value, reflected in the expansion of processing
outlets on the high street, the number of mail-order processing possibilities, the
special offers which provide free film with processing, and the reductions or offers
on processing time. By 2004, however, there are signs that this is changing. In the
4th quarter of 2001 Kodak lost $206m (Digital Photography Review, 2002) and
more recently reported substantial falls in the sale of film with the loss of many jobs
(Guardian, 23/01/2004) a reflection of the impact of digital technologies, so that in
the USA filmless cameras now outsell conventional models. It is also interesting
that high street processing while incorporating the printing of digital images, have
diversified into preservation, make-overs and specialist products incorporating
personal images. Clearly technological changes do impact on “everyday” image
production and use, but it is perhaps interesting that while the ability to manipulate
the image might be one selling point, in marketing new kinds of cameras and related
technology, advertisements will still draw on older conventions. One such advert
for Hewlett Packard uses the caption “you still say cheese. That much is the same.”
28 BARBARA HARRISON
The impact of technology in the creation of a mass market for cameras, film
and processing is not the only consideration here. Those features which make it
possible for anyone to do photography, are important to our experience of it in our
everyday lives. In particular as Slater (1991, p. 54) argues, it minimises any sense
that one is either “doing photography” or that it has a conventional character.
Most fundamentally, the simplicity and the reliability achieved by making the photographic
process invisible, also makes the practice of taking pictures transparent. If photography requires
no thought to carry it out, then it can be taken for granted, unconsciously inserted into everyday
social situations.
Some of my interviewees were surprised that they could talk at length about their
photographic practice, the images they produce and what they do with them. For
many it had a “taken for granted” character. In beginning to articulate their own
orientations to, and practices around, cameras and images it became evident that
it also had a conventional character.
“EVERYDAY” PHOTOGRAPHY AS A SOCIALLY
REGULATED PRACTICE
Any examination of “everyday” photographic practice will reveal that it occurs
in some contexts and not others, and that only some topics, events and people
are evident in the content of photographic images. As Bourdieu (1990) pointed
out, while everything may be photographed, both theoretically and in terms
of the technology available, only certain things are. This suggests that it is a
socially regulated and highly conventional activity. In these terms, Bourdieu argues
certain ontological choices are made about what “is worthy to be practised”:
what is photographed, what is stored, communicated, shown and admired.
Underlying “everyday” photography are models, socially derived, of the “takeable”
photograph. This social dimension of “everyday” photography also ensures that
the meanings of the images are in some measure available to everyone, drawing on
shared values and systems of thought as well as aesthetic criteria. Personal image
making draws on wider public narratives.
Furthermore, as with other imagery considered as a form of representation,
both “everyday” and “commercial” photographic images (such as those used in
advertising for example) draw on underlying cultural codes that not only construct
the meaning of, but provide for self identification with, the representation. There
are shared genres also, and an interpretative trading between self and image
content (see Goffman, 1979; Williamson, 1980). Over time some topics and genres
have remained relatively constant while others have changed. There is often, for
Snap Happy: Toward a Sociology of “Everyday” Photography 29
example, little distinction over time between the formal arrangement in family
portraits or wedding pictures, except that dress and sometimes settings are more
historically specific. On the theme of domestic or family photography, it is evident
that some topics are considered appropriate for the “snapshotter” while others
require the more formal and professional image (at least alongside the former);
weddings and graduations for example.
Conventionality then is associated with what may and may not be photographed,
but also with defining the significance of particular events by the very fact that the
photographic record is itself part of it. The association of both professionally
produced images, and those produced by participants and/or family members,
with key social rituals or significant transitions in the life course, are almost
unimaginable without the presence of cameras and photographers. But what events
or rituals are photographed remains restricted. For example, although photographs
have often been part of funeral rituals, the idea of taking photographs of a funeral in
the “everyday” context is uncommon (their sombre nature being important here).
Indeed such occasions and the emotion of grief were evident in the field work as
occasions when the camera should not be used. Photographs of Christmas or other
significant indoor gatherings have been less common, due in part to the limits of
flash technology in the past, but also because such events have been less important
in terms of communicating key family values as a public display of group solidarity.
I am not saying here that people do not take photographs at Christmas, there are
no doubt endless pictures of baby’s first Christmas on video and in albums but
not of Grandad asleep in front of the TV. My argument is rather that there is no
recognised conventionality for the Christmas photograph.
Bourdieu again offers some insights into the role of ceremony in “everyday”
photography and draws attention to some changes over time in the French context.
He argues that:
photographs of major ceremonies are possible because – and only because – they capture
behaviour that is socially approved and socially regulated, that is behaviour that is already
solemised. Nothing may be photographed apart from that which must be photographed (1990,
pp. 23–24 his emphasis).
In these terms Bourdieu sees ceremonies as something which are photographed
because they are outside of daily routines and must be photographed because it
realises an image that a group seeks to give of itself. So he would suggest that
the importance of various kinds of ceremonies is reflected in whether or not they
are photographed. For example, he points to the rarity of photographs at baptisms,
which “are never the occasion of big ceremony” (p. 21) while wedding photographs
are an important part of ritual exchange between two groups. Whilst such an
argument about ceremony has plausibility for comparisons between baptisms and
30 BARBARA HARRISON
weddings, it does not explain entirely such variability. Two other factors would
seem to be important. Some ceremonies will assume greater significance for
particular social groups only, the first communion being one (Bourdieu noting
however, that these have only come into being since the 1930s) while weddings
have a wider currency across diverse social groups and, it could be argued,
ritually signal important continuities of family and social standing as well as ritual
exchange. The second factor, to which the example of funerals belongs, is that
despite the ceremony’s importance as a mark of transition, of family, group or
community unity, it is generally a solemn and sombre ritual, and one where the
“need” for photographs in Bourdieu’s terms, is not present.
Cultural variability in the significance of transitions and the meaning of rituals
that relate to them, will give rise to different “needs” for photographs. I speculate
here about the importance of the high school year book in the USA as marking a
significant transition where, unlike here, nearly all students leave a local public high
school together as a cohort, and this signifies a particular relation to their shared
pasts and futures in terms of community, work and higher education. In a fairly
recent exhibition at the Barbican in London “Africa By Africa” we have a different
example. Here we have a long tradition of professional portrait photography for
private consumption, and almost any excuse, including buying a new dress, or
meeting up with a friend can be an occasion for a photograph, according to the
curator of the show (Newnham, Guardian, 22/1/1999). Repeated motifs occur
over time, but also backdrops will reflect sitters’ aspirations as well as confirming
existing bonds. It might be argued that for some groups such as these the taking
of a portrait is itself a kind of ceremony.
In the Malian context, Elder (1997) has demonstrated distinct changes in the
mode of photographic practice over time, for example from studio photography to
street photography necessitated by the ID photograph, and then the more recent
mobile photographer, and these have significance for the relation of photographic
imagery to everyday life. Elder’s study is a valuable referent because it is one
of the few recent empirical sociological and historical studies of the role of
photography in a society. It also allows us to examine the extent to which the
kinds of conventionality and social regulation identified above can be found
across different societies and cultures and where the differences lie. Despite some
distinct form of practice in the Malian context, in particular its professional nature,
considerable commonality can also be found in the kinds of and content of images,
and conventions about what “makes a good photograph.” It is the work of the mobile
photographers since the 1980s, which she argues comes closest to the “snapshot”
of Western societies. She distinguishes two major occasions which call for the
work of the mobile photographer: first, everyday activities the most common of
which are “souvenir” photographs taken of family members and friends or other
Snap Happy: Toward a Sociology of “Everyday” Photography 31
groups in both domestic and public settings. The second are festive occasions
such as Ramadan, weddings, school graduation, Independence day and so on. In
both categories there is a blurring of the private and public in that in the first, the
uses to which the images are put, such as ID photographs, and greeting cards,
is conditioned by social demands including those of public agencies, and in the
second there is a mixture of family or domestic occasions and those that extend to
the wider culture. A further division of public and private can also be seen in the
distinction Elder’s practitioners made about whether they were “invited” or were
just there, although the public or private nature of some events, such as weddings
was sometimes contested. Both these examples of “everyday” photography in
African contexts, draw attention to the changing meaning of snapshot photography,
the role of professional image-making and the positioning of self in relation to
others. Here we have the continued importance of the family, but alongside friends,
an indication of new meanings of public spaces, aspirations and achievements,
indications that people can express their own individuality through the settings
and backdrops against which they choose to be photographed. Work of African
portrait photographers (Laumiere, M., 2001) and the archive of the Brixton “high
street” photographic studio run by Harry Jacobs from the 1950s until 1999 (The
Photographers’ Gallery, 2002) confirm the continuance of traditions of commercial
portrait photography for personal use.
Nearly all writers on forms of “everyday” photography have noted that in our
“western” societies it is, as Susan Sontag (1979, p. 9) put it, about the family
and tourism. We might ask why is it that everyday photography is mainly about
these topics? We should note also that these categories include events which are
of significance in family contexts, significant others (including pets), and not only
tourism but holidays and leisure (the seaside, the garden, the trip to the stately
home) and other forms of consumption. Again, Bourdieu (1990) suggests that the
practice of domestic photography developed as a consequence of the differentiation
of the public and private spheres, and Slater (1991) links the rise of the mass market
in cameras, film and processing to domestic consumption. Equally, it would seem
important to consider photographs as attesting to important social relations, as
symbolic realisations and testimony to people’s encounters with the “exotic,” the
other, those things that are in some sense not ordinary. In this sense, Bourdieu talks
about holiday photographs as transforming “places and moments into monuments
to leisure, certifying one has leisure and the leisure to photograph it” (p. 36).
Thus an essential characteristic of “everyday” photography is that in the
socially regulatory framework which defines what should be photographed, little
is concerned with the everyday (Spence & Holland, 1991). On holiday we may
indeed photograph what is for others aspects of their everyday existence (often
to their amusement – because they would not think of taking these pictures for
32 BARBARA HARRISON
themselves), but rarely do aspects of our own everyday lives become a focus for
the camera. An interesting example of this taken-for-granted aspect of photographs,
is provided by Jo Stanley’s (1991) account of a community photographic project
on women’s work. Two quotes at the beginning of the paper illustrate the point:
“Pictures of me? at work? Well I don’t think so dear”; and “Well I have got plenty
of me with the girls from work, but when we go out, but nothing in the factory,
you know. Well you wouldn’t, why bother?” (p. 60). It reminded me of how often
in the past women in my family have removed their aprons for a family picture.
A final aspect of the conventionality in “everyday” photographic practice is
display, and the role of photographs as a form of gift exchange, in which elements
of display are also embedded. Here both “amateur” and “professional” images
are evident. It might be argued that the kinds of photographs which are displayed
is even further limited by convention. Group photographs, family photographs
and children predominate. Some photographs will be metaphorically locked
away, while others have a more public place in which they can be continually
contemplated. One aspect of this which emerges strongly in the fieldwork, is the
extent to which display is a collective activity, forming relationships (as in the case
of new partners or friendships), as shared experiences, and enabling “stories” to
be told to others whose experience it was not.
IDENTITY, MEMORY AND HISTORY: FAMILY
PHOTOGRAPHS, ALBUMS AND ARCHIVES
Holland (1991, p. 1) argues that family albums reveal “many possible pasts.”
Memory is interwoven with private fantasy and public history as viewers “make
their own tracks” through an album. On each and every occasion it is viewed, the
past itself will be reconstructed, and thus there are many pasts contained within it.
This is also a consequence of the shifting position of the self and as a viewer new
understandings can arise in the interrogation (not necessarily in an active way)
of any image or image(s). It is important to emphasise that while the meaning of
personal imagery such as that in family albums owes much to a positioning of
the self in relation to memories of the past and in the present, such meanings will
also be shaped by social meanings and by the public conventions that are part of
their production. In this respect, the family album is noticeable for its particular
constructions of “what a family is” and for the silences and absences of both
people and topics as many analysts of family albums have pointed out (Hirsch,
1981; Spence, 1980, 1986; Williamson, 1984). Slater (1995, p. 129) argues that
we can see family albums as an “existential relation between photographs and
memory which folds individual and collective identities into familial narrative
Snap Happy: Toward a Sociology of “Everyday” Photography 33
time.” Whatever, the physical form the “family album” takes, he argues that family
identity is constructed and constituted through the selection processes that gives
these images their iconic significance as bearers of the past. Commentators, such
as Musello (1979) have suggested that family photography is primarily for private
use, and that the uses of these images are varied, including a presentation of self and
identity and a reinforcement of particular relationships, although of course these
may be idealisations. He also stresses that the meanings these images have cannot
be understood simply through the images alone, because they are carefully selected
and socially patterned representations. Importantly, despite the idea that the family
album produces the family, and produces particular forms of it, there is still room
for manoeuvre within it as Kuhn (1991, p. 22) has argued. “These traces of our
former lives are pressed into a never-ending process of making, remaking, making
sense of, ourselves-now,” so that there can be no “last word” about a photograph.
Indeed such remaking can be seen as a kind of resistance, an alternative narrative
to the conventional reading of the representational image (Kuhn, 1995).
There is a strong connection between the idea of memory and the photographic
image, in that both function to anchor our present selves with the past (Barthes,
1981; Lurie, 1998). Both image and memory are partial renderings, selective stock-
takers or referents, and both will require some kind of activity, usually narration,
to make them meaningful, involving associations beyond what is captured and
remembered, what is in the representation. Researchers have found this to be the
case when they have used people’s personal images in forms of biographical and
narrative inquiry (Winckler, 2002). What the person recounts or narrates can lie
outside of the image and to the audience is often unrelated to what is in the image.
One reason why material forms of visuality such as photographs have such
a strong connection with memory, as a synthesising of experience and arriving
at understanding, is because recall and remembering requires the utilisation of
visual as well as other sensory cues as core elements of the imagination. This
involves creating mental pictures of what happened, who was present and so on.
Furthermore, as with photography, recent interest in memory has emphasised that
it too has a cultural form, including codes and conventions, and the retrieval of
memories is a culturally constructed activity while at the same time appearing to
be transparent and “natural.” This is to recognise that memory is not just about
recall or a calling up of the past, it requires agency. Hirsch (1997) distinguishes
post memory from memory by its “generational distance” and from history per
se by its connection with the personal. Memory is more directly connected with
the past, even though mediated, she argues, while post-memory cannot function
through recall because the experiences occurred or preceded the person’s birth.
Post-memory is used to refer to those narratives that have arisen in the context of
traumatic collective events but which can neither be understood nor recreated as
34 BARBARA HARRISON
first – hand experiences. (There is clearly a question here as to the extent first-
hand experience is necessary to understanding.) Children of Holocaust survivors,
or other such collective traumatic events would typify this. In contexts of post
memory then, photographs mediate familial memory in the face of loss and carry
an additional emotional weight which lies not just in the horrors of looking, but
in what the viewer needs to bring to the images in order to complete “the story.”
Photographs can be considered as part of the “debris” that can be collected and
put together for a variety of stories – some of which compete. It is equally the case
that not all instances of “generational distance” in Hirsch’s sense involve trauma,
as family images now also include those for whom there can be no memory as
generations of distance separate the person, the occasion and the viewer.
Family albums and displays of formal and professional photographs, illustrate
well the difficulties of maintaining a clear distinction between private and public
production and consumption. Any visit to a shopping centre will witness many
“lined up” for the photograph of baby or children, and the portrait photographer
is alive and well on the high street. Further, witness the growth of the school
portrait, no longer the class of 3a but individual children, whose very growing up
can be attested to by the annually changing image. In a recent journalistic piece on
family portraiture (Lane, 1999) the author makes an interesting distinction between
“normal family photographs,” that is those taken on an occasion, and professional
portraits, which she argues “are the occasion” – rather like the ceremony referred
to above. Families featured in the article; testified to the attention they gave to what
to wear for the occasion, its colour schemes, the backdrop and location. Even the
seemingly informal portraits reveal a formal approach to its production, a contrived
naturalness: one family in a field “decided to all wear black and white,” noting that
“my sons like Adidas stuff, but it wouldn’t have looked right to have that writing
in the photograph.” Again, these families reveal the extent to which ideas of family
solidarity, capturing and celebrating the development of children, and that such
photographs are for posterity, are widely accepted aspects of these productions.
One final aspect of family photography also points to a seeming contradiction
to both the sentimentality that surrounds it and the importance attributed to its role
in identity construction and social solidarity. Slater (1995) cites market research
conducted in 1982 that found that 39% rated family albums as their most treasured
possession, yet 60% only looked at these photographs once a year. This, Slater
suggests, indicates that taking pictures and having pictures is more important than
looking at them, although other forms of display also need to be considered. But the
value of photographs to people continues to be asserted. Indeed in my field work an
Australian woman told me that when the bush fires come you save your family first
your pets second and your photograph albums third. “You lose your memories”
she said, and this sense that photographic collections in whatever form are a way
Snap Happy: Toward a Sociology of “Everyday” Photography 35
of preserving memories is demonstrated in people’s regret that there was no photo-
graphic record, and their difficulty in disposing of (or rationalising) their images.
Taking these data and arguments it seems to me it may be quite wrong to think
that photographs are inert or function as accumulations of “scraps” as Kracauer
(1993) has suggested. Rather as Edwards (2001) has argued, photographs can
be seen as performance, in that in the context of social biography, “things”
are active not passive in the making of meaning. She argues this theatricality
happens in two ways: in the intensity of its presentational form (as a framed
fragment of reality, experience etc.) and in its particular signifying properties.
Thus, “Photographs have a performativity, an affective tone, a relationship with
the viewer, a phenomenology, not of content as such, but as active social objects”
(p. 18). Edwards too, stresses the link between orality and a historical relationship
with the photograph, as “people talk about photographs, with photographs and
to photographs” (p. 21), and to others in photographic contexts. In this way too
relationships can be formed with family albums whose compilers and subjects are
unknown to the reader/viewer (Langford, 2001).
NEW CONVENTIONS OF
“EVERYDAY” PHOTOGRAPHY?
In the section on camera technology, I suggested that new technologies might
impact on the production and consumption of “everyday” images. Digital
photography opens up the possibility for the manipulation of images which has in
the past been restricted to the dark room. Not only will images now have a more
open-ended quality, but once stored on discs and available for use on computers,
there is potential to combine them with other materials including sound (Lister,
1995). This manipulation and storage in relation to widespread home computer
consumption poses interesting questions especially as there seems to be some
ambivalence among both practitioners and non-practitioners about what it offers.
Some commentators have suggested that the photograph is “dead” (Mirzoeff, 1999)
but this is to neglect the many ways in which the presence of a photograph as a
material entity is crucial to how people engage with them. It is this that leads
a number of people to reject the thought of “going digital.” We thus might find
that digital technologies occasion a similar response to that which has been found
in people’s evaluation of video. Chalfen (2001) interviewed American teenagers
about video and many of them rejected it as a basis for sharing and collective
“story-telling”; as “stopping you from thinking” and as something that could not
be looked at “again and again” Videos were often seen as “boring,” and the quality
and even aesthetics of video production was the subject of derision. Some of my
36 BARBARA HARRISON
respondents, however, did like the addition of sound to the visual images. What
we might find is that a differentiated practice arises; where digital photography
and its use are distinguished from video and that of still imagery.
Related to this possibility, Slater (1995) has raised a number of interesting
points in relation to what digital technologies may provide. He suggests that there
are two significant developments in relation to domestic images in contemporary
everyday life. The first is that those images that have a place in everyday life are
not those bound up with memory or commemoration, but with forms of practice
that are happening now. That is they are a form of “communication rather than a
reflective representation.” In this sense the ability to send, exchange images of the
immediate, can be important to maintaining forms of solidarity and group identity
at a distance (Harrison, 2002c). Second, he argues, “self-presentation rather than
self-representation should play the largest role in identity formation” (pp. 139–140
emphasis in original). A more appropriate metaphor in this context, he suggests is
the “pin board.” Private images are combined with public ones, and perhaps other
ephemera, in a shifting collage produced within the present. In this way the role
of domestic photography in mediating between the private and public spheres is
changing because of its location within patterns of consumption and leisure which
themselves have become increasingly privatised. Thus, there are new contexts of
“home entertainment,” a technological possibility for an expanded range of images,
including an increasing flow of images from outside the private sphere, even while
photography remains an activity of, and testimony to, family leisure. However, he
suggests:
What is important in the development of domestic photography is not so much the digitalisation
of photographic processes; but rather the potential flows and convergence of images in the home
as they are structured by digital domestic commodities.
We may need to consider here the changing nature of households and relations
between kin that are occurring in any case, and some of my interviewees used
photographs as part of information flows to maintain kin networks across diasporas.
However, it may be early days yet for domestic images to have fully entered
into the possibilities offered by multi-media data streams, and questions about
what kinds of images will circulate and be retained are open, although it seems
that some forms of imagery, such as the family portrait remain somewhat immune
to these new social forces. In addition despite the potential that can be realised
through digital images and visual communication flows that can account for new
mobilities across borders and boundaries, the materiality of the photograph may
still be essential to many of the roles people in everyday life see it as performing.
As a Kodak spokesperson commented recently “quite frankly people do not want
films or digital cameras they just want pictures” (BBC News, 27/9/2002).
Snap Happy: Toward a Sociology of “Everyday” Photography 37
CONCLUSION
The first part of the title of this chapter “snap happy” was purposely chosen to
indicate one way in which “everyday” photographic production and consumption
is conventional and socially regulated. In particular, “everyday” photography
in both amateur and professional image making, shows people, their families
and significant others, and their leisure pursuits as happy, healthy, together or
united in untroubled worlds. These are idealised and often contrived images that
realise significant moments in the present, privately initiated for displaying a
public identity, functioning also to preserve aspects of the past for the future.
As numerous authors have noted (e.g. Chalfen, 1987; Cronin, 1998; Seabrook,
1991) photographic images act as an aide memoir, as a “trigger” to memory. They
become the material repositories that allow people to engage in forms of “memory
work” that is both individual and collective whether or not the past is their own.
Photography is considered to be a practice accessible to everyone, such a
common and familiar cultural practice that it can be used in any one of a number
of contexts as a means of articulating a critical consciousness about self and others
(see Cohen, 1989). What is worthy of being photographed, displayed or stored,
reveals ontological choices that confirm values, social relationships and identities.
In this chapter, I have stressed that photography is a normatively regulated and
thereby conventional form of social practice. Cameras and images function within
particular social contexts and moments, which also define their significance.
Leisure, celebration, ceremony and ritual provide moments which require group
solidarity, as well as elements of social differentiation, to be seen and preserved.
Moments can be relived and remade as people attend to images from the past in
the present. These aspects of “everyday” photography form an important element
of any sociological analysis of visual culture in the post-modern world.
NOTE
1. These figures were provided by the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford, U.K.
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RECORDING THE “HABITUS”
Tim Dant
INTRODUCTION
The arrival of cheap video equipment would seem to have opened up a whole range
of methodological opportunities for the social scientist, especially the sociologist.
The poor quality, expense and time-consuming clumsiness of film has over the
last ten years been replaced with a flexible and easy to use technology, cheaply
available in the high street that enables the researcher to record social action “au
naturel.” As a social researcher who has been seduced by this opportunity I would
like to comment on the process from the experience of a recent project. Without the
breadth of experience to offer anything like a systematic methodology for using
video in the social sciences, what I hope to do in this piece is to raise methodological
issues that affect every research method but which take on a different quality with
visual data. It is remarkable how little film and video data feature within the social
sciences. Because of the capability of capturing the visible and hearable actions
and interactions of people going about their ordinary life, it would seem to provide
a rich source of data for those social scientists interested in studying local social
situations. The flow and pattern of life as it is lived is recorded and retained in
the moving picture with sound, to become available for close study and multiple
replays. The action can be frozen, slowed down and instances separated in time
and place easily compared.
The possibility of being able to see video data of Goffman’s asylums or Whyte’s
street corner would seem to offer a considerable advance on the relatively crude
process of the ethnographer’s note taking. Audio tape recordings retain the real
time of conversations and have proved to reveal nuances of interaction through
the techniques of linguistics, conversation analysis and discourse analysis (e.g.
Seeing is Believing? Approaches to Visual Research
Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Volume 7, 41–60
© 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
ISSN: 1042-3192/doi:10.1016/S1042-3192(04)07004-1
41
42 TIM DANT
Atkinson, 1984; Boden & Zimmerman, 1991; Levinson, 1983; Potter & Wetherell,
1987). Video recordings add visual data which enables the analysis of non-verbal
communication and the possibility of analysing interaction which is meaningful
but only in the material context of the setting. Instead of relying on the reported
observations of “key informants,” the video recorder can be the key informant that,
apparently, does not operate a selective memory or filter data according to schemes
of relevance tied to the informant’s interest in the situation. Ethnographers learn
to attend to the unintended, the accidental and coincidental, to record what seems
obvious and ordinary as well as the noticeable and remarkable. The perspective
of “ethnographic disinterest” would seem to be supremely invested in the video
camera that does not care what it records.
Of course this potential for a full record of what happens is not all it seems.
As casual watchers of the burgeoning of so-called “reality TV” over the turn
of the millennium we have become suspicious of the presentation of “ordinary
lives.” The early examples of “fly on the wall” documentaries from the 1960s,
especially the horrible fascination of the superlative black and white films of
Fred Wiseman, seemed to show things as they really were. As watchers we were
amazed that ordinary people being themselves (as opposed to actors “taking a
part”) would, in front of a camera, behave in ways that revealed their propensity
for intolerance, insensitivity, prejudice and even violence. Indeed, they convinced
us that what we were seeing must be unrehearsed and unprepared and therefore
“true,” because no one would act like that if they thought about it. But then, as
experienced watchers of film and TV, we have come to realise that the extremes
of behaviour that attract our interest have been selected by cameramen, editors,
directors and producers. They know what will stir our emotions enough to stop us
switching over and they point it out to us with framing devices, titles, voiceovers and
judicious editing.
HABITUS
I am interested in how we interact with our material world in ways that are
characteristic of contemporary culture (Dant, 1999; Dant, 2004) and managed
to persuade the ESRC to fund a video based research project to study the material
interaction of technicians working on cars in service and repair garages.1 It is
their working situation that is the habitus of my title. The term is most usually
associated with Pierre Bourdieu who writes of the habitus as “systems of durable,
transposable dispositions, structured structures . . . which generate and organize
practices” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 53).2 Such “dispositions” are not dependent on
conscious aims or complete mastery of how to achieve them but instead reflect
Recording the “Habitus” 43
the regularity of the social setting that is produced within the setting but is not
reducible to a system of rules. In a 1935 lecture on the “Techniques of the body”
Marcel Mauss used the term “habitus” in a rather simpler way to refer to ordinary
skills and habits including “the techniques and work of collective and individual
practical reason” (1973, p. 73). Both he and Bourdieu use the term to distinguish
social, shared and collective ways of acting from the characteristics and talents of
individual people. Mauss made it clear he was not talking about customs (local
dances or rituals for example) that may distinguish a particular culture but was
referring to those acquired abilities that appear as “techniques of the body” and
are oriented to the practical aspects of everyday life. The example he gave was the
different techniques that French and English soldiers used during the first World
War for digging – because the English troops did not know how to use French
spades, when a division from one country replaced a division from the other,
8,000 spades had to be replaced. Within each culture the techniques for using a
certain sort of spade had been learnt from within the habitus as part of what it
was to dig. Within the each army, soldiers constituted a habitus that had a shared
set of habits for doing ordinary things like digging. No doubt each army could,
given time, have learnt how to use each other’s spades but each group would have
resisted, arguing that, given the right spades, their way was perfectly good.
What I hope to show is that recording the ordinary actions of technicians in
garages can enable analysis of the way actions unfold from the habitus as ordinary
and routine within that setting. How technicians use tools, tackle practical problems
and follow a sequence of tasks is only demonstrated in the work. Much of their skill
is learnt through practical experience, through trial and error and through working
alongside others and learning from what they say and do. They do undertake some
formal instruction and do use some abstract knowledge but their work is reliant
on what we might call “embodied knowledge” in that it is contained within the
relatively unconscious, ordinary “ways of doing things” that constitute the shared
habitus.
HABITUS OF THE GARAGE
Car maintenance and repair is a major industry in industrialised countries that
requires a different type of habitus to that of the original production of cars.3
Marx clearly described the development of machine tools in the cotton industry,
in particular what he called “self-acting” machines (1976, p. 503), that not only
displaced the human physical power but also the skill, dexterity and organisation
of the work characteristic of hand-tool manufacture. During the twentieth century,
dedicated machine tools, the production line and robots in the car industry have, in a
44 TIM DANT
similar way, either replaced human skilled interaction with objects or subordinated
human workers to the operations of machines. But the repair and maintenance of
the private car continues to require regular hands-on, skilled work that has become
a ubiquitous local industry.
In this research project the aim was to find out how technicians interacted with
the material objects of their tools and the cars they worked on. The reason why it
is interesting is precisely because it is an easily researchable type of interaction
between human beings and objects that demonstrates the complex situations, the
variety of objects and the unanticipated mechanical contingencies that make the
work beyond the capacity of a machine. In the modern garage there are a range
of power tools (such as the hydraulic car lifts and the air driven power tools)
and some electronic diagnostic tools but the work is predominantly undertaken
by human beings applying embodied skill and using hand tools. The technicians
control the work, including the pace at which a job proceeds, and draw tools into
their interaction with the objects of the car rather than have their work determined
by an automated machine. In a similar vein Julien Orr has described how the repair
and maintenance of photocopiers is work on machines rather than work determined
by machines (1996). Using ethnographic techniques of observation he describes
the social organisation of the work of cleaning, replacing and adjusting of parts
but does not use visual data to analyse the interaction between technicians and
photocopiers.
In looking at material interaction we were asking how the technicians use their
culturally and socially acquired, embodied skills to transform material things such
as cars and their components. One of the owners of the garages we studied said
that cars were “not designed to be repaired” by which he meant that design is
primarily oriented to manufacture and the effective functioning of the finished car.
The result is that the engine compartments of modern cars are extremely full with
little room to see, get at or work on the components. Nonetheless, the car is made
up of a series of components that are fitted together, usually by bolts, nuts and
screws that are, in principal, repairable by removing and replacing defective parts.
It is in identifying the precise component that is defective, negotiating its removal
and fitting the replacement part, that human embodied skill is required to effect
a repair. The technician is always engaged with material objects that have been
designed and made by someone else and are intended to work in specific ways.
Rather than following the instrumental logic of machine production, the technicians
must follow what Merleau-Ponty (1962, p. 106) calls the “intentional threads” that
link them to the objects they are working with. These threads of intentionally are
sustained by embodied knowledge about how things work (how they fit together,
what tools are appropriate and how to use them) and are broadly shared by those
who share the same habitus or working environment – here, a garage.
Recording the “Habitus” 45
To illustrate this process and to show what video enables the researcher to do, I
will look at a junior technician replacing the windscreen wiper assembly on a car.
What we can see are the skills that the technician has to employ to firstly make
the replacement part fit and secondly to make it work as was intended. He uses
skills that are distinctly human but also distinctly characteristic of the habitus of
the garage. There are instances of interaction with other technicians who help and
advise and who share common understandings of the use of tools and the work
of technicians. Before turning to the example, let me make some general points
about taking a video camera into this sort of setting.
VIDEO IN THE SETTING
The ESRC was initially doubtful that garage owners would allow us to video their
work for fear that the material might be used to expose them as “garages from
hell”; in fact, garage owners expressed no such fear because they felt they had
nothing to hide. We approached a number of garages in two different areas (rural
and urban) and some garage owners did refuse for very practical reasons: they
did not have enough space for a researcher and camera; they did not want their
busy work interrupted; technicians did not want to be watched as they worked.
Nonetheless, getting people to agree to participate in the research was surprisingly
easy and most garage owners and their staff (some individual technicians did ask
not to be filmed) were most helpful and willing. Since the garages were in effect
self-selecting we do not know what we did not see; presumably any garage that was
engaged in dodgy practices would simply have put us off with a practical reason.
Some of the techniques we saw and videoed did not comply with current health
and safety legislation but we saw no examples of customers being “ripped-off” by
careless or unnecessary work. The ease of getting consent to the research meant
that we had to be very conscious of the ethical implications of what we were
doing, in particular not exposing garages and individual technicians to critical
comment. We promised to avoid identifying individuals or garages and so only
publish papers using still images in which identifying material (names or number
plates) is pixelated. Publishing video material on the internet or on CD-Rom is a
possibility but we could not control how the material would be used; the video
data could be taken out of context and used without our knowledge or control in
ways our subjects did not consent to.
We promised not to interfere with the normal working of the technicians
by constantly stopping them and asking what they were doing or why. Some
technicians enjoyed having someone take an interest in what they were doing
and were very happy to talk as they worked. Others simply carried on as normal,
46 TIM DANT
ignoring the camera and the cameraman. We cannot be sure what was “normal”
work; were those who were happy to work in front of the camera “playing up,”
were those who ignored it “on their best behaviour?” For the researcher looking
at the recorded material it often appears as if their view is as a “fly on the wall”
but there are instances in the corpus of data of a technician’s nervous glance at
the camera when things were going wrong and occasionally putting their body
between the camera and the work to hide it from view. Clearly the camera did not
“disappear” for the technicians even when they had become used to it and there
are some instances of technicians turning to the camera to say things like “there
you are, that’s the sort of thing that happens” and jokes between technicians about
impending stardom now they are on video. Nonetheless, for the great majority of the
time, the technicians simply ignored the camera and seemed neither embarrassed
by it or to perform for it in the way that people so often do when a video camera
is used in a family at home or on holiday.
Maintaining access to the field situations was dependent on the skills of the
researcher. David Bowles was the research associate who undertook the fieldwork
and was behind the camera negotiating what to film and how – without getting in the
way.4 Other researchers had suggested that a camera running on a tripod without
someone looking into it would more easily become part of the furniture and so be
ignored by the technicians. Initially we had planned to set up the video camera
on the tripod at some distance from the work but David rapidly realised that this
meant we would miss most of the action; even though cars are large objects many
of the bits are small and the very inaccessibility of components quickly emerged
as an issue in the work. David developed his skills of holding the camera to follow
the action and used the eyepiece instead of the LCD screen to save battery life.
This produced the potentially most intrusive form of videoing with the camera in
front of the head of the researcher, obscuring his facial features but accentuating
the one, unblinking, enlarged, mechanical eye. Getting to know the people being
filmed and building a rapport with them was very important if this was going to
work.
The camera operator needs to move the camera slowly; a few minutes playing
with one shows you that it doesn’t work like a human eye and rapid “panning”
and “zooming” is vertiginous to watch and so blurred as to be useless. Moving the
camera slowly also requires that the camera operator moves slowly and together
with their restricted vision through the lens, this makes him or her rather clumsy.
The foldout screen on the camera did enable certain types of shot such as with
the camera held low-down pointing up under a car or high-up pointing down into
the car. Digital cameras can be set to self-focus and operate well with very little
light which meant that we did not need any extra lighting, even to film in the dark
recesses of car engines. Background light, from an open door or a large window
Recording the “Habitus” 47
did sometimes interfere with the camera’s response, plunging the action in the
foreground into impenetrable darkness. Once captured, digital images were easy
to manipulate on a lap-top computer to review recordings in detail, edit sections
together as digital files and extract still images.
We did not plan to interview the technicians but we were able to “overhear”
snatches of naturally occurring conversation and responses to David’s occasional
questions. Some conversations were recorded by letting the camera run while
pointing at the floor; this allowed a friendly face-to-face interaction without the
intrusion of the camera lens. These snatches of talk were picked up quite well by
the camera’s built-in microphone but because of the high ambient noise in garages
(engines, alarms, telephone bells, shouts, compressed air tools, constant radio)
they are often very difficult to hear on the tape. The technicians had become very
used to talking above the noise but the microphone on the camera automatically
adjusts the sound recording level to the loudest sound, often putting close-by but
relatively quiet speech into the background. Using a separate microphone, ideally
stereo, would have improved our audio data but would have restricted the work of
the researcher in the field.
Using a video camera interferes with the normal techniques of the ethnographer
of either simply observing from a distance or getting involved in the action as a
“participant observer.” Looking after the camera (changing batteries, tapes, setting
it up, putting it away) takes up some of the researcher’s observation time in the
setting and separates him or her from others. There were occasions when David
literally “leant a hand” but in general since he was neither qualified nor insured,
the camera provided an excuse for “simply looking.” To the technicians working
with tools, the camera was a tool of David’s trade. The presence of the camera
attracts interest – other technicians and customers were curious – and provides an
identifying label distinguishing the researcher from, say, a trainee. It also makes the
usual technique of writing notes in the setting impossible; David wrote “fieldnotes”
on his impressions and general observations at the end of the day.
REPLACING THE WIPERS
This task, which lasts for over an hour and a quarter, illustrates how practical
reasoning and embodied skills are shared and used to achieve a repair. The customer
had complained that the wipers “dragged” as they crossed the windscreen of his
car so a replacement drive unit was ordered. Much repair work involves replacing
parts and fitting often simply reverses removal of the old part. However, things are
not always straightforward and in this example two problems had to be solved;
firstly, the part is not identical with the one taken off, secondly the part needs
48 TIM DANT
to be adjusted before it will work even as effectively as the one taken off. The
wiper drive unit comes as an “assembly” including the electric motor and a system
of articulated levers and cams that link it to the two separate wiper axles and
translate the motor’s drive from going round in one direction to going backwards
and forwards through a fixed quadrant.5 The references to the data specify the tape
number in this corpus of data (Tape 66) and indicate the time at which something
can be seen or heard on the tape (e.g. 13:03 is thirteen minutes and three seconds
after the tape started).
Because the wiring on the replacement assembly is not identical with the old
assembly, before installing it Will had to extend the five wires carrying power and
switching control to reach the sockets in the car. For each insert, four ends have to
be stripped, two connectors each have to be crimped twice and two plastic sleeves
shrunk on. Will works smoothly picking up the tools (snips, crimps, strippers and
a cigarette lighter to shrink the sleeves) and parts (lengths of wire, terminals) in
a sequence of cutting, stripping, joining, crimping and sealing each end of each
extension. The job is repetitive but would have been difficult to specify precisely
in advance or write down in a manual or set of instructions. It is based on what
he has learnt of how to use these tools and the spare parts and his familiarity with
how this type of job is done in this setting; he has identified the place to work,
drawn together the items necessary for the work and proceeds steadily through the
repeated sequence for each of the five wires. Will’s own skill may well have been
supplemented by discussion with a colleague about the task; he and his colleagues
share the tools, parts and techniques that constitute the habitus of this workshop
(Figs 1 and 2).
Will had invited David, the researcher, to see what he was doing and after initially
explaining the task, they stand side by side at the bench, chatting. While they talk
the video records roughly what David would have seen if he had simply come to
chat to Will. The hands and eyes of both men are taken up with their tools but they
are free to think and talk of other things.
After the unexpected modification of the wiring, Will puts the assembly in place,
plugs the extended wires into the sockets on the car, and fits the nuts onto the bolts
on which the assembly is mounted. Before the wiper arms and blades are refitted
one of Will’s senior colleagues, Mike, tests it by working the switch while they
both watch the movement of the axles and levers in the assembly. The motor runs
and the wiper axles turn but something is not right. Mike concludes that “the switch
is a little bit dodgy” but they are also wondering if the original problem of dragging
wipers might still be there, caused by something else (66–30:22). After testing and
looking for a period of minutes, Mike suggests that Will fits the wiper arms “and
see how fast it is with the wipers on” (66–32:56). At the moment that Will closes
the cap over the nut on the second wiper arm, Mike reappears and as he reaches in
Recording the “Habitus” 49
Fig. 1. Shrink-to-Fit Terminal (66–13:03).
to test the wipers, Will stands back with his spanner behind his back. The wipers
rise from their at-rest position, but as they sweep back down the screen they dip
below it and point into the trough where the assembly is. Mike says “Whoops”
(Fig. 3: 66–35:36) and Will winces and reaches forward with his left hand to grab
the wiper before it moves any further.
Fig. 2. Crimping (66–14:58).
50 TIM DANT
Fig. 3. “Whoops” (66–35:36).
In fact the driver’s side blade goes past the axle for the passenger side blade
and Will has to lift it against its spring mounting away from the windscreen to
free it. Even though the wipers are working and not “dragging,” they are dipping
below the line of the windscreen. Mike and Will think it is to do with the way the
wipers have been mounted on the axles – with the arms and blades removed, Mike
again tests the assembly while Will looks on (66–36:63). After nearly a minute,
Mike remounts the driver’s side wiper on its splines so that the “park” position is
different, not quite at the bottom of the screen.
In contrast to when he was recording Will’s work at the bench, the researcher,
David, is a couple of yards from the action and interaction which is between Will
and Mike. No one talks to David and his camera takes in not just hands and things
but includes heads and eyes. Glances between Will and Mike and between each of
them and the wipers are caught on video.
When they try them again, Mike holds the blade so that he can keep it from
getting into the wrong position and he gets Will to work the switch. After a couple
of movements of the wiper, they take it off, adjust its mounting on the splines and
try again – even when the “park” position is half-way up the windscreen the wiper
still dips to the bottom of the screen on its return swipe (Fig. 4: 66–38:01).
There are more tests, more moving of the wiper on the splines and then a lull
during which Will picks up the old assembly from the floor to see more closely
how it works. First he picks it up and looks at it, then he glances from it across
to the new unit that is fitted in the car; he is holding the old assembly against his
body in an orientation in space such that the new assembly could be a sideways
Recording the “Habitus” 51
Fig. 4. Holding onto the Wiper (66–38:01).
transposition of the old, or vice versa (Fig. 5: 66–39:26). Even though Mike and
Will are no longer interacting, here Will does not discuss with David what he is
thinking and doing as he did earlier at the bench.
They still cannot see what is wrong . . . Mike switches on and off the new
assembly a few times and eventually puts the driver’s side wiper back on once
more, setting it with the at-rest position 45 degrees off the level – when switched
off it would be directly in the driver’s line of vision! But when he tries it, the
Fig. 5. Comparing with the Old Assembly (66–39:26).
52 TIM DANT
Fig. 6. Mike’s Smile (66–40:12).
wiper sweeps the driver’s side of the windscreen properly and returns to the
45-degree position. He looks up at Will and a smile breaks out on his face
(Fig. 6: 66–40:12) – Will says something like “How’s it gone and done that!”
(6–40:15).
It’s at this stage that Dan is called over to watch; Mike explains to him what has
been happening and offers to demonstrate but before he can, Dan seems to have
grasped what’s wrong:
41:27 D: When you work it full, that goes down too far does it?’
W: It goes right down
D: Your motor’s all in the wrong place, and the regulator
M: Yea:::h (2.2) I can’t see how though because it can only go in
that way.
[to Will] Is that how it come out?
W: Yeah, well that, well look [fetches old assembly from floor] (4.7)
[shows the old assembly to Mick and Dan across the car]
D: Yeah, but its where you actually bolt the (0.3)
M: motor
D: motor on to
The transcription ends as a very loud compressor kicks-in obliterating the sound
track, although the conversation continues with the technicians leaning over the
bonnet of the car to talk. There is no sign of the strain of having to be heard; this
Recording the “Habitus” 53
is normal. Then Mike is called away and the camera moves in closer and we can
hear Dan explaining to Will how to adjust the regulator.
42:29 D: Put it in situ like it is now
W: Yeah
D: Push it off (.) right (0.8) pull the arm (0.2) right over (0.7) so this
comes right down (0.2) put it back up again (0.3) and then try it
W: (0.3) OK
At this point David is almost close enough to be part of the interaction but he is in
effect ignored. Neither Dan nor Will glance at or talk to him – but then neither do
they react to the camera. Getting two or more people interacting in shot usually
puts the researcher at too great a distance to be part of the interaction.
Dan’s explanation is accompanied by hand gestures that locate the indexical
components of his speech (this, it); parts are touched as they are referred to and
directions (over, down, up) are reflected in hand movements.6 Will gets to work
to make sense of what Dan has said by getting a small Y spanner and undoing
the link between the motor and the drive on the assembly, as it is mounted in the
car. As he works, the camera is able to get close up shots of his hands and David
moves from one side of the car to the other to be opposite as he works, often able to
catch Will’s expression in line with his hands and the spanner. While Will works,
Dan picks up and looks at the old assembly, moving the levers to see how the link
between the motor and the drive is adjusted (Fig. 7: 66–43:52).
Fig. 7. The Regulator on the Old Assembly (66–43:52).
54 TIM DANT
Fig. 8. Touching the Wiper (66–51:06).
When Dan and Mike put the wiper back on to see if it works, Will says “Is that
alright or what?” but Dan watches the wiper; its axle, its blade and the path it’s
just traced. When it moves again (it is switched to intermittent) Dan’s right hand
rests on it, allowing his hand to follow its movement (Fig. 8: 66–51:06). He says
“It’s nearly right but if you watch, it jumps down at the beginning . . . that’s where
you want that straight.” Will takes the whole assembly out of the car and on the
bench he adjusts the regulator to be straight; when he refits the assembly, it works
just as it should.
What was a straightforward replacement of a part has required a mixture of
human dexterity, skill, know-how and some problem-solving ability. If the wires
had been the same length as on the old assembly, if the regulator had been set
straight with the motor at “park” in the factory it would have worked correctly first
time. The wiper assembly had been designed and made to work in a particular way
and was intended to be a direct replacement part but the technicians had to identify
how the assembly fell short of its intended form and add other parts to modify it
and then adjust it so that it would work as intended. The failure of the part to work
as expected suggested a number of possibilities;
� the intentionality in the wiper assembly was not being realised by its workings
because of some fault in the assembly or motor (e.g. as the wiring had been
incorrect); � the intentionality in the wiper assembly was in accord with its workings but that
there was some other fault interferring (e.g. that an electrical or switching fault
was producing this effect);
Recording the “Habitus” 55
� the intentionality in the wiper assembly was not being realised by its workings
because of the way that it had been fitted (e.g. the wipers were not fitted on the
splines in the correct alignment); � the intentionality in the wiper assembly was not being realised by its workings
because of some adjustment that was needed (e.g. the regulating arm needed to
set straight down when the motor was in “park”).
All of these possibilities were considered and all were given some practical
consideration; they affected what the technicians did with the wiper assembly to try
to get it to work as they believed was intended. Identifying the intentions of wiper
assemblies is not difficult; they had all used wipers on cars and had all probably
worked on them and had some idea of how motor power was used to give them
their functionality. But what was characteristic of the habitus of garage work was
that things did not go quite according to plan and the practical experience of those
in the setting had to be used to realise the intentionality embedded in the objects
they were working with. It is noticeable that the way these technicians worked
was a mixture of trial and error, embodied skill and experience and collaboration
– and this mix was characteristic of what we saw in all the garages we studied.
What they did not do was work in a rigid or systematic way, for example by
following fitting instructions or strictly learnt or established procedures – exactly
the sort of precise sequence of actions characteristic of machine tools and computer
programmes. It was not by measuring the connecting wires against a standard
that they were found to be too short; it was by putting the object in place and
seeing that they were too short. When the wiping mechanism did not work as
they had expected, the technicians did not seek out a manual or look for fitting
instructions in the box. What they did do was try the mechanism, with different
switching positions, with wipers off, with wipers on, with hands holding the
wipers, with wipers in a different position on the splines and with hands touching
the wipers.
They did not consult a diagram but at different times both Will and Dan picked
up the old assembly, which was easy to see and manipulate outside the car, and tried
to work out how it, and so the new assembly, should work. The old assembly had no
power or wipers attached and their embodied techniques for using it as a diagnostic
resource were different. Will held the old assembly against his body in such a way
that he could make easy sight references between old and new assemblies, checking
for instance that all components were there, were of the same size and were in the
same orientation. Dan looked at the old assembly as a device in itself; he moved the
various levers, putting the components into different orientations with each other.
These two different forms of material interaction with the old assembly were not
the first things they did; these were how they explored the possibilities about the
56 TIM DANT
new assembly away from the car. We cannot know what was going on in the minds
of the technicians although we can see the mindedness of their actions; there were
moments when they stopped and looked at the part but no one went off to “have a
think about it” (Dan and Mark were engaged in other jobs which is why they only
appear when they get the feeling Will’s job is not going right). Most of the time
their consideration of the assembly is not simply with their eyes but their bodies
and hands are also oriented to it. This bodily material interaction with the workings
of the wiper assembly are easy to see in the video but are not clear from the still
images. Both Mike and Dan at different times put their hands on the wipers and
felt, as well as watched, the way that the wiper arms moved.
A different type of analysis might have focussed on the power relations between
the three mechanics; Will allows the others to take the lead in diagnosing and
issuing instruction and advice. He stands back and takes his hands and tools away
when one of the others is getting involved and yet it is he who does the majority
of the work with the assembly. Although Mike takes charge of the job, it is Dan
who works out what is wrong – he is involved by Mike at a point when the failed
intentionality of the objects appears incomprehensible.
The data shows how working with tools involves not simply mechanical
movements by the body, such as could be done by a machine, but a blend of physical
and mental skills that cannot be separated out into “cognitive” and “muscular.”
Feeling is part of seeing and both are part of understanding which is part of
knowing what to do next and the blend of these human capacities flows together
in “material interaction.” I use this term to refer to the way that human material
bodies intentionally interact with material objects to bring about changes that may
affect their future interaction with human bodies. The fault in the wiper assembly
changed the nature of the material interaction between the owner of the car and the
assemblage of the car. This led to the material interaction between the technicians
and the car that involved replacing, modifying and adjusting the assembly so that
it would work and provide a felicitous interaction once again between the owner
and his car.
LIMITATIONS OF VIDEO
Video has helped to show how the habitus of the garage operates in detail by
capturing the flow of human interaction with material objects and other humans.
As with audio recording, the temporality of events is recorded by the video camera
with great precision; a clock on the editor system can be used to measure the length
of time things took, including the pauses between events. But because the video
can repeat the action endlessly, sequences of action can be studied precisely and
Recording the “Habitus” 57
the details of complex action unravelled in ways that the social actor in the setting
would not be conscious of. This can mean that non-action is a significant part of
the data as when a technician’s hands withdraw and a tool is put down while they
stop to think and look.
As watchers of TV and film we are used to seeing a recognisable world through a
flat, rectangular screen, that has its own “diegesis.”7 But of course the world we live
in is far more dynamic than the world recorded by a video camera which, despite
visual and aural information in real time, is distorted in comparison with human
action and experience. What is missing is the ability to engage with environment,
to move, to turn ones head or even just the eyes, to use peripheral vision to see
stereoscopically and of course the visual image does not allow us to feel what the
technicians can feel. The researcher may have moved the camera to follow action
of the technicians’ hands but it cannot allow the viewer of the video to glance
quickly between his hands and his eyes, to overcome obstructions to vision or
to make sense of what is going on in the periphery (glances between people and
objects are often crucial for other participants making sense of what is going on
– e.g. Goodwin, 1994; Heath & Hindmarsh, 2000; Hindmarsh & Heath, 2000).
The rigid boundary of the frame of the recording constantly reminds the viewer of
what is out of sight, “off-camera,” that might have a part to play in the action. On
the other hand distance can be overcome with a zoom so that you can sometimes
see better on film than the technician could doing the work.
Because we are used to seeing image sequences that have been edited on film
and television, there is a temptation to treat video data as the raw material for
making a programme. Video for research can be edited in the same way; we have
presented research papers with sequences of video clips as illustration. However,
for analytical purposes, it is not the attention grabbing or aesthetic quality that
is important, it is that video data shows a continuous, unedited flow of action.
Although the choice of camera angles has “framed” what is to be recorded, it
is in analysis that that the researcher decides what is significant and construes
meaning in the flow of images. That meaning is expressed as a text that is written
for presentation to an academic audience which may refer to, or “quote” from the
data, in a similar way to other data sources (such as tape recordings, statistics or
notes). Although video provides a fuller record of actions and events than other
types of recording, it is still data rather than a complete record of what went on;
the experience of the researcher who was actually present is often crucial to giving
the context for interpretation. The detail in video data does provide a problem in
analysis; to study what is going on may take many repeats of the same section and
a second viewer of the data will often see different things. The analysis of video
data is several times more time-consuming than the slow business of analysing
audio recordings.
58 TIM DANT
When still images are used to illustrate text, the crucial flow of action is lost
(hands gesturing, holding the wiper as it moves) and those researchers who have
specialised in using video to capture interaction between humans in workplace
settings often closely analyse sequences of talk and action that occur in very short
time spaces (e.g. Heath & Luff, 2000). Brief snatches of face-to-face talk are
blended with glances at screens, actions of reading and writing, pointings, remarks
to others and even conversations on telephones in a complex process of interaction
that must be painstakingly unravelled so that sequence and synchronicity can be
precisely described. This type of analysis embeds the images in the flow of talk
to show how the material environment of bodies, objects and screens affect how
the human interaction proceeds. One “quotation” technique is to use a series of
still “frames” in sequence that show how non-verbal forms of communication are
integrated with talk (e.g. Heath & Luff, 2000, pp. 28, 29).
INTERACTION WITH MATERIAL
OBJECTS IN THE HABITUS
In this piece I have commented on the use of video to explore how the habitus
of the garage setting is lived out through the interactions between technicians and
the objects they are working with and on. It is one, rather specific, use of video
recording that has I hope illustrated some of the advantages and limitations of the
use of video. The same data could have been used for other purposes, for example to
explore the working environment – we have elsewhere explored the significance
of dirt within the garage environment (Dant & Bowles, 2003) – or to analyse
social or interactive relations. For the difficult task of studying the way that garage
technicians interact with the material objects in the garage, video was an ideal
method of recording data. Because what they were doing and the objects they were
working with were unfamiliar – we know how wipers work, but not what makes
them work – the opportunity to replay and study the data closely helped to make
them familiar. The detail of the activity of working on such things is so focussed
that fieldnotes alone would have produced very broad generalities and the language
used for such objects and actions is very limited and highly indexical. Despite
attempts such as those of kinesics (Birdwhistell, 1973) or Labanotation (Farnell,
1994) to produce simple graphic ways of recording body movements, these are
for specific purposes (non-verbal communication, dance and other meaningful
movements) that are inadequate to capture the flow of everyday, ordinary material
interaction. The very familiarity of our own material action (opening doors, making
cups of tea) makes it very difficult to recognise the complexity that is specific to
particular contexts beyond remarking on skill, which is taken to be a personal
characteristic rather than a socially produced feature of the habitus.
Recording the “Habitus” 59
Of course while video reveals something of the habitus, this is not to say
that Bourdieu’s “structuring structures” are shown; it is in the regularities of
action, the ways that tasks are approached in a similar way, the way that tools
are characteristically brought into use, the consistent way that advice is sought
and given, the ways rules are applied or ignored that demonstrate such structure.
To demonstrate this character of habitus requires extensive and detailed analysis
of a large corpus of data and here video is of limited use. Because of the time
taken to review and make sense of the data, such a macro sociological task is
enormously difficult using video – data must be summarised and abstracted with
the result that original instances are lost from sight. On the other hand, Mauss’s
rather more microsociological notion of habitus as “habits,” “practical reason”
and “techniques” is eminently discoverable in video data. The complexity of
manipulating objects in garage work, together with their relatively unpredictable
nature, requires a set of distinctly human skills which it is difficult to imagine a
machine doing. In general, these embodied skills of practical reason used to work
with material objects are characteristic of human beings, but they are specific to
this habitus of people who routinely share work with a set of objects – in this
case, cars, parts and tools. It is the habitus of the garage that enables the material
interaction between technicians and the objects they work with and is the source
of the practical reason that is particular to garage work; the set of embodied skills
that equips them to understand the intentionality embedded in objects, to interpret
the intentionality of both manufacturers and customers and to transform this type
of mechanical object. The analysis of video data allows us to record and study the
features of this habitus.
NOTES
1. The project, Car Care: The Professional Repair and Maintenance of the Private Car, was conducted at University of East Anglia and funded by ESRC Small Grant No: R 00023370. The study involved fieldwork in five local garages of different sizes and organisational structure over a period of seven months in 2001/2002. The principal form of data gathered was video of repair and maintenance work as it proceeded normally; the research was designed not to interfere with the flow of ordinary commercial work.
2. See also Bourdieu (1977, pp. 72–95) on “Structures and the habitus,” reprised in a revised and slightly less convoluted version in Bourdieu (1990, pp. 52–65).
3. The value of the servicing and repair market in the U.K. has been calculated at £15,800M in 2000 of which 55% was for replacement parts and 45% for labour (Mintel, 2002). The increasing sophistication of cars has dissuaded owners from DIY servicing but it has also increased the intervals between services (now averaging 10,000 miles). Only 3% of owners are prepared to service their own cars if it is less than five years old, rising to 11% for cars six years or older. Dealerships continue to dominate the market (47% share), especially in servicing cars still under warranty but the demand for newer “fast-fit” outlets
60 TIM DANT
and “service centres” (27% share), as well as traditional small independent garages (18% share) provide a very competitive market. All of these types of garage were studied in the Car Care project.
4. May I record my thanks to David Bowles who participated in every part of the project including the writing of earlier papers. Although David kindly reviewed and commented on this chapter, he was not directly involved in the writing – so all mistakes and misunderstandings are mine. He has turned his attention back to his doctoral research on social capital and voluntary work with elderly people.
5. The wiper arms and blades are separate; the original ones were reused. 6. This continuity between gesture and talk is nicely recorded on video and while it lasts
less than a minute would need extensive description to analyse its communicative richness. 7. Diegesis is “. . . the sum of a film’s denotation: the narration itself, but also the fictional
space and time dimensions implied in the narrative, and consequently the characters, the landscapes, the events, and other narrative elements, in so far as they are considered in their denotative aspect” (Metz, 1974, p. 98).
REFERENCES
Atkinson, J. M. (Ed.) (1984). Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Birdwhistell, R. (1973). Kinesics and context: Essays on body motion communication. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex: Penguin University Books.
Boden, D., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1991). Talk and social structure: Studies in ethnomethodology and
conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dant, T. (1999). Material culture in the social world: Values, activities, lifestyles. Buckingham: Open
University Press.
Dant, T. (2004). The driver-car. Theory Culture and Society – special issue on Automobility, 21(4).
Dant, T., & Bowles, D. (2003). Dealing with dirt: Servicing and repairing cars. Sociological Research
Online, 8(2), http://www.socresonlin.org.uk/8/2/dant.html.
Farnell, B. M. (1994). Ethno-graphics and the moving body. Man, 29(4), 929–994.
Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist, 96(3), 606–633.
Heath, C., & Hindmarsh, J. (2000). Configuring action in objects: From mutual space to media space.
Mind, Culture and Activity, 7(1–2), 81–104.
Heath, C., & Luff, P. (2000). Technology in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hindmarsh, J., & Heath, C. (2000). Sharing the tools of the trade. Journal of Contemporary
Ethnography, 29(5), 523–563.
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marx, K. (1976). Capital Volume One. London: Penguin Books.
Mauss, M. (1973). Techniques of the body. Economy and Society, 2(1), 70–88.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge.
Metz, C. (1974). Film language: A semiotics of the cinema. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mintel (2002). Car servicing/MOT (February). Mintel International Group.
Potter, J., & Wetherell, M. (1987). Discourse and social psychology: Beyond attitudes and behaviour.
London: Sage.
PERFORMANCE,
SELF-REPRESENTATION
AND NARRATIVE:
INTERVIEWING WITH VIDEO
Sarah Pink
It’s just basically some of my favourites that’s on here. I’m into the desert, I like Vincent Van
Gogh very much, two funny cards, that’s what my best friend looks like, that’s exactly what he
looks like. Take away the hat and that’s the exact spitting image of what he looks like. So in
actual fact if you come back this way, zoom in on that, that is my best friend and as you can see
the resemblance between him and Chef is quite staggering. That’s why I’ve called my bear Sal
because he looks like him. And basically the rest of it I went to France in the World Cup, just
the memorabilia, that which is round my neck there, because I write a lot I like to have a nice
creative environment. So my favourite things around, nice pictures around, a nice environment
that would inspire me or help me think (Mario, UK).
In modern western cultures much of the information we communicate with is visual
and includes references to the media culture that forms part of our everyday expe-
rience. Yet a tape-recorded interview transcript can only convey words about these
aspects of informants’ lives. The transcript cited above is from a “video interview.”
Mario, in his late twenties at the time, was living in a student hall of residence while
working as President of a students union and as a freelance writer. As he showed me
around his room the visual and material dimensions of this space became integral
to his way of telling me about himself and his home. The presence of the camera
and our mutual knowledge of contemporary media culture informed the way he
represented himself and his visual and material environment audio-visually.
Seeing is Believing? Approaches to Visual Research
Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Volume 7, 61–77
Copyright © 2004 by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1042-3192/doi:10.1016/S1042-3192(04)07005-3
61
62 SARAH PINK
INTRODUCTION
Visual ethnographic methods are increasingly popular in social science research.
Much has been published on their design and use (e.g. Banks, 2001; Pink, 2001;
van Leeuwen & Jewitt, 2001). Yet little has been written on using video in in-
depth interviews, or how such video-interviews might differ from tape-recorded
interviews. In this chapter I discuss the video interview, as developed in my research
about gender in the sensory home,1 to reflect on the nature of the ethnographic
knowledge about everyday life and experience this method produces. I focus
particularly on informants’ uses of narrative as a vehicle for self-representation
that reveals and conceals. Video invites informants to produce narratives that
interweave visual and verbal representation. In doing so they reference familiar
everyday narratives and practices that are in part visual. Here I discuss how three
narratives – which I shall call the “Hello magazine,” “estate agent” and “self-
analysis” narratives – were developed in an audiovisual research context.2
From 1999 to 2000 I interviewed fifty people as part of two research projects
developed with Unilever Research.3 The fieldwork was in England and Spain and
in this chapter I draw from both cultural contexts. Both projects explored people’s
relationships with their homes, one focusing on cleaning and lifestyle and the other
on laundry practices. The research sought to set people’s cleaning and laundry
practices within the context of their everyday lives in, and relationships to, their
homes. The research for these projects was what I shall call “video ethnography,”
using a form of “video interview.” By the video interview I mean not simply a video-
recorded interview. Rather a situation where the video camera and the informant’s
understanding of video’s potential for representation is an integral part of the
interview itself and of the way it is analysed. I spent approximately two hours
formally interviewing each informant, although in most cases the actual meeting
extended to three or four hours and in some cases involved further participant
observation. Each meeting began with a one-hour tape-recorded interview during
which we discussed the informant’s identity, everyday life and domestic practices.
The second half of the interview, also about an hour, was the video interview.
The idea, as I introduced it to my informants, was for us to “tour” their home, to
explore each room, the items in it and how they cared for them. I told them that
were not obliged to show me or tell me about anything they felt uncomfortable
with and were entitled to stop the interview at any point (although no one did). In
this sense the way the tour was conducted was left quite open to each informant
to interpret as he or she would. However it was also structured by my checklist
(which I always kept at hand) and my probes and prompts to discuss in more
depth items and practices of particular interest to the research. After the first few
minutes of video-recording I usually wound the tape back and played it to my
Performance, Self-Representation and Narrative 63
informant to show how I was recording them and how they looked on video. I
hoped this would give them confidence in my work and promote their involvement
and interest in the video process. We usually also viewed a segment of the finished
interview before I left. Most informants told me they had never done anything like
this before, or spoken with anyone about some aspects of their cleaning practices,
and that they had enjoyed the interview. Once the project was completed I asked
all the informants whom I could trace for permission to use their interviews in
my published work. Nearly all agreed and I have only used materials from my
meetings with those who did.
INTERVIEW AS NARRATIVE
Hoskins introduces her book Biographical Objects by noting how ‘Through
“telling their lives,” people not only provide information about themselves but
also fashion their identities in a particular way, constructing a “self” for public
consumption’ (1998, p. 1). As she emphasises life histories do not exist “out there,”
ready to simply be “collected” by ethnographers. Rather they are created in the
context of the interview because “An ethnographic interview, whether conducted
at one time or over many years, is a complex dialogue, a co-creation of a narrative
that is in part structured by the listeners questions and expectations” (1998, p. 1).
Hoskins’ experiences are pertinent because she was not only interested in the
life histories of the Kodi people (of the Island of Sumba, Eastern Indonesia)
but in their domestic and ritual objects. Hoskins discovered that she “could not
collect the histories of objects and the life histories of persons separately” because
“people and the things they valued were so complexly intertwined they could not
be disentangled” and when she asked her informants about objects rather than
persons she found that they produced more personal, intimate accounts of their
lives (1998, p. 2). Hoskins’ reflections are on the Kodi cultural context, however
they also provide a way of thinking about the relationship between informants’
narratives about objects, spaces and places and their narratives of self in modern
western cultures. Narratives based on the material/visual home can also inspire
modern western informants to reveal intimate and personal information about their
lives, experiences, concerns and emotions. Such narratives provide a framework
in which informants can situate and order such experiences. However narratives of
the material/visual home can also be used to order such experience to selectively
reveal and conceal aspects of experience and levels of emotion. The video
interview allows informants the opportunity to use established narratives that
depend on visual as well as spoken experience to structure their performances of
self. To explore this in the first two sections of this chapter I first consider the nature
64 SARAH PINK
of the “video interview” and the knowledge it produces, then I discuss performance
and narrative as ways of understanding informants’ self representations on video.
DEFINING THE “VIDEO INTERVIEW”
Video has a short history of use in qualitative research. In the 1980s anthropologists
welcomed video, it was cheaper than film and could be left to run for longer
periods. It was as such used within a realist frame to “objectively” record social
performances, activities and behaviours (e.g. see Collier & Collier, 1986, p. 146;
and as discussed in Pink, 2001, p. 77). However, with its lower image quality,
video was used for research rather than filmmaking. Many anthropologists still
use video to record events and interview during fieldwork, although usually these
visual methodologies go undocumented. However as new video formats bring
increasingly high quality, video is becoming more widely used in ethnographic
representation. Sometimes now digital video is used almost as a replacement
for film, which yet works in rather different ways, in ethnographic documentary
making (see MacDougall, 2001). Observational researchers from other disciplines
have also used video. In the existing qualitative methods literature video is
usually referred to as a recording device that allows one to record non-verbal
communications (Alasuutari, 1995, p. 43) and the details of behaviour that might
be missed though observation (e.g. Fetterman, 1998, pp. 68, 69). In none of
this existing literature however is the question of video recording interviews as
a research method discussed. Instead the focus is on producing either footage
suitable for editing into an ethnographic documentary or for recording visual
information that might otherwise be lost. My working definition of the “video
interview” differs from these uses, although it has more in common with the
literature on interviews in ethnographic films (discussed below). I see the video
interview as an interview in which the video camera becomes a (non-human)
agent in the process by which knowledge is produced. The camera is part of the
intersubjectivity between researcher and informant; it becomes an integral part of
their relationship and is essential to how they communicate with one another. The
context of a video interview is one in which both researcher and informant are
aware that their interaction is mediated by a video camera. This does not mean
simply that they temper their performances with regard for the camera, but that they
perform to the camera by using it as a medium though which to communicate with
one another. Thus the camera is used to both reveal and conceal, it may be seen as
offering opportunities to both show and hide more. The camera is simultaneously
a catalyst for forms of communication not normally developed in tape-recorded
interviews.
Performance, Self-Representation and Narrative 65
The idea of the video interview raises the question of how it compares with other
similar methods, in particular what we might call “video participant observation.”
It is not my intention here to argue that either the video interview or video
participation is a “better” method. Rather to note that one should chose ones
method according to context and circumstances. Working in other people’s homes,
video participant observation would have been less practical and time consuming.4
Indeed the video interview methods used here, whereby the researcher makes visits
to, rather than lives in the informants’ home are parallel to methods designed by
anthropologists of the home who do not practice visual methods. Ethnographers
might spend only short periods of time with informants in their homes, and may find
informants have not met their neighbours are, rather than sensing any community
with them (Miller, 2001, p. 3). Video participant observation involves the researcher
video-recording actual activities and events, as they unfold in everyday or ritual
contexts, in a way akin to participant observation. This method has similarities to
the production process for an observational ethnographic documentary. In Henley’s
words, observational cinema and conventional fieldwork methods both “involve a
judicious mixture of observation and participation” and share a “belief that under-
standing should be achieved through a gradual process of discovery, that is through
engagement within the everyday lives of the subjects” (Henley, 2000, p. 218). The
researcher becomes someone who normally lives her or his everyday fieldwork life
with a video camera at hand, not necessarily always recording but, participating
as a researcher/video-maker rather than simply as a researcher. It could be argued
that the observational cinema method is more likely to produce data about what
people actually do whereas the video-interview tells us only what they say (with
the embellishment of visual communication) about what they do. However this dis-
tinction is too clear cut, and does not accurately represent the relationship between
saying and doing. Reflecting on the work of the ethnographic documentary maker
David MacDougall, Lucien Taylor compares the interview based documentary to
observational documentary to remind us that we usually dealing with performances
whether in interview or participant observation. In fact neither method guarantees
a closer version of the ‘true’ way people experience than does the other:
In the standard interview setting, subjects are invited to say what they think or do or reflect on
their experiences after the fact, while observational filmmakers, like ethnographers, are more
interested in what people actually do, in experience itself as it is lived. To be sure saying and
doing are not altogether distinct from one another, and phenomenologists have a tendency to
forget that reflecting on one’s life is an integral part of living it. Likewise, performances staged
for the camera may have affinities with those that people put on for themselves – and the
performers may be no less true to themselves for it (Taylor, 1998, p. 5).
The research video interview is likewise an opportunity for informants to reflect on
their experiences, to tell about their lives. Talking is certainly a form of “doing”;
66 SARAH PINK
it is an everyday practice that is enacted in multiple narrative forms by the same
individual each day. However such interviews need not be just the “talking heads”
that we picture when imagining a documentary film interview. For example my
interviews involved exploring my informants’ homes. I accompanied them around
their homes with my camera, video-recording things they drew my attention to,
activities they performed to “show” me, and things I found interesting for my
research. I was not just interested in what they said but in what they showed and
what we both experienced as we explored their homes. As MacDougall describes it
“interviews in films not only convey spoken information but also unspoken infor-
mation about the contexts in which they occur. They allow the speakers to describe
their subjective experiences of past and present events, while simultaneously we
interpret the emotions and constraints of the moment” (1998, p. 117).
Therefore I am interested not only the content of what is said or in talk as
performance. Rather in how talking, representing self, and the material/visual
home are co-implicated in the production of a narrative that tells a story about
the everyday relationship between a particular self and her/his material/visual
home. In my fieldwork the audio-visual interview performances involved particular
components – the individual, her or his home, the objects in it, her/his
historical/biographical experience and the researcher and perceived audience.
My informants wove these together using existing cultural narratives that could
conveniently incorporate them.
PERFORMANCE AND NARRATIVE AS WAYS OF
UNDERSTANDING VIDEO INTERVIEWS
Like most public performances5 the event an interview forms part of does not
necessarily begin when the tape-recorder is switched on or even necessarily when
the interviewer arrives. My informants knew that they would be video-recorded
in their homes and began to prepare for this experience (or performance) both
mentally and materially before the event. Although they had been asked to do
nothing out of the ordinary to their homes before my visit, so I should find them as
they would have been “usually,” many prepared both themselves and their homes
in some way. This might range from cleaning the house from top to bottom and
dressing up and doing hair and makeup to simply tidying away personal items
they did not want to be seen and ensuring they felt comfortable with their clothes.
In the interviews we reflected on what they had done to prepare, to incorporate
the pre-performance part of the event into the narrative of the interview. These
initial preparations for the interview even before my arrival reflected how each
informant had started to perceive the interview as an audio-visual event and how
Performance, Self-Representation and Narrative 67
this informed their approach to it. This also inevitably influenced the narratives they
chose. Likewise after the interview the event did not simply end when I switched the
video camera. We viewed some video clips and when time permitted, having spent
two hours telling me about themselves, my informants often questioned me. By
situating the video interview in this way it can be seen as part of a wider event within
which, and with reference to cultural knowledge and personal experience, specific
interview narratives develop. Noting how “. . . experience and life do not have a
narrative structure per se. Rather, they are constructed in the form of narrative”
(2000, p. 76), Flick describes rather well how two key cultural and context specific
elements figure in the construction of narrative. When people create narratives in
this way they work with “contextualized and socially shared forms of knowledge”
that are negotiated in two spheres. First by using “prototypical narratives given in
a culture” the informant negotiates between her/his experience and the established
narrative. Second she/he negotiates with listeners who are either convinced by
or reject (elements of) the story (Flick, 2000, p. 77). My informants were also
aware that they were addressing other viewers who would see the tapes later.
They were anonymous, defined as “the research team” and would not comprise
a public audience unless at a later date the informant signed a form agreeing to
this. Considering my video interviews in these terms I saw my role as researcher
(listener/viewer) to treat my informants’ narratives as credible – I was interested in
their explanations and probed only when I suspected they were open to discussing
other possibilities. I left the situation open to let them chose their own narrative
style. However of course my very involvement in the situation impinged on how
they made such choices, which were not arbitrary but informed first by how the
informant perceived the interview in anticipation, and second by their interpretation
of the interview context once the event was underway. Some informants mentioned
how they felt about the way they were communicating – and as such recognised that
they were working with existing narratives. For example, as one informant noted
it was a bit like a counseling session but at the same time different. Later after
the interview the end of the performance was signified as my informants often
changed mode, from performer on video to a person who asked me questions.
The interview event continued but the audiovisual performance I am interested in
analysing here was concluded.
In the following three sections I discuss how different informants referenced
specific established narratives that may also be seen as characteristic themes of
modern western culture. I have called these the self-analysis narrative, the Hello
magazine narrative and the estate agency narrative. My informants did not strictly
follow narratives from these genres but adopted components of and/or referenced
these distinct narratives as part of their personal audiovisual narratives. In parallel
with this run other themes of modernity, namely: the visual and technological
68 SARAH PINK
aspects of modern western media culture; consumer culture; and the self-reflexivity
of modern western subjects. These themes were to some degree interwoven with
all the interviews. Below to make them explicit I associate them with particular
interview narratives in which each was predominant.
THE SELF-ANALYSIS NARRATIVE:
INTERVIEWER AS LISTENER
The self-analysis narrative refers to the testimonial and confessional style adopted
by some of my informants. By exploring their homes and the objects in them
they showed and discussed the personal meanings this material context had for
them. The spaces of the home and one’s possessions often have deep emotional
significance, sometimes associated with joyful or painful memories, current on
going troubled relationships, or bereavement. Some informants, in showing me an
object on video described its meaning for them in terms of the emotional content
of the feelings and relationships they associated it with. In doing so, reflexively
talking me through relationship stories of conflict, rupture or reunion, or stories
of personal change, achievement and progress as we toured the home. This way
of talking about spaces and objects (and indeed sometimes photos and paintings
displayed on the walls) is in some ways parallel to photo-elicitation. Harper (2002),
reflecting mainly on research done in modern western cultures, claims that photo-
elicitation methods make it is possible to delve deeper into people’s emotions
and memories. However the video interview extends this as the self-reflexive and
testimonial style develops in relation not only to visual images and but to material
objects and spaces (see also Hoskins, above).6 For example in Mario’s interview
we turned to examine his desk:
. . . this is where you actually sit and do your work is it?
Yes this is the hub of my brain. TV and video, I don’t really use it very very much I’ve just
got it. This is my pride and absolute joy, my computer, which I’ve called The Daddy because
it’s great and the printer and things like that. Now I write in notebooks a lot and then type it up
on the computer and I use this just to bounce things on, bits of writing work, freelance writing
projects I’m working on I stick up there. Because again not only is it very useful to have it,
because I tend to forget about things so it’s good to have it actually on show, but also this says
to me I am a working freelance writer. It creates that environment which I enjoy very much.
The quotation from Mario’s interview demonstrates how the presence of the
computer, notebooks and papers stuck on his wall prompted him to tell us about
himself and his identity – it “also says to me I am a working freelance writer.”
However rather than simply evoking responses based on the visual/material,
video interviewing adds another layer to the methodology of visual and material
Performance, Self-Representation and Narrative 69
elicitation as it is combined with informants’ own visual self-representations. Part
of Mario’s interview was also about representing (by showing the camera) the
environment he discussed – how the desk was organised and the large sheets of
paper with lists and notes relating to his writing projects on the wall.
Other parts of the video interviews were in “talking head” style. Here it is useful
to draw some parallels with interviews in ethnographic film. The video interview
can also be seen as an example of what MacDougall calls “the subjective voice”
in the form of:
Testimony, the first person perspective, approaches subjectivity through the self-expression of
the film subjects. It is found in films (or sequences) in which the primary source of experiential
information is communicated to us by those who have had the experiences. Although it
sometimes occurs in spontaneous dialogue, it is typically the mode of interior monologue,
confession, and interview (MacDougall, 1998, p. 102).
For example the first few minutes of Mario’s video interview were recorded in
‘talking-head’ style. I asked him who had taught him to do the laundry:
No one. I had to learn. I got some advice from my mum as you do but no generally I can’t
remember the first day, whatever it was the day came and I must just have gone over with my
bag and just bunged it in. I do remember asking people how to do laundry before I came away
to university. I didn’t really understand and luckily the halls’ machines are fairly idiot proof so
good because I was a bit of an idiot then.
What was it that you didn’t understand?
Temperatures, whites and non-whites, powder amounts and tumble drying, hand washing,
stain removing, I just didn’t have a clue. It was all alien to me (Mario, UK).
Some informants represented their domestic practices as direct reflections of
emotional needs or responses that were explicable in terms of psychology. For
example:
It’ll be interesting for you – I have this hate, horror of grease going over my cooker – this should
be interesting, I need a psychoanalyst here. I don’t know what it is – it’s funny, it’s like a real
obsession, and it’s like other people come and they sort of like . . . get that grease. I just hate
grease, anyway (Jenny, UK).
I think I spend quite a bit of time at home, actually. I quite like being in my home. Although
then I do have various spurts throughout the year where, like I’ll be away for 3 weeks or 2
weeks. I mean usually in a month I’ll be away perhaps 2, you know, away at friends or family,
2 weekends out of 4. But I usually find that I can go 2 weekends and then after that I need to
get away. So it sort of becomes a psychological thing (Jenny, UK).
Others spoke of their domestic practices as having therapeutic effects relating
to shifts in frame of mind between different activities, or producing ordered
environments and selves:
Yes, it’s good to clean before making phone calls to sort of like prospective employers and, yes.
It puts me in a frame of mind, an ordered frame of mind I suppose.
70 SARAH PINK
Does that show you something you feel about yourself?
Yes, I suppose so, yes. I’m a more efficient, ready to communicate person (Malcolm, UK).
However we should not treat such subjective self-expression in the testimonial
mode as necessarily “true” accounts, but ones that are imbued with introspection
and self-analysis. MacDougall notes although “Interviews are perhaps the
ideal medium for confession and self-revelation” they can represent “limited
perspectives and uneven mixtures of candour and self-justification” (MacDougall,
1998, p. 117). The video interview allowed informants to reflect about and
simultaneously construct versions of their identities through the narrative of
showing their homes in an audiovisual medium. In doing so they produced first
person testimonies about themselves and homes, authenticated by references to
self-awareness and by the visual/material home that served simultaneously as their
prompt and their evidence.
By the self-analysis narrative I refer to how people reflected on their everyday
housework practices within a frame of self-understanding and on the interview
itself as a process of learning more about themselves. In doing so they employed
familiar modes that are part of established practices of self-reflexivity and self-
representation in modern western culture. Defining oneself in terms of one’s
trajectory of personal awareness and development, be this to friends or a therapist,
is culturally established and appropriate. In an interview it is a confessional stance
that stands as a “safe” narrative and offers a frame within which to talk about oneself
and about personal issues that bind ones experience to ones material/visual home,
without transgressing known forms of expression.
The significance of video in this interview process is threefold. First, it provides
informants with a platform from which to speak authoritatively, giving their
subjectivity a voice. Second, by focusing on the visual and material environment the
video interview is a form of visual/material elicitation that might evoke “deeper”
accounts and memories. Third, video gives informants an opportunity to show
and display the visual/material symbols of self-identity that represent personal
trajectories and ambitions and form part of the constitution of self in the home.
HELLO MAGAZINE: NARRATIVES
FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION
Hello magazine features two main types of interview with celebrities in their
homes. The first (and most common) covers the family and (public version of) the
personal lives of the celebrities featured. They are interviewed about their family
lives, work, children, homes etc and photographed posing in various locations
Performance, Self-Representation and Narrative 71
in their home and/or garden. The second is a feature about the interior design
and decoration of a celebrity home. It covers (usually) her design choices and
creativity and photographs of a number of rooms discussed in the feature. My
informants’ interviews were not parallel with these published interview styles
or with the visual representations of Hello magazine. Nevertheless the model
of Hello is a useful reference point that indicates the presentation of self and
home as it is produced for public consumption. In the interview I discuss below
there are some themes in common with Hello interviews, such as family (the
couple, children and parents), home decoration, and “conventional” priorities.
This theme was particularly relevant in Spain, where Hola (the Spanish version
of Hello) is widely read. However rather than relating the theme specifically to
the magazine, it is better contextualised in terms of the traditional relationship
between street (calle) and home (casa) in Spanish culture. As Corbin and Corbin
(1986) emphasised the distinction between the public calle and domestic casa is
important in Spain, the latter being an essentially private, domestic space. During
my previous participant observation in Spain (1992–1994) I found in comparison
with English homes which are used more for entertaining friends and colleagues
and for socialising, in Spain most non-family socialising takes place in the calle,
in bars and restaurants. It was unusual to be invited to a person’s home until one
knew them well. Therefore in Spain showing one’s home in the video interview
context transgressed usual norms differently to in England. Spanish informants
needed to seek appropriate narratives for this event, which displayed private
space publicly. Susana was about 30 when I interviewed her. She was married
and pregnant with her first child. As she was to be videoed Susana decided to
combine the interview with a “going out” narrative. We did the interview just
before going out for lunch so she was already dressed and made-up for a public
domain when the camera was switched on.7 Susana took me on a selective tour of
her home, excluding a room she felt was untidy and unprepared. In the rooms we
viewed, themes of family, life stage and home decoration prevailed. In her bedroom
she told me:
[I am] getting everything ready for the baby girl. The layette, the cradle, all her clothes, her little
shoes. Everything. So at the moment the house is a bit untidy, but we are getting a bedroom
ready for her.
This is you, isn’t it?
Yes, it’s me when I did my first communion. My collection of boxes. I like boxes very much,
wooden ones and boxes of all sorts. They are ears of wheat. I picked them 2 years ago. I dried
them and I’ve put them up as decoration. I really like them. This is a sketch my mother-in-law
did. I found it in the house, framed it and hung it up.
However the use of a familiar narrative that encompassed themes of family and
home decoration allowed the informant to draw a line between what she did and
72 SARAH PINK
did not want to discuss and what she implicated and excluded in her strategy for
visual representing her home.
The decoration is all very rustic. This is a Singer sewing machine, which was my grandmother’s.
Well I wanted to turn it into a table, but I’m going to leave it like that, I’m going to take the
head off and get it working so I can sew.
And how do you clean this?
All I use is wax, which I have made to nourish the wood, because virtually everything here,
doors and all are wooden, and I clean them with that.
Do they make it specially for you?
Yes . . . they make it in the city in a very old cleaning materials shop, its been there for ages.
They also make floor wax. For tiled floors they mix a wax with a slightly reddish colour and
which nourishes the floor. First you have to apply a salt so that the lime scale comes out of the
floor and then you apply the wax.
Did you chose all this yourself.
Yes, I had it all made, but I chose it and told them what I wanted. The cushions for example
are fastened here with old nails, called gypsy nails, made from iron (Susana, Andalusia, Spain).
By focusing on processes of decoration, family heirlooms and conventional family
relationships Susana presented the surface of her emotional life at home. For
example, preparations for a new baby, pictures symbolic of family relationships,
the restoration of her grandmother’s sewing machine, and the special treatment of
her furniture. These public representations do not delve into the self-analytical.
Susana’s biographical photographs displayed around the house represent her as a
beautiful young woman, and at her key life stages such as first communion and
wedding. These images tell us about what is important to her, however she does
not engage in a narrative about her feelings on these occasions.
In this interview narrative video has a particular role to play. Susana used the
opportunity for visual representation to present an appropriate and conventional
scene, she showed the researcher and camera the things that were important to her,
and indicated their importance verbally describing the work and time she dedicated
to their preparation and care. Her self-presentation was important and she ran her
hands through her hair to re-style it during the interview. Her home was, in the view
of her friends and family, particularly beautiful, and the video interview offered
her a chance to showcase it.
THE ESTATE AGENT: HOME
IMPROVEMENT NARRATIVES8
While doing fieldwork for this project I was house hunting myself. When viewing
houses I often found myself looking around the house with my researcher’s eye.
This was partly because the “tour” that sellers take buyers on is similar in format
Performance, Self-Representation and Narrative 73
to the route of my video tours – the informant usually chose the order of the rooms
and was considered the expert on the home while I asked questions. When people
show their homes to prospective buyers they frame the buyer’s visual experience
of the home with a spoken narrative. As such they invite and intend a particular
way of seeing. The buyer may indeed resist or contest the gaze that is offered, or
believe that it has been deliberately constructed to reveal and conceal aspects of the
home that show it only to its advantage. In addition in my experience sellers often
combine showing their homes with a selective narrative about how they have lived
their life there. Often these narratives focus on the biography of the house, which
is inevitably interwoven with the biographies of those who live in it, and centre
on how the home had been “improved,” altered and developed. Some informants
took a similar, businesslike and “factual” approach to showing me their homes.
For example, as Christine described her house
Ok, this is [name of the house], we’ve been here 8 years and we have done quite a lot since
we’ve been here. The last window to the right, up and down, is an extension with a lounge
downstairs and a bedroom en suite that we had built of my father. He only lived with us,
unfortunately, 2 months but at least he did have somewhere to go. The front door is new, there
used to be a bedroom there and we’ve made that into the hall with the, just the little porchway.
Between the 2 windows on the left there was a front door that was blocked off but didn’t go
anywhere, so we bricked that in. We’ve also had all the thatch re-done and I think that’s all
we’ve done to the house (Christine, UK).
In these situations I also probed underneath to explore the questions I wanted to
draw out about their relationships to their homes as this stance was very different
from the more revealing self-reflexive mode (although no more or less “true”). For
example, Pete showed me his living and dining room telling me how its decoration
reflected his character and indeed his personal life and self-awareness:
I plan to decorate rooms and I just never, I mean you’ll see this room – I’ve obviously painted
1/2 the ceiling, 1/2 the wall! I’ve got an incredibly low boredom threshold. I’ll set my stall out
to paint that room and by lunchtime on Saturday I’ll be so pissed off with it that I’ll go and do
something else. And if somebody rings up and says do you fancy a pint? No contest! I’m gone.
I mean have you always been like that about cleaning and decorating and everything?
Yes, I think it’s driven some of the women that I’ve had in my life absolutely crazy. I’ve got
jobs that really should take a weekend, last 6/9 months you know. And it sometimes never gets
done. And I think people find that incredibly irritating. I’ve learnt to live with myself (Pete, UK).
In contrast when Christine showed me where she kept her horses she stuck to
describing a process that had and would be completed, without reflecting on her
own capacity to achieve this or dwelling on how this was bound up with her self-
identity:
I’ve just tidied, this is the last little piece I’ve tidied up and seeded it. I’ve got to paint that
shed next.
74 SARAH PINK
How long have you been waiting to do that?
Well that wasn’t finished built until February so that’ll be one of my next jobs. Do you want
to film that then? So there’s a ditch running all the way round where this white fence is, so all
this has to be strimmed, but I do pay to have that done. And this was all untidy, we’ve gradually
cut this down so obviously I can run a tractor over this. Mind the cow pats (Christine, UK).
Whereas Pete showed his home decoration as an example in a narrative that focused
on his self-identity, Christine indicated I should film her out-buildings to illustrate
the process of improving her property. Like other informants who talked me
through their home-improvement projects – such as extensions, attic conversions
and new kitchens – her narrative placed personal space and embodied labour in the
context of material and visible change, rather than one of personal development
and emotional or psychological need. Video was significant in this: it is a medium
through which the visible and material can be prioritised in an audiovisual narrative,
situated by the informant’s commentary. This works similarly to Banks (2001)
notion of directed photography, whereby informants indicate (often spontaneously)
what the researcher should photograph (see also Pink, 2001), and thus point out
what is important. In the video interview context this is exaggerated. The informant
has license to direct the gaze of the camera from themselves to objects and back
again. Although the researcher holds the camera and ultimately the shots are framed
by her or his subjectivity, this is negotiated as the informant indicates her or his
preferred visual perspectives.
Because the established narrative of showing a potential buyer around one’s
home depends largely on “showing” – on the visual experience of the home –
and on revealing and concealing in this context – this provided an appropriate
and comfortable means of presenting home in the interview context. It offered a
narrative that took the focus away from the personal while implicating the personal
and emotional investment that must have gone into creating a home. In this
situation it is up to the interviewer to probe and make the connections. In my work
this also involved linking them to the identity issues I explored in the tape-recorded
interviews.9
CONCLUSION: PUTTING NARRATIVE AND
THE VIDEO INTERVIEW IN CONTEXT
Above I have discussed the video interview narrative, outlining three examples of
how informants referenced established narratives in ways specific to the audio-
visual qualities of the video interview. On video informants communicated about
their everyday practices and biographical experiences with reference to familiar
audio-visual narratives they feel comfortable and safe with. An understanding of
Performance, Self-Representation and Narrative 75
how this develops is key for researchers using the video interview. Researchers
need to negotiate video interview narratives to ensure that although informants
have ultimate control over what they chose to reveal and conceal, the narrative
is not constructed in such a way that it does not cover the concerns of the
research. To achieve this we need to maintain an awareness of narrative and
the types of narrative available in the culture we work in, as well as having the
cultural confidence and sensitivity to know when one might appropriately probe
underneath them. When working in one’s own culture or in a context one has
significant research experience of a researcher might use this knowledge intuitively
rather than self-consciously ticking off the type of narrative used as it is produced.
In other contexts where one’s awareness of the culture is lower the analysis of
narrative might form part of the continual process of interpretation as the research
develops.
Like any interview the video interview, needs to be situated in relation to
established cultural narratives. However the video interview also encourages
informants to work with established audio-visual narratives. These might be drawn
from uses of images in still and moving audio-visual media for commercial and
home media productions and from existing practices of showing, displaying,
viewing and looking. In the examples discussed above I analysed the video
interviews in relation to contemporary modern narratives of self-analysis, media
representation and house selling and the visual perspectives of these practices.
I linked these with three (not necessarily mutually exclusive) key features of
modernity that have been developed by a number of social theorists. First in
Britain we live in an economy that is inter-linked with to the housing market
in ways that are not evident elsewhere. Home ownership, market value and buying
and selling homes is an important factor in the relationships people have with
their homes. This is a key aspect of consumption in Britain, linking with both
domestic consumption and with domestic space (the home) as a commodity
itself. Second modern media cultures are central to how we communicate in
everyday life. In the example discussed here I indicated how visual and written
magazine narratives might provide templates for familiar representations of self
and home. Third, the self-reflexivity of modern western subjects can be seen
as part of individuals’ everyday relationships with their friends and family as
well as, in a different way, to their therapist and counselors for those who
have them.
Used and analysed appropriately the video interview can provide researchers
with much more than a visual record of an interview. The combination of
visual and verbal knowledge and representations it produces offers rich research
material, that is, like any interview transcript, embedded in local and cultural
knowledge.
76 SARAH PINK
NOTES
1. This research is written up in my book Home Truths: gender, domestic objects and everyday life (Pink, 2004).
2. Elsewhere (Pink, 2004) I note that these narratives were used, here I follow the point up to unpack how they functioned within the research.
3. In 1999 I developed Cleaning, Homes and Lifestyles with Katie Deverell and in 2000 a project about Laundry practices with Jean Rimmer, both at Unilever Research Port Sunlight, U.K.
4. Some such methods have been developed in commercial research, notably by Siamack Salari at Everyday Lives – see http://www.edlglobal.net/). However, as far as I know have not been used in academic anthropology.
5. For example in the case of the Spanish bullfight, for a bullfight aficionado the event does not start when then performance commences in the arena, but when the bullfight aficionado dresses up smartly to go out and then takes his or her aperitif in the bar before the performance. As for other events like a football match or a rock concert, what happens before and after the performance form a part of the narrative of the event itself and it is important to take note of this.
6. Of course here I recognise that photographs themselves are material artifacts and that material objects are also visual in some way or other. My aim here is rather to distinguish between the photo-elicitation interview whereby an informant discusses a set of photographs (normally focusing on their visual rather than material qualities) and the video interview con- text where the informant draws a range of visual and material objects into her/her narrative.
7. Some other (women) informants asked for a break between the tape-recorded interview and the video interview so they could change their clothes and do their hair and make-up.
8. Another possible contemporary interpretation of these narratives would be in terms of abundance of home improvement and home decoration programmes currently screened in television in the first years of the twenty-first century. However I would argue that this is not applicable in the cases analysed here for the following reasons. First the interviews discussed here (with the exception of Mario who was interviewed in 2000) were undertaken in 1999 when such programming was still not in its heyday and did not form an important part of British popular culture. Second, my informants never mentioned such media representations. Third in Spain as far as I know at the time such programmes were not broadcast. Had the interviews been carried out now in 2003 I would expect informant references to this genre and that some of the elements of the genre would be reflected in interview narratives.
9. In some situations it can be important to supplement with a video interview with a tape recorded interview as some people might not want to talk about intimate feelings on video.
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ON USING VISUAL DATA ACROSS
THE RESEARCH PROCESS: SIGHTS
AND INSIGHTS FROM A SOCIAL
GEOGRAPHY OF YOUNG PEOPLE’S
INDEPENDENT LEARNING IN TIMES
OF EDUCATIONAL CHANGE
Pat Allatt and Carolyn Dixon
Eyes for Listening, Andrezej Jackows (2000).
Seeing is Believing? Approaches to Visual Research
Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Volume 7, 79–104
© 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
ISSN: 1042-3192/doi:10.1016/S1042-3192(04)07006-5
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80 PAT ALLATT AND CAROLYN DIXON
INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
In all its stages, qualitative research inhabits a visible world. Yet the use of visual
data across the life of a research project is a visual span seldom considered in the
methodological literature (Albrecht, 1985; Brannen, 2002). From a study largely
based on observation and interviews in which visual data did not feature at the
outset, we illustrate this longer perspective by focussing on two aspects of span.
One refers to the inclusion of visual data throughout a project, from the search for
a research setting to the final stage of dissemination. The other concerns the more
frequent approach that includes a mix of visual methods, ranging from visual
documents of film and photographs (Denzin, 1989) to other visual images and
sights fleetingly observed. We argue that to use our eyes in the peripheral as well
as the central data gathering stages, and to glean data from what is incidentally
noticed as well as harvested with specific visual tools, generate an extended
sociological understanding. The visual widens the window on the world of those
being studied, bringing the intricacies of their lives closer to both researcher and
audience. In this latter regard, we note the value of visual data at the dissemination
stage, particularly for audiences of practitioners and those with interests in policy
formation.
Incorporation of visual material was not part of the original research design. It
grew from difficulties in finding suitable research settings: educational institutions
in the Teesside region of the north east of England willing to participate in a
qualitative study of 17-year-old A-level students that tracked independent learning1
from educational settings into the home. Historically, independent learning, the
pedagogy whereby responsibility for learning is transferred from the teacher to
the learner, is a long established practice in the post-16 academic strand, logged,
for example, in classic studies of the early 1950s and 1960s (Jackson & Marsden,
1962; Morris, 1969). Our aim was to investigate the contemporary nature of this
“disembedding” of learning from the public sphere and its reconfiguration in the
private – processes defined by Giddens as “the ‘lifting out’ out of social relations
from their local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite
spans of space-time” (1990, p. 21). Unexpectedly, the consenting colleges fell
within a visually distinct, relatively discrete locale. Here, as elsewhere, students,
parents and teachers were variously navigating the changing post-16 sector. The
visually vivid local dimension, however, contributed to an increasing awareness
that geography intersected with education policy to critically shape young people’s
learning careers (Allatt & Dixon, 2002a). Against this background, and to frame
our analysis, we first situate our approach. We then describe how the visual led us
into the social geography of independent learning, its power to penetrate facets of
educational change, and its role in oral dissemination.
On Using Visual Data Across the Research Process 81
THE THEORETICAL-METHODOLOGICAL CONTEXT
Although varied and opportunistic, our use of visual material fell within a rich
methodological tradition. First, following Becker, theory directed our gaze (1974
cited in Harper, 1994; Denzin, 1989). Geographers and social scientists have
variously noted the geo-political interface of locality and externally fuelled change,
asking how people “attend” to the problems of globalization and wide societal
changes “in their daily lives” (Beynon et al., 1994, p. 197; Holloway & Valentine,
2000; Massey, 1984; Ryden, 1993). We similarly focussed on this macro-micro
issue – in this case, the interface of centralized education policy with the geography
of local difference – and examined and how this conjunction shaped what Highmore
calls “the landscape of everyday life” (2002b, p. 101). That peopled by our
participants ranged across topographical and social sites, in particular the public
arenas of college, employment and travel, and the private spheres of home and
emotional interiors. It is here that our visual images were located.
Second, theory not only showed us where to look but also shaped our way of
seeing. According to Simmel, “Of the five senses the eye has a unique sociological
function,” conveying, for example, appraisal, welcome and dismissal through the
nuanced glance (Ball & Smith, 1992, p. 2). Our concern with the relations between
individual, geography, and educational change promoted a relational mode of
looking – what could be called a “positioning eye”. Through this lens we recognized
and then explored the relational messages held by the images encountered –
roads and neo-classical buildings, stables, maps, chairs, bedrooms, timetables –
that placed people in terms of status or fit in the configuration of educational
change.
Third, to use what is “visually available” is a well recognized strategy;
we cumulatively used our varied material, becoming researcher-bricoleurs who
“construct . . . objects [research accounts] out of whatever materials are at hand”
(Ball & Smith, 1992, pp. 47, 66). To this we added the visual lexicon, a vocabulary
richly available in the metaphors of academic texts, literature, and everyday speech
(Lakoff & Johnson, 1981; Richardson, 1994). This linguistic visualizing tool not
only offered visual concepts that distil diverse data into embracing ideas – seen, for
example, in Ball and Smith’s (1992) text as well as their themes and illustrations.
But alertness to everyday usage awakened us to the research relevance of the
mundane visual world; like Solberg (2001),2 we began to see, our opened eyes
unlocked our thinking and led us into new theoretical pastures, particularly those
concerning identity and the everyday.
Fourth, although the general qualitative literature addresses the traversing notion
of span, its visual dimension is seldom considered. Methodological accounts
describe the reflexive transformation of research material in its progress from
82 PAT ALLATT AND CAROLYN DIXON
raw state to public document (Clandinin & Connelly, 1994; Denzin, 1994; Flick,
2002), but those that track the visual through such transformations or across the
research stages seem rare. In an aptly entitled article, “Video Safaris: Entering the
Field with a Camera”, Albrecht (1985) described the sociological use of video
techniques across several stages of the research process – for generating ideas,
constructing and testing hypotheses, and developing theory; he also noted the
general deficit of photographs at the dissemination stage, a continuing neglect
Brannen (2002) more recently critiqued.
Rather than follow Albrecht’s methodologically generative approach, we focus
on interpretation and understanding. In a triangulating process, we interweave the
visual and non-visual elements of the research – namely, accumulating researcher
knowledge, participants’ texts, and audience receptivity. We attempt to integrate
Geertz’s (1993) thick description, constituted from different perspectives, with
Becker’s (1974) notion of thick, conceptually rich visual data. Across the project,
from the earliest research phase to its release into the public sphere, we illustrate
the special contribution of the visual to an “interpretation” that, borrowing from
Geertz, “trac[es] the curve of a social discourse”(1993, p. 19) in the contemporary
social geography of independent learning.
THE RESEARCH AND DATA
The original research design took little account of geography in an extended
theoretical sense; the Teesside location was selected to offer broad regional
comparison with a section of the project based in south and west Yorkshire. The
Teesside students were in the first year of their A-level studies, attending either
an FE college or a 14–19 community college located in two coastal towns. The
colleges served a semi-rural, post-industrial economy and inland moorland of
scattered settlements lying on the edge of a large industrial conurbation. Parental
occupations ranged from professional and small business owners to skilled and
semi-skilled workers. Some students were from homes where parents were either
university educated or from backgrounds with such a heritage. Others were the
first generation to “stay on” beyond the age of compulsory schooling or consider
higher education.
The data were collected in the academic year 1999–2000, a period of relative
curricular calm prior to the introduction of Curriculum 2000 in September 2000.
The total data set comprised verbal, observational, and visual material. Interviews
were conducted with four teachers; four young people; and two student groups.
Individual interviews were also conducted with seven families of students and their
parents. Classroom observation was undertaken for one course in each educational
On Using Visual Data Across the Research Process 83
setting, each for one term; titles are undisclosed to preserve anonymity in a small
locality.
The visual data belonged to the worlds of geographical landscape, material
artefacts, and time. They comprised photographs, maps, shipping charts,
historic posters, government leaflets, students’ weekly time-tables, video diaries,
observation and glimpses of artefacts not visually recorded. As we can look inwards
as well as outwards, we also included researcher visual memories (Ball & Smith,
1992; Kondo, 1990, cited in Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). Only video diaries recorded
participants but none are represented here. For ethical considerations, although
largely in the public domain, the data were anonymized.
Progressively, the visual entered our researcher sights. The increasing
significance of locality to the study meant that photographs of the area – of
industry, shorelines, streets, shops, people, and countryside – could not languish as
illustrative background material. They “became [data]3 relevant to the enquiry” and
subject to analysis (Clandinin & Connelly, 1994, p. 419), making “a distinctive
contribution” (Bolton et al., 2001, p. 504). This early material was augmented
with maps, older representations of the area, and photographs directly connected
to interview data. The intention that students keep written diaries was extended
to include a visual element by offering disposable cameras to record anything
connected with their lives (Flick, 2002). However, diaries were not written and
cameras disappeared into the black hole of adolescence. Later, students (selected
with the help of teaching staff, considered necessary to protect departmental
equipment) were invited to make individual video recordings. Greeted with
enthusiasm, this produced nine videos, four of which were from the family group.
To convey our unfolding insights, the chapter is broadly chronological. We first
describe the locale and the visual processes in its selection. We then turn to visual
imagery of education policy and the role of the visual in exploring policy effects,
first for teachers and then students. Finally, we consider the visual dimension of
dissemination.
A VISUALLY DISTINCT LOCALE
Within the Teesside region, one area is visibly distinct, not separate from adjacent
sites but subtly distinguishable from them. Lying a few miles to the east of Steelton,
a major industrial urban centre with sectors high on indicators of social need and
disadvantage (Abbott & Godfrey, 2000), it is characterized by a boundedness on
all sides, clearly visible in cartographic and topographic representations.
Most visibly to the east, the North Sea borders the coast. A river estuary and
flood plain, still the site of steel production and sprawling chemical plants, lie
84 PAT ALLATT AND CAROLYN DIXON
to the north. To the west and to the south, moorland rises in a plateau, dropping
to the old, coastal fishing communities. Though an area of contrasts, containing
pockets of affluence, it is best described as a post-industrial, semi-rural hinterland
of scattered settlements with a range of fragile economies: iron and steel, chemical
processing and offshore oil, farming, fishing and tourism, all in decline.
Decline and marginality visually thread through historical time. The local
museum, a repository of local meaning (Ryden, 1993), sells facsimiles of 1950s’
railway posters recalling once popular seaside resorts; and Lloyd’s mid-nineteenth
century General Wreck Chart of the British Isles (Plimsoll, 1873) plots the
numerous vessels sunk off this coast. Both convey more intense industrious times.
This geography of the edge, captured over 400 years ago in Waghenaer’s (1985)
Dutch sea chart of this north east coast, is caught today by Shields’ (1991)
definitions of marginality and visually held by our photographs. Marginality refers
to peripheral geographies of decline. Poor transport infrastructures link scattered
settlements – significantly, respondents measured journeys by time rather than
distance. They may be places of illicit and disdained activities – reflected here in
high rates of unemployment, part-time work, and low staying on rates beyond the
age of compulsory schooling. And they display a sense of otherness to a distant
Fig. 1. An Approach Road to the Locale.
On Using Visual Data Across the Research Process 85
centre and main culture – found here in feelings of geographical distance, the
localism of aspiration and, for some, apprehension about the unknown world of
higher education (Allatt & Dixon, 2002a).
Marginality and otherness are visually conveyed in a mundane photograph of
one of the few approaches to the locale (Fig. 1). Though commonplace, its detail
renders it a “thick visual document . . . visually and conceptually dense” (Denzin,
1989, p. 220 citing Becker, 1986, p. 243, italics in original). An anonymous,
modern road with its ubiquitous lighting sweeps between verges of scrub toward an
industrial complex on the horizon (which we know to be in commercial difficulties).
The photograph hints at continuing attachments to a dominating, external world.
In a landscape from which industrial capital is in flight (Beynon et al., 1994), the
first blush of oilseed rape in the marginal farmland bordering the road visually
symbolizes newer external connexions – to European subsidies and perhaps the
global agro-chemical business beyond. To view the photograph as a snapshot
“pasted into” (Chaney, 2002, p. 43) a particular discourse retains this landscape
within a continuing narrative of externally driven change. We transpose this theme
of abstract change to the education sphere, but first describe the visual processes
by which we lighted on this locale, and from which it all started.
THE VISUAL DIMENSION OF SELECTION: WAYS OF
LOOKING AND MENTAL MAPS OF VISUAL
DISCERNMENT
Now able to describe this coastal economy and recognize its theoretical power
to open up the social geography of independent learning, it was not an obvious
choice. How then did we select it and what part did the visual play? Following
Ball and Smith’s discussion of Simmel, we draw upon types of looking and the
discerning function of the eye, aspects of “a practice that is universal to social
life” (1992, p. 64), to retrospectively unravel the visual, often tacit, dimensions of
selection.
Different ways of looking shaped the selection process, integrating what
we knew with what we saw. Following normal practice, “looking for”
educational settings began with the cognitive search that gauges suitability
against specified criteria – A-level courses, college prospectuses, formal ratings of
academic performance, area statistics, informal perceptions of academic standing.
Constructed away from the field, cognitive images of reality were visually fleshed
out by locating them on a map, and then, with our “informed eye”, by physically
“going to look”. Finding institutions in situ, however, implies a process of viewing,
of “looking at” them, their settings, and the routes taken to reach them.
86 PAT ALLATT AND CAROLYN DIXON
From the first step into the field, we are steeped in visual images. Within a
radius of some 30 miles, we travelled4 inland and out to the coast; through suburbs,
villages and townships; across moorland; past industrial sites and post-industrial
wastes, schools, colleges, training centres, and homes; into shops, cafes, and
museums – all inscribed with geographies and histories that coloured the everyday
worlds we were to uncover. More specifically, potential educational settings were
viewed from outside their walls, their proximity to each other and to near and distant
settlements noted; we saw the character of the surrounding neighbourhood, and
speculated about catchment areas and local labour markets.
These elements are not constituents of passive scenery, but activate the taken-
for-granted skill of visual comparison. “There are maps on paper . . . and in our
heads” (Franklin, 1993, p. xi). Immersion in this visual field fostered what could
be called a mental map of discernment. To discern is to “make out or espy, to catch
sight of with the senses or the mind . . . to distinguish or tell apart” (Pocket Oxford
Dictionary); the term combines differentiation with flashes of sight and insight.
This discriminating function of the eye set the coastal locale in sharp relief to the
“normal appearances” of the wider area (Ball & Smith, 1992, p. 64), a difference
which we also “felt”. Influenced by the willingness of colleges to participate, its
selection offered a new dimension to the investigation. When we made the decision,
however, we had little idea how fruitful it would be.
A VISUAL SYMBOL OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY:
CHANGE AND CHOICE
Fom this local geography we stepped into the colleges, to be symbolically greeted
by a political discourse of educational change. In the main reception area of
Longscar FE College, addressed to present and potential students but accessible
to all who passed through, lay small, single-sided, official leaflets (Fig. 2).
Visually symbolizing the changing experience of learning, the image and text also
foreshadow its troubled interface with local lives. We first indicate the significance
of this leaflet by outlining the context of educational and social change.
Current education policies in the post-16 sector emphasize the principles of
expansion and choice. Over the last 30 years, A- and A-S level entry has grown
from an academic elite of some 8% to over 30% of the age group (Edwards et al.,
1997). The students belonged to this less homogeneous constituency, and while
some, irrespective of background, remained “subject hungry,” others “stayed on”
because they had done well at GSCE O-level and there was nowhere else to go.
Choice finds expression in the quasi-market of education and the
commodification of knowledge. It is seen in college choice, subject modularization,
On Using Visual Data Across the Research Process 87
Fig. 2. An Official Leaflet Placed at a College Entrance.
88 PAT ALLATT AND CAROLYN DIXON
and the pedagogy of independent learning. Choice, moreover, is formally devolved
to the young themselves, this locus mirrored in political and theoretical discourses.
The first resides in debates on children’s rights following the U.K. ratification of
the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child in 1991 (Roche, 1996), the
second in individualization theses which promote the centrality of the self and the
reflexive shaping of biography (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991).
The leaflet visually encapsulates this primacy of the youthful self. But a
surprising aspect of the portrayal is its dark undertone. The figure’s angle, tension,
age, countenance, and thrust of the fingers seem aggressive and threatening,
mirroring the “in your face” culture of contemporary advertisements.5 The implicit
power shift carries messages for teachers as well as learners. It suggests the meeting
of two antagonistic educational cultures, voicing something new which stands in
opposition to what has gone before and “had its day”. But rather than offering
young people choice, choice seems thrust upon them.
Visual placing inscribes things with meaning (Ball & Smith, 1992; Hall, 2002).
The leaflets sat at a gateway – sites anthropologists regard as significant – and
signalled a physical and symbolic educational juncture. At this Janus-faced turning
point, individuals look to both future and past – towards what they were moving
into and might become, and backwards to where they were from, at what they
had been, were relinquishing, retaining, losing, rejecting, or building upon. The
leaflet’s imagery spoke to dilemmas current policy raised for both teachers and
students. We visually trace some their facets by moving deeper into the college
setting, its surrounds, and homes.
VISIBLE CULTURES
“Cultures are visibly different” (Ball & Smith, 1992, p. 5). In Longscar FE College
visibly distinct, educational cultures lived in uneasy co-existence. Following recent
reorganisation, part of the local A-level provision occupied a wing of a strongly
vocational college, still referred to as “the old tech”. A-level students comprised
only 5% of the college roll of 800, with no transfers between the sectors. Within
the wing itself, the new A-level constituency entered a culture where teachers were
committed to preserving the academic ethos that had shaped their own biographies.
They had histories of teaching elites, their relationship to teaching was as experts
in their subject, and they expected of their students a lively engagement and signs
of emerging academic identities. In contrast, many students sought security rather
than independence in their learning, were passive and task orientated, and displayed
a disengaged and mechanistic approach to schooling and homework. These two
life-worlds, two distinct biographies of desire (Adam, 1995; Hodkinson & Sparkes,
On Using Visual Data Across the Research Process 89
1997), visibly met in the classroom, expressed in the defensive adoption of didactic,
paternalistic teaching styles and student practices that reflected attitudes of younger
pupils. We do not develop this here, but show how visual data deepened and
extended these observations. Moving between landscape and college, we focus
first on the teachers and the visible markers of their academic identities.
A VISUAL GEOGRAPHY OF STATUS AND IDENTITY:
FROM ROBERT HOOKE TO TINY TASKERS
Educational buildings punctuate this landscape. Symbols of history and policy,
their bricks and mortar stand as a visible, public narrative of educational change
as teachers and taught transfer to new or alternative buildings. The A-level
wing represented the latest stage in the local journey for part of the academic
sector of post-16 education. It began in the early eighteenth century with the
opening of Sir Edward Tasker’s Free School (Fig. 3), its neo-classical proportions
probably designed by Robert Hooke. In the mid nineteenth century, following
vicissitudes, the school re-opened on a new site as the New Grammar School.
In 1976, with the introduction of comprehensive education, it was relocated to
a former secondary school and operated as a sixth form college (Philo, n.d.).
Today, following local reorganization in the late 1990s, part of the local A-level
Fig. 3. Sir Edward Tasker’s Free School.
90 PAT ALLATT AND CAROLYN DIXON
Fig. 4. Tiny Taskers Nursery Sign.
provision is housed within Longscar FE College, competing for students in the local
A-level market.
This academic journey visually lingers in a landscape of palimpsests: the original
purpose erased, buildings and sites are re-used, reinscribed with other forms. The
original Free School is the local museum; the site of the grammar school supports
a library; and the sixth form college – the building’s second transformation – is an
outreach college with an attached nursery, whose logo visually and symbolically
ingests the original Free School. Within a ubiquitous, contemporary design, equally
appropriate to a working men’s club or leisure centre, the founder’s name is
alliteratively merged into the nursery’s name – Tiny Taskers (Fig. 4).
Visible only to the knowing eye, this landscape holds what Ryden calls
“repositories of place-based meaning” (1993, p. 75), for the eye is receptive to
feelings transmitted by material objects as well as humans (Ball & Smith, 1992;
Ryden, 1993). Moreover, landscapes, buildings,6 and other artefacts (Forty, 1995;
Miller, 1998) transmit ideologies as well as sentiments, resonating with Shotter’s
(1993) notion of knowledge of the third kind, that seeming intuitive recognition
of relative status, conveyed here by the changing occupancy of public buildings.
On Using Visual Data Across the Research Process 91
As Robert Hughes (2003) observed when discussing Hitler’s architect, Albert
Speer, “Symbols of power and politics . . ., architecture puts us in place.” These
concrete symbols of an elite’s temporal journey meshed with teachers’ narratives
of discomfort with their current position. Only called to our attention because of
our educational brief, we began to see the “inward significance” (Ryden, 1993,
p. 41 citing James, 1967) these buildings held for them. We began to recognize the
insinuation of education policy into identities, and the emotional depth of teachers’
visual strategies of resistance, to which we now turn.
VISUAL DEFENCES: VISIBLE SYMBOLS
OF SOCIAL SPACE
Local A-level provision had lost its public face; the academic tradition was no
longer inscribed in a public building that spoke-without-saying, neither inwardly
to teacher identities (or those of students) nor outwardly to the external world.
Though a separate wing, and despite its separate public entrance some yards distant
from that of the main college, no external feature distinguished the academic sector.
According to Bourdieu, “Structures of social space show up in spatial
opposition” (2002, p. 125). Just as leaflets visually heralding a changing
educational culture were positioned in the main foyer, symbols of resistance were
positioned at the two access point to the A-level wing. Recognizing the power
of visual signifiers, teachers used them to hold on to a past by weaving it into
the present. To the visitor’s gaze, the college’s main reception area resembled
that of any modern enterprise, from commercial office to hotel. In contrast,
prominently displayed inside the small, public entrance lobby of the A-level wing
were emblems of a traditional academic culture: grammar school memorabilia
including commemorative boards of former pupils fallen in the two world wars.
On vacating the Sixth Form College, staff had brought them to this new and alien
territory – and more were to follow. For as Bourdieu observes, “. . . structures of
social space . . . are inscribed in physical space and cannot be modified except by a
work of transplantation, a moving of things . . .” (2002, p. 124). Like the advertising
messages Ball and Smith (1992) describe, these artefacts were symbolic visual
referents – here to a traditional past struggling to retain its place in the educational
future, attempting to establish what Bourdieu calls an “eternization” that will “hand
on to posterity” (2000, p. 72).7 Visually they distinguished the academic from the
vocational educational world.
While these mobile sentries of tradition greeted the eye at the public entrance to
the wing, at its rear a subtle boundary lay underfoot, embedded in the fabric itself.
Deep within the building, this entrance was approached though corridors and stairs
92 PAT ALLATT AND CAROLYN DIXON
leading from the main college entrance. Arrival was signalled not just by a door but
in a qualitative change of flooring, from synthetic surfacing to polished, wooden
parquet tiles. Writing of the sociological significance of the “infra-ordinary”, that
which, as Highmore (2002a, p. 175) explains, is “neither banal nor exotic”, Perec
argues that we “need to question bricks, concrete, glass” (2002, pp. 176, 178).
The fleeting act of noticing this change in texture, something which “doesn’t call
attention to itself” (Perec, 2002, p. 176), threw one researcher into the reflexive,
visualization of a biographical past,8 summoning up the image and ambience of a
girls’ grammar school, the pungent scent of fresh polish at the beginning of term,
and a whole tradition of schooling laid into a personal biography over 50 years
ago. In looking inward as well as outward we have ourselves as analytic tools.
Here, in calling up memory, the visual experience of architecture and its dressings
brought us analytically closer to understanding the lives and feelings produced by
changing times.
According to Braudel (2002), life is lived across different temporalities,
the past and the future threaded through the present. We now turn from the
visual representations of temporal strands in the biographies and educational
worlds of the teachers to those of young people, living in the same changing
educational landscape but weaving their lives with different threads. Visible
artefacts illuminated the submerged histories of teachers and their relation to the
contemporary educational world; for students, we focus on invisible presences –
invisible time and absent things. We first note the visual strategies which enabled
us to see the “timescape” (Adam, 1995) in which homework and schooling were
emebedded and then turn to the home.
MAKING TIME VISIBLE:
PROFILING THE TEENAGE WEEK
Time management dominated student lives, expressed in the struggle to defend
boundaries between various activities. Independent learning, with its notion of self-
responsibility, uncoupled substantial elements of the curriculum from the spatial-
temporally managed college order. From the standpoint of an individualization
thesis, the freedom of the new order promised personal satisfactions, yet
many students felt oppressed. This arose not solely from deadlines and self-
accountability for academic work, rather from the fullness of their lives.
Historically prioritized by those on the academic route, today lessons and
homework compete for place with other activities – part-time paid work, leisure,
family commitments, domestic obligations, and, in this locale, the extensive chore
of travel (Allatt & Dixon, 2002a, b). Photographs showed where students spent
On Using Visual Data Across the Research Process 93
their time – the chip shops, cafes, and retailers where they worked, college, gym,
and clubs, homes and bedrooms; they said nothing, however, of its allocation.
Diagrams render “the invisible visible” (Ball & Smith, 1992, p. 65). “Drawings
or sets of lines . . . enable the listener to visualize what is being expounded” (Pocket
Oxford Dictionary), distilling complexities to make them “available at a glance”
(Ball & Smith, 1992, p. 61). Visual representation of clock time, the type that
fuelled these students’ concerns, is well documented. Solberg (2001), for example,
used tables of time budget data to expose gender and generational differences in
domestic labour, Garhammer (1995) pictorially represented the family balancing
act of time use, while Davis (1994) contrasted different types of time in care
work – clock time and process time – through lines and spirals. We transformed
interview data into time profiles, sequentially mapping temporal slices of activity
across the day and the week, building a layered picture of students’ busy lives
(Fig. 5). Cumulative imaging conveyed temporal density more sharply than words.
Fig. 5. A Composite Example of a Time Profile, Showing the Cumulative Layering of
Time in one Student’s Day, and a Comparison of her Time Allocation Across Three Days.
94 PAT ALLATT AND CAROLYN DIXON
It exposed the loading of time across the student day, differential daily patterning
and activity range. It highlighted sites of potential tension and aided analysis
of the dynamics of boundary management, verbalized in interviews. Profiles
brought into view “individualized” student types differentiated by time use, and
challenged assumptions regarding a relatively unproblematic academic track into
higher education (Allatt & Dixon, 2002b).
ABSENT IMAGES: YOUNG PEOPLE’S
BEDROOM FURNITURE
Absent images can reveal presences. The final illustration from the data gathering
stages concerns absences in a video still of a student’s bedroom. To have one’s own
bedroom is a defining feature of young people’s lives today, and their dominance
in the videos reflected the importance attached to this private space (Dixon &
Allatt, 2001). Young people’s bedrooms are of the commonplace. Rather like “the
habitual” Perec defines, “We don’t question it, it doesn’t question us, it doesn’t
seem to pose a problem, we live it without thinking, as if it carried within it neither
questions nor answers, as if it wasn’t the bearer of any information” (2002, p. 177).
Yet problems and information lodge in these rooms. Their very existence denotes
a historic change in household assets and the parental distribution of household
space; the limits of their privacy symbolize generational issues of domestic order
and family dynamics; biographies and developing identities are traced in their
furnishing and decoration – in nursery wallpaper superimposed with teenage
posters (Dixon & Allatt, 2001; Weatherell et al., 2003); and their contemporary
use as “study-bedrooms” indicates the penetration of schooling and the state into
the private sphere of home and consciousness.
Angie’s bedroom was a contested site. All the students had their own bedrooms,
some jealously preserving this private space by doing homework at college or in
the communal spaces of the home. But when used for homework, we assumed,
from evidence here and elsewhere (Allatt, 1996), and, especially as these were
A-level students, that bedrooms would be suitably furnished – with at least a flat
surface and an upright chair. Angie’s room had neither (Fig. 6). A place on which
thought and money had been spent, it was a young woman’s bedroom, the small,
narrow room fitted with modern furniture – bed along one wall, along the other
wardrobe, wall mirror, and storage space, and a small, low easy chair between.
Whether this configuration stemmed from Angie’s or her parents’ image of a room
appropriate to a young woman of her age we do not know. What is clear is that
it spoke not of familial support for academic study, but rather as a place for rest,
recuperation, and the grooming of the self for presentation to the outside world. It
On Using Visual Data Across the Research Process 95
Fig. 6. Two Photographs of Angie’s Bedroom.
is the bedroom of a young worker. Symbolically, Angie had arranged her school
books on her bed, where she did her homework, and in the accompanying sound
track described the resulting pain, “I haven’t got a desk or anything, so I find that
I’m just sat on my bed doing it . . . leaning over . . . which soon hurts my neck.”
“Chairs were comfortable because they accommodated biology, but they also
accommodated the postures of the time,” notes Rybczynski (2001, p. 97) in
his history of domestic comfort. Angie’s bedroom fittings, neither biologically
nor culturally, accommodated appropriate posture in the time of independent
learning. If furniture and furnishings orientate and define us in relation to the
wider society (Baudrillard, 2002; Bourdieu, 2000) this room spoke of disjoined
relations, “fundamentally defined by an absence” (Bourdieu, 2002, p. 123, italics in
original). The fitments symbolized an older spatial and temporal order between the
public and private spheres – the local trajectory of the young worker. Declining but
still inscribed in the local labour market and visible amongst some young friends,
this youth trajectory lived on in such parental support. Following Rybczynski and
Baudrillard, furniture incorporates symbolic and moral9 qualities. Furniture that
supports homework articulates with a contemporary ethic of parental support for
learning, fuelled by a public rhetoric of parental responsibility. This linkage is
recognized, understood, and translated into action by those parents who convert
their children’s bedrooms (privacy and sleep) into study-bedrooms (privacy, sleep
and work) (Allatt, 1996). According to Bourdieu, “Social relations objectified in
familiar objects . . . impress themselves through bodily experiences” (2000, p. 77).
The disjoined interface, between the central policy imperative of independent
learning and a facet of a local culture that drew on older patterns of youth
96 PAT ALLATT AND CAROLYN DIXON
transitions, was embodied in physical pain. The noticeable absences, concealed
within the home until led there by Angie’s video, further opened our eyes to the
state’s incursion into the mundane practices that shape identity.
THE THEATRE OF DISSEMINATION
“Having told our story to ourselves, we must now tell it to others” (Denzin,
1994, p. 502). In its several meanings,10 wanting others to see lies at the heart of
dissemination; it encapsulates the challenge of communication, and is the pinnacle
of the research endeavour. According to A. C. Grayling, “Showing is more potent
than saying” (Radio 4, 20 May 2003), and we sought to bring both story and
research experience – our unfolding sense of discovery – closer to the audience
through what could be called visual strategies of audience inclusion.
The audiences comprised those with policy or practitioner concerns and
academics. The visuals, all in colour and displayed by overhead projection,
were either drawn from fieldwork data or created for presentational purposes.
With extracts from interview transcripts, they were woven into oral presentations
lasting approximately 30 minutes. Focussing on the visuals in this composite, we
highlight three presentational strategies: visual images and audience rapport; visual
grounding; and the visual framing of the argument.
VISUAL RAPPORT AND VISUAL GROUNDING
Visual images promote rapport; people warm to pictures. We neither enter into
pedagogic reasons nor the influence of an image saturated environment, but note
that the appearance of pictures heralds a discernible settling into seats, silence, and
an air of anticipation. To catch the eye is to capture attention, and its immediate
engagement recalls the device of the opening joke, reflective not of amusement
but identification of speaker with audience. Visuals in themselves bring audience
and researcher closer, facilitating a mood of critical openness towards the narrative
about to unfold.
Within this ambience, visual imagery grounds the narrative in a real world.
Images, like those illustrated, not only perform analytically but also visually weave
a rich tapestry of mundane detail. This visual usage mirrors those writing styles
that “bring the reader to the cultural world rather than reporting on it from a
distance” (Harper, 1994, p. 407). To see for oneself is validating. As a woman
in one of the food queues of America’s poor tellingly observed, “The people in
Washington . . . ‘need to come down and see how many people are in these lines’ ”
On Using Visual Data Across the Research Process 97
(Borger, 2003). Our audiences, of course, were not seeing these other social worlds
with their own eyes, and the inevitable filtering of data by researcher, participant
and audience has been extensively debated (Denzin, 1989). Yet our visual hugging
of the everyday11 brought them a little nearer to the lived experience of educational
change.
A VISUAL FRAMEWORK: ANALYTICAL AND
POSITIONING IMAGES
To hold the audience, the story was visually framed. Within an argument, images
(sometimes the same image) may operate at different levels. Those of the kind
we have illustrated, what could be called analytical images, were set within a
framework of positioning images, visual statements that structured the argument.
These placed the research in its theoretical context, located it at a crossroads of
enquiry, and construed fieldwork as a journey of discovery.
Almost “at a glance” (Ball & Smith, 1992, p. 61), a visual metaphor positioned
the story in the geo-political context of independent learning. An outline map of
England, empty except for two points, marking London and the north-east locale
some 350 distant, provided the opening visual statement. A glance geographically
placed the study; a second look, however, refocussed by verbal comment,12
transformed the descriptive geography of place into a visual symbol of the “politics
of location” (Massey, 1993, p. 142), displaying what Harper calls “the larger
frames of power” (1994, p. 411). The map conveyed both geographical and
symbolic distance between southern capital and regional periphery – respectively,
the powerful centre and origin of abstract education policy and a distant other
where policy decisions are lived in the practices and emotions of the everyday
(Ryden, 1993). Photographs – of the approach road and other pictures – then
visually transporting the audience to this “other” place.
A second visual metaphor then fostered the view of research as an exploratory
journey (Fig. 7). Two women walking away from the camera across a grassy,
patchily worn, public space towards a 1960s’ housing estate became a multi-
layered metaphor of enquiry. Images of local people in a mundane setting implicitly
connected the abstract notion of research to ordinary lives and meaningful places;
the photographer’s stance created the sense of following; and, the caption, Women
in Landscapes, suggested a teasing complexity not visually apparent. Verbally
elaborated, the image represented the research directions of the enquiry. It situated
the study in the everyday world the women were traversing; metaphorically reached
back into the historic, socio-economic landscape whence they had come; and
was poised to follow them into the private spheres of home and inner lives.
98 PAT ALLATT AND CAROLYN DIXON
Fig. 7. Women in Landscapes.
This visual configuration provided a referent for a narrative which took up
these themes.
Finally, dispersed across the presentation rather than positioned, we visually
framed fieldwork as a process of discovery. Like the patterns displayed by
temporally layering young people’s activities, visuals sequentially unveiled the
micro-elements of a finding. Similarly, taken-for-granted assumptions would have
remained intact, or understandings of a situation tainted, had we not “gone to see”
places referred to in participants’ interviews. For example, although young people
generally talk of clubbing, the Longscar experience is very different to that of
Newcastle. And when Gemma spoke of her horse, though knowing she lived in the
poorest part of the town, it evoked in us a multi-layered class imagery – of middle
class connexions if not circumstances, connoting a potential reservoir of cultural
capital which might be drawn upon to promote her academic career.
Photographs of the stabling demolished these presuppositions more tellingly
than words (Fig. 8). This was not the world of the pony club. Part of a set of
defunct railway carriages, the stable stood in the shadow of industry, surrounded
by industrial waste. Gemma had considered leaving school for stablework, but on
obtaining reasonable grades at O-level had stayed on to “give A-levels a try.” Each
day she left college early to care for her horse, earning from stable work in order to
keep it. Rather than signalling high status leisure, the practice spoke of retention,
On Using Visual Data Across the Research Process 99
Fig. 8. Gemma’s Stabling and Surrounding Landscape.
of a bridge into employment in a poor local labour market. In presenting the visual
after Gemma’s statement of ownership, the aim was to startle, exposing the socially
situated assumptions tucked away in the cultural baggage of both researcher and
audience.
CONCLUSION: EYES FOR LISTENING
. . . ever enlarging vistas opening before me as I progressed deeper in my knowledge of the
country.
Conrad (1994, p. 11)
100 PAT ALLATT AND CAROLYN DIXON
The chapter has traced an unanticipated visual journey during which eyes were used
to listen. It originated with difficulties in finding a research setting for a study of
young people engaged in independent learning, drew on an eclectic range of visual
data, and concluded with the dissemination of findings in public presentations. The
character of this visual span and the fact that the design of the study was sufficiently
robust without its inclusion raise questions as to its particular contribution – what
more did the visual tell us?
Our use of the visual focussed not on technique but on enhanced sociological
awareness. The visual statement that opened the chapter and has so far lain dormant,
Jackows’ Eyes for Listening, ascribes to the eye a sense that reaches beyond
surfaces, denotes that images have something to tell and the viewer a capacity
to listen. Just as Walker observed of photographs, visual images “exist on the
boundaries of what is familiar and what is unknown” (1999, p. 298). Crossing this
boundary and drawing on this “voice or view of the image” (Walker, 1999, p. 298)
deepened our sociological understanding of the worlds we were investigating.
The visuals, therefore, were not purely illustrative, whether of geographical
setting or daily life – although illustration plays an important role in grounding a
study in real experience, showing the texture of the everyday. Nor were images the
afterthought Walker attributed to photography a decade ago, “tacked on in the final
stage of a project” (1999, p. 280). Rather, arising from its inception and continuing
across the project, analysis of mundane sights led us further into participants’
worlds, bringing into view layers of meaning which might have remained implicit,
unspoken (Bolton et al., 2001), unrecognized, or backgrounded as context.
What we hear an image say, however, and then translate into words, is filtered
through the theoretical lens we train upon it. Our selection of visuals was shaped by
a theoretically informed, discerning eye that subsequently tightened the theoretical
focus by binding the geography of place with the interplay of educational policy and
everyday lives. Our eyes became analytically sensitized to the relational messages
of status and fit visually inscribed in a changing educational landscape that found
expression in geography, colleges, homes and minds.
We live in a visual world, inescapably immersed in a language laced with visual
imagery. Yet such ubiquity may blind us to the sociological insights this offers.
Indeed, the explicitness of the title Jackows gives his picture hints at a general visual
deficit – what could be called a visual deafness. Yet once attuned to the image’s
voice, new vistas are opened – the sweep of a road, the jolt of an absence, the tread
underfoot – link into both intimate and wider “social and cultural arrangements”
(Ball & Smith, 1992, p. 31). For us the possibilities that presented themselves were
used in the manner of the researcher-bricoleur, deploying what is to hand to reach a
goal. Landscape, maps, roads, leaflets, buildings, timetables, furniture, memories
emerged as visible facets of the locally lived experience of central educational
On Using Visual Data Across the Research Process 101
policies. The effects of educational change on the practices, identities and inner
lives of teachers and students came into view: time became visible, absences made
present, and taken for granted assumptions revealed. With regard to dissemination,
visual images, created rapport, provided a framework for the argument, and
brought the audience closer to the worlds of researcher and researched – in
the hope, in Janet Lewis’s phrase, “of reaching people’s hearts as well as their
minds” (1997, p. 29). By keeping our eyes open we perhaps opened the eyes
of others.
For us, difficult circumstances foregrounded what we had noticed, and visual
discernment led to a research locale which set us off on a visually informed,
sociological journey. Good visual data are conceptually dense, but their collection
is not necessarily technically complex; and while respondents’ eyes and their
contribution may take us into their private worlds, much is available in the public
sphere. We would argue for a wider inclusion of the visual in sociological enquiry.
The educational discourse we traced was enriched and extended for us and, we
hope, our audiences, by embedding a visual dimension across the study, in viewing
the visually commonplace through a powerful and developing theoretical lens, and
through bringing to bear upon the visual Mills’ sociological imagination in an
attempt “to grasp what is going on in the world” (1978, p. 14).
NOTES
1. Learning assignments, set within educational settings, are undertaken outside formal boundaries. They include homework, unsupervised tasks on college premises, work experience, and work placements.
2. Anne Solberg describes her growing visual alertness to children’s work activity; her italics suggest her visual awakening: “I saw how eager and willing they were to work” (2001, p. 109).
3. This transformation is variously denoted. Clandinin and Connelly, for example, refer to “field documents” becoming “field texts” when they have been analytically worked upon (1994, p. 419).
4. Such exploratory tours seem little noted in research accounts, though travel finds its way into research costings.
5. A café in the region calls itself “Get Stuffed”. 6. The neo-classical architect Sir John Soames (1753–1837) wanted architects to speak
through their buildings (Radio 4, 14 September 2003). 7. Attempts to collectively reinforce this cultural memory were embodied in the A-level
wing’s Remembrance Day Service. 8. Former uses of institutions are frequently absorbed through the senses – from
panelling, flooring, window height etc. 9. It is of note that writing earlier on this subject we were at pains not to impute blame
(Dixon & Allatt, 2001).
102 PAT ALLATT AND CAROLYN DIXON
10. The following are but some of these meanings – to show, disclose, bring to attention, perceive, comprehend, understand, open the mind, see things afresh, see what has been obscured or unnoticed, mentally discern, grasp the meaning.
11. Pictures do not necessarily have to be of the particular locale. A recent book on Germany and war destruction used pictures unlinked to the text to give a sense of the real world.
12. While Brannen (2002) notes the video’s power to convey clear messages by stripping away the nuances of verbal discourse, our static image provided a base for elaboration.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The data are from a larger study, Youth, Family and Education: the Formation of
the Independent Learner, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council
(Award number L 134 251009) within the ESRC Research Programme: Youth,
Citizenship and Social Change. The research was based on two sites, Teesside and
Yorkshire, conducted respectively by the Universities of Teesside and Leeds.
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IMAGES, INTERVIEWS AND
INTERPRETATIONS: MAKING
CONNECTIONS IN VISUAL RESEARCH
Alan Felstead, Nick Jewson and Sally Walters
INTRODUCTION
Barthes (1977) famously argued that the meaning of an image does not become
apparent until it is accompanied and explicated by text. Pictures are ambiguous, he
suggests, and their interpretation is dependent on words to specify and focus their
multiple and uncertain meanings. However, it is also apparent that relationships
between texts and images may take many different forms (Becker, 1981; Berger,
1972; Chaplin, 1994; Pink, 2001). Furthermore, for the social scientist, the texts
that mediate the meanings of pictures come in two different forms and contexts.
There are the words of respondents – captured by interviews, questionnaires
and other research devices – and those of social science theory and analysis.
Similarly, images may be generated by respondents, by researchers or derived
from secondary sources by respondents or researchers. Thus, an examination of
the methodological foundations of visual research in social science must address
the varied and dynamic interrelationships between pictorial images, interview
transcripts and theoretical interpretations, through which meaning is constructed
rather than simply found. As Chaplin comments, sociologists make rather than
take photographs (1994).
This chapter does not offer a comprehensive classification of the many ways
in which these relationships can be constructed. Instead, it charts the experience
of the authors in undertaking six visual research studies, all of which employed
Seeing is Believing? Approaches to Visual Research
Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Volume 7, 105–121
© 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
ISSN: 1042-3192/doi:10.1016/S1042-3192(04)07007-7
105
106 ALAN FELSTEAD ET AL.
cameras to generate still and video images. It describes our unfolding awareness
of these relationships and analyses the roles played by images, interviews and
interpretations in each study. All six of projects discussed here were embedded in
two ESRC-funded projects, comprising part of the “Future of Work” initiative
(Working at Home: New Perspectives L212252022 and Transforming Places
of Work L212252051). The first examined the domestic and employment lives
of managerial and professional employees who work at home. The second
investigated changes to social relations in the office, associated with loss of personal
space and personal workstations. In addition, the second project examined the
employment practices and social networks of people who work on the move from
place to place (e.g. in trains, cars and planes). Our initial plans made some provision
for the use of visual methods, particularly in the second project. However, the main
thrust of our research design entailed a large programme of interviewing and data
analysis that did not incorporate such techniques. Nevertheless, as time went on,
visual methods increased in salience, both in the conduct of the research and the
presentation of findings.
STUDY ONE – PHOTOGRAPHING
WORKSTATIONS IN THE HOME
Study One entailed interviewing 72 people, and their spouses/partners, who worked
at home for a substantial proportion of the time (144 respondents in total). We asked
a series of questions about relationships with managers, clients, co-workers and
other household members. Towards the end of interviews, once rapport had been
established, we also asked respondents whether they would mind showing us the
place where they worked and allow us to take a few photographs. The response
rate was very high, with virtually no refusals. Digital cameras were used and paper
versions of the images were created using a standard colour printer. In this way,
we generated 245 colour photographs. In most cases we had several pictures from
different angles of each workstation and its location in the house.
When embarked on taking photographs, our expectations were shaped by
existing theoretical frameworks. Although the literature on how people incorporate
workstations into their homes is not extensive (Ahrentzen, 1990, 1992; Beach,
1989; Bulos & Chaker, 1993; Felstead & Jewson, 2000; Haddon & Lewis, 1994;
Haddon & Silverstone, 1993; Michelson & Linden, 1997), it delineates two typical
configurations. On the one hand, segregated workstations that are cut off from the
rest of the household and, on the other, integrated workstations located in the
midst of domestic life. Indeed, on the strength of this assumption, our interviews
were intended to discover what determined respondents choices between
these options.
Images, Interviews and Interpretations 107
When all the images had been printed off, they were laid out together on a large
table. Because transcription takes a considerable period, the pictures arrived before
the interview texts. Looking at all the photographs together it rapidly became
apparent that a two-way classification of the relationship between home and work
was far too simple and failed to capture the variety of the images before us. Instead
the images suggested a continuum from segregation to integration. Our encounter
with these images, therefore, forced us to reconstruct our taken-for-granted
classificatory scheme. Accordingly, we decided to search within the photographs
for visual evidence of spatial boundaries that appeared to represent divisions in
social relationships. We focused on features such as the disposition of artefacts,
the style of décor and the use of physical barriers and markers within the home. In
conceptualising such boundaries, we drew upon conceptual models derived from
sociological and anthropological theory, in particular the work of Douglas on
“group” and “grid” (1973) and Bernstein on “classification” and “frame” (1973).
Our interrogation of the images involved several stages, each comprising an
attempt to classify observed boundaries within the photographs into a series
of formally defined types of domestic arrangements. Each typology typically
generated anomalous images, leading to further refinement of the categories and
redistribution of the images within them. Eventually we produced a five-cell
typology, representing distinctive types of domestic spatial configurations, which
enabled us to classify all the images (photographs illustrating each of these is
displayed in the panel overleaf). In this process, the benefits of taking photographs
became increasingly obvious. Photography had provided a permanent and readily-
available record of all the research sites that could be “revisited” at times and
places of our choosing. We were able to juxtapose images, shuffle them around
and create tentative associations, generating several alternative classifications. The
production of multiple digital copies was cheap, fast and simple.
108 ALAN FELSTEAD ET AL.
Images, Interviews and Interpretations 109
More generally, making and analysing images not only generated substantive
findings but also created new leads in the research process and sensitised us to our
own unquestioned assumptions. The process was valuable in itself, independently
of its outcome. The photographs contained more information about socio-spatial
boundaries in the home than ever could have been captured by interview. Words
could not have represented the wealth of detail contained in the photographs.
Moreover, careful scrutiny of photographs revealed aspects of domestic interiors
that respondents were likely to take for granted or even seek to hide. Furthermore,
photographs enabled us to identify aspects of the sites that were significant within
our theoretical schema, rather than those of respondents. Thus, our five-fold
schema was generated by inspection of the photographic images themselves,
without recourse to interview transcripts. Later we did examine the interviews
but our initial analysis was developed independently and was not subsequently
revised by them.
Study One, therefore, was driven primarily by the interaction between images
taken by the researchers and sociological theories developed by the researchers.
Respondents’ comments played little direct role.
STUDY TWO – SHADOWING MOBILE WORKERS
Study Two entailed shadowing ten “mobile workers”; that is, people who routinely
conduct work activities in trains, planes and cars as well as transitional places, such
as motorway service stations and airport lounges (Brown, 2001; Cairncross, 1997;
Felstead et al., 2005; Laurier, 2001; Laurier & Philo, 1999; Rifkin, 2000). A variety
of recording techniques were employed, including making extensive written notes
110 ALAN FELSTEAD ET AL.
and tape recording long sequences of conversation. In addition, we used digital
cameras to photograph places visited by respondents and locations of work-related
social interactions. Nevertheless, although we had the consent of respondents, the
practicalities and social dynamics of some situations inhibited taking pictures.
Unlike Study One, on this occasion the benefits of visual methods were limited
and secondary. Cameras enabled us to make reliable and accessible records of
the various places that respondents travelled through, and worked in, during
the course of a day. Furthermore, comparison of photographs with interview
transcripts revealed that respondents were not always accurate or comprehensive
in remembering, or even recognizing, where and how they worked. In this instance,
researchers’ images were more accurate than respondents’ words. Another benefit
of taking photographs was that all the members of the research team could see
something of the texture of the working lives of shadowed respondents. This was
important because the practical limitations of time and resource meant that only
one researcher could shadow each respondent.
However, the output from shadowing was dominated by the huge volume of
interview transcripts that this method produced. Photographs functioned primarily
as illustrations to respondents’ words. This was partly because establishing and
maintaining rapport limited the number of photographs that could be taken. It was
also, however, because our decisions about what and when to take photographs
were not guided by a strong theoretical framework. We did have some conceptual
models in mind – derived from the work of Goffman (1959, 1963) – but these were
not linked to the image making process through a precise specification of when,
where and how the camera should be used (as in Study One). As a result, the visual
aspects of Study Two became somewhat ad hoc.
In Study Two, then, visual images functioned primarily as illustrations of, and
adjuncts to, interview transcripts. They had little significance in their own right
and did not play a major role in the development of theories and explanations.
STUDY THREE – PHOTO-ELICITATION WITH
“MOBILE WORKERS”
The objective of Study Three was to generate theoretically focused qualitative
evidence about the practices of “mobile workers.” Unlike Studies One and Two,
visual methods were central to the research design from the outset. Moreover, this
time we decided to put the camera into the hands of our respondents and give them
responsibility for selecting and taking images. In this way, we hoped to facilitate a
more active collaboration between respondents and researchers (cf Chaplin, 1994;
Pink, 2001). We wanted to devise a methodology that would bring the words and
Images, Interviews and Interpretations 111
images of respondents into a productive dialogue with one another. Furthermore,
we sought to locate that dialogue within a researcher-led analytical process of
generating theoretical models and explanations.
Study Three took the form of photo-elicitation; that is, a mode of research in
which respondents are presented with images that are intended to elicit their verbal
responses, captured in interview (Emmison & Smith, 2000, pp. 36–38; Harper,
1986, 1988; Prosser & Schwartz, 1998; Schwartz, 1989; Walker & Weidel, 1985).
Images may be culled from secondary sources (such as the media), derived from
respondents’ own sources (such as family snap shots) or generated by the re-
searcher. In Study three, however, respondents were asked to take the photographs
themselves, a method known as “autophotography” (Clancy & Dollinger, 1993;
Ziller, 1990). In extended interviews, respondents were subsequently asked why
they had shot these pictures and the meanings they attributed to them.
Seven “mobile workers” agreed to take photographs of their working
environment over the course of a week. Each was given a disposable analogue
camera, capable of 27 shots, and altogether they produced 115 images. Conscious
of the lessons of Study Two, the researchers provided respondents in with specific
instructions about what pictures they should take and when.
In this project we are interested in the places, and in the ways, in which people work in the 21st
century. Accordingly, would you please take pictures of the following: (a) the range of different
places where you work; (b) the tools you use to carry out your job (however expensive or ordinary
they might be); (c) your most and least favourite aspects of your working environment. Please
feel free to take pictures of anything and everything that strikes you personally as relevant.
Don’t worry about the artistic quality of the photographs! It is their content that interests us.
Please take as many or as few photographs as you wish.
Once they had finished, respondents mailed their cameras and film to the
researchers. Two sets of each film were then developed. One was given to
respondents after they had completed the elicitation interview. Respondents had
not, therefore, seen the pictures that they themselves had taken prior to the
interview. In contrast, before each interview, the researchers carefully inspected
all the photographs, looking for unexpected images, inexplicable details and any
other representations of potential significance. The researchers, then, entered the
elicitation interview fully appraised of the images, with an agenda of questions
and comments to put to respondents.
At the elicitation interview, the photographs were presented to respondents one
by one. With each picture, initial questions were standardized and general (e.g.
“why did you take this picture?”) but gradually funnelled down to detailed and
specific queries. Interviewers lingered over each photograph, not presenting the
next until it was apparent that respondents had no more to say. Interviews averaged
approximately an hour.
112 ALAN FELSTEAD ET AL.
As in Study One, the photographs revealed aspects of respondents’ lives
that they were unlikely to have spoken about in a conventional interview
because they took them for granted or were unaware of their significance.
Furthermore, the pictures provided a means for researchers to press respondents
for verbal responses. The images made it possible to delve into the experiences,
practices and knowledges that underpinned the nomadic lifestyle of “mobile
workers.” The minutia of tacit and taken-for-granted “cook book” knowledge
could be teased out in photo-elicitation interviews. The photographs typically
acted as a catalyst that inspired respondents to construct a verbal narrative.
They wrapped stories, anecdotes, histories and mythologies around the images.
The photographs were triggers of memory and narrative (cf. the role of family
photograph albums, Chalfen, 1998). Unlike Study Two, therefore, the images and
interview texts of Study Three were closely linked, each informing and enhancing
the other.
Study Three was informed from the outset by Actor Network Theory, alerting
us to the importance texts, devices and disciplines in ordering networks of social
relationships (Law, 1986; Law & Hassard, 1999). In addition, Study Three drew on
the work of Goffman, particularly with respect to spatial forms in the presentation
of the self (1959, 1963). The instructions issued to respondents were directly
attuned to these theoretical concerns. As a result, Study Three successfully revealed
how “mobile workers” assemble and repair networks of long-distance control and
mobility, navigate their way through and between physical and symbolic locations,
and exert influence over others at a distance. Theoretical perspectives provided
the lens through which images and transcripts were ordered and interpreted. At
the same time, interview transcripts and photographic images together elucidated
our theoretical perspectives, developing their themes and articulating issues. In
Study Three, therefore, images, interviews and interpretations were more equally
articulated with one another than in earlier studies.
There were, however, some limitations. Respondents did not always remember
to take pictures or it was inconvenient for them to do so. It was sometimes difficult
for the researchers to read the time gaps between still photographs. Since nearly
all the pictures had been taken by our respondents, our interviewees themselves
rarely appeared. It was possible that some items, places and people had been posed.
Arguably, images that our respondents perceived as damaging or discrediting
were unlikely to be presented. Respondents may also have refrained from taking
photographs that they perceived not to be of interest to researchers. This reflects a
general characteristic of photo-elicitation studies. Conventional interviews entail
a good deal of face-to-face interaction between researchers and respondents, in
which each grooms the responses of the other from the outset. In contrast, photo-
elicitation offers far fewer cues to the respondent about what is expected or required
Images, Interviews and Interpretations 113
until late in the study. These issues were, however, explored in the interviews.
Indeed, a rich vein of further questioning concerned the pictures that respondents
had not taken.
Overall, then, in Study Three images, interviews and interpretations all played
a major role in the research process, informing each other and driving the research
process forward through their interaction.
STUDY FOUR – PHOTO-ELICITATION IN “COLLECTIVE
OFFICES”
Flushed with success from Study Three, we decided to conduct a similar photo-
elicitation study in what we have termed “collective offices”; that is, offices in
which personal space has been eliminated and replaced by collective facilities, such
as “hot desks,” “touchdown desks” and bookable rooms (Felstead et al., 2005; see
also Becker & Steele, 1995; DEGW & BRE, 1996; Duffy, 1990, 1992, 1997;
Law, 1999, 2001). In “collective offices” workers are required to assemble
and defend individualised sequences of activity in time and space. They find
themselves navigating between temporarily available workstations within an office
building, often experiencing disruption to their work plans. They have to invent
ways of making contact with colleagues at the same time as avoiding unwanted
interruptions from others. Parallels between the skills and practices of “mobile
workers” and “collective office” workers suggested to us that Study Four should
adopt a similar methodology to Study Three.
Study Four was conducted in a private sector agency, with approximately
120 employees engaged in highly creative forms of “knowledge work.” Twelve
respondents took part, using 27-shot disposable analogue cameras. Altogether, they
produced 297 images. They were given written instructions intended to delineate a
clearly defined task that was intended to tap into their lived experience of working
in the organization.
This is a project about ways of working and use of space in [Name of the organization]. We are
asking you, along with a number of other [members of staff], to make a photographic record of
your experience of your working environment(s) over the course of a week. With the enclosed
disposable camera, please take a photograph every time you move between one location and
another. Please feel free to take pictures wherever you work. Our only requests are that you
begin the roll with a picture of yourself, take at least five shots per day and record the date/time
on the back of the camera.
On first sight, the photographs produced by respondents were puzzling. Many
appeared to depict incidental or trivial subjects. In part, we attributed this to
the more open-ended instruction that respondents had received that may have
114 ALAN FELSTEAD ET AL.
allowed for idiosyncratic interpretation. We went into the interview phase of the
study, therefore, seeking clarification by means of many open-ended questions.
However, interviews in Study Four were highly informative. Initially, photographs
were presented one at a time and respondents were asked to explain what they
showed and why they had taken this shot. Once all the pictures were on the table,
interviewees were asked what they thought the entire collection said about their
working lives. Finally, respondents were questioned about specific aspects of the
images. As in Study Three, respondents talked fluently and revealingly about their
pictures. Once again, the images triggered off rich verbal reflections on working
in “collective offices.”
Thus, in Study Four, interviews enabled us to grasp the meaning that respondents
gave to the photographs whilst, at the same time, their images drove and enlivened
the verbal dialogue between researchers and respondents. Transcripts comprised
both pictures and words. Each was required to make sense of the other. This
conjunction of respondents’ images and texts created a new synthesis, superseding
interviews and photographs alone. We have called such transcripts “photo-scripts.”
“Photo-scripts” proved very useful in disseminating our research results. Thus,
for example, we constructed a public exhibition that comprised quotations from
interviews conducted in Study Four juxtaposed with respondents’ photographs.
However, “photo-scripts” also enabled the researchers to devise new theoretical
interpretations of the social relations of “collective offices.” We constructed
concepts that incorporated lay perceptions but also went beyond them. This evolved
into a nine-point ideal type that teased out a series of consequences for social
relationships of the abolition of personal space in the offices.
In Study Four, then, images, interviews and theoretical interpretations all played
a part in the research process. Each informed the other, each made sense in the light
of the other. They were three interconnected but independent threads of meaning.
STUDY FIVE – VIDEO DIARY OF A “COLLECTIVE
OFFICE” WORKER
Study Five comprised a video diary of life in a “collective office,” shot by two
employees of the organization that featured in Study Four. The respondents were
not asked to make a finished film but, rather, to shoot as much or as little video
as they liked of everything and anything they thought relevant and interesting.
This footage was then to be jointly edited by the researchers and respondents into
a documentary format, drawing upon the expertise of technical professionals as
required. Our expectation was that Study Five would produce masses of short
pieces of video that, in collaboration with respondents, we would assemble and
Images, Interviews and Interpretations 115
edit to illustrate our newly constructed ideal type of the “collective office” that had
emerged from Study Four.
It was agreed that one respondent would operate the camera and the other would
appear on screen, although this division of labour became blurred. They planned to
take shots as and when they had spare time over approximately ten working days.
A hand-held DVD video camera was used in the hope that this medium would be
easy to edit. In effect, the plan was that one respondent would shadow the other
and that the results would be available to the researchers as a video record. Sound
would capture conversations but the main source of evidence would be the pictures.
We hoped that the involvement of office workers themselves would reduce
the number of posed images, sometimes encountered in previous studies. In
addition, and very importantly, we wanted to enhance the autonomy and scope
of respondents in the research process. The brief was deliberately general and
open-ended. Respondents were asked to record anything they thought interesting.
Moreover, they were to be fully involved in, although not wholly in control of, the
editing process.
It has to be said that these arrangements did raise difficult ethical issues. It
might be argued that the researchers had put the respondents into the role of
“mole” or “spy” inside the organisation. Insiders were, arguably, more likely to
get permission for filming from colleagues, were already privy to office secrets
and were more likely to capture candid moments. Nevertheless, when we received
the results of our respondents’ work, there was much excitement in the research
team. Four hours later, however, we were confused and dispirited. There were
long sequences that seemed to have no bearing on the use of space and time in
“collective offices.” It was not clear to us what themes informed the images and
we could not grasp the significance of much of what was shown. There was,
moreover, another serious difficulty. The technical quality of the video was not
good enough for public exhibition. Even the bits we found relevant often did not
have the appropriate clarity, lighting and length of shot that would enable us to
compile a film for public consumption.
On reflection, we realized that we had made two mistakes in Study Five. First,
we had sought to produce visual materials for public display with kit likely to
produce technically flawed output. Technically good images required the use of
high quality tripod cameras and lighting. Our second mistake had been that of
expecting respondents to illustrate our pre-conceived theories, whereas, naturally
enough, what they did was to describe their own lay perceptions. We decided,
therefore, to look again with fresh eyes at the visual materials they had produced
– and only then to incorporate them into theoretical discourses. Accordingly, we
replayed the video images, putting aside our theoretical preconceptions and trying
to grasp our respondents’ viewpoint.
116 ALAN FELSTEAD ET AL.
The key to rereading the video diary in Study Five came from remembering a
casual remark by a respondent in the photo-elicitation interviews of Study Four.
This respondent had accidentally taken a picture of the furniture in the café.
Apologising, she added that the benches in the canteen had been deliberately
introduced, replacing chairs, in order to force staff to interaction with one another.
Occupying a place at a bench, as opposed to sinking into a chair, forced other
diners to stand up, squeeze together and start talking. We realised that the humble
bench was a symbol of a widespread and deliberate managerial strategy in the
company to achieve control through the integration of employees into an intense
organizational culture and small group socializing. Furthermore, and this was
the new realization, this intention was written in and through every aspect of
the aesthetic of the building, large and small. Participation in and performance of
this aesthetic was central to the way in which company values, mission, myth and
memory were transmitted and received.
The casual remarks of our respondent about the benches in the café brought
to mind Strati’s wonderful discussion of the chair (1996, 1999) and Gagliardi’s
work on corporate landscapes (1996). This, in turn, shifted our reading of the
visual materials generated by respondents in Study Five. The apparently extraneous
images of the video were, in fact, depicting everyday aspects of the aesthetic of the
workplace, which inculcated particular dispositions and attitudes in the workforce.
The video was telling us about a central aspect of workplaces that we had failed
fully to understand; that is, the role of aesthetic orders of meaning in processes of
managerial control. For respondents, the aesthetic of the workplace was a crucial
aspect of their individual identities within the company and, to outsiders, a valued
badge of membership of a highly successful corporation. Moreover, the aesthetic
actively performed and creatively reproduced by employees. In the performance of
the aesthetic of the building, corporate culture was institutionalised, energised and
celebrated. It also became apparent that this was encouraged – indeed required
– by senior management. In the absence of bureaucratic rules, the fabric of the
organization was its culture and its culture was exemplified in its style. Style and
surveillance, décor and discipline, went hand in hand. The workplace itself had
become an image that constituted the social relations of the labour process (Nickson
et al., 2001, 2003; Witz et al., 2003).
Study Five was, therefore, a mixed blessing. It failed to deliver materials to
illustrate our preconceived theoretical model of the collective office. However, by
reading the images through our respondents’ eyes we were led to a whole new line
of enquiry and, ultimately, new ways of theorizing social relations in “collective
offices.” The process of conducting Study Five had great heuristic value, even
though it did not lead directly to a specific output.
Images, Interviews and Interpretations 117
STUDY SIX – VIDEO OF “COLLECTIVE OFFICE”
WORKERS MADE BY THE RESEARCHERS
Study Six comprised a video planned, directed and edited by the researchers,
with the technical assistance of a professional camera crew. It was shot in the same
“collective office” that had figured in Study Four and Five. It was explicitly intended
as an exposition of the ideal type model of the “collective office” generated in Study
Four. In Study Six, then, image making was firmly directed from the outset by a
strong theoretical frame developed by the researchers. We devised a storyboard
that provided a tight shooting agenda for the camera crew. However, we also
recorded chance events that occurred whilst we were on site, provided that they
were relevant to our theoretical objectives. Several hours of film were edited down
into seven and a half minutes of video. Each section of the video is introduced by
a brief caption, indicating the key ideas expressed in one element of the ideal type.
This is followed by a sequence of images of the workplace, presented as a collage
of short shots. This film has proved very effective in disseminating our research
findings to both academic and lay audiences.
It might be argued that the video produced in Study Six is no more than an
illustration of our ideal type of the “collective office.” The images were explicitly
selected as servants of an established theoretical interpretation. However, it is our
contention that the video does more than simply illustrate; it also elucidates and
illuminates. There are aspects of the ideal type that are more firmly grasped and
deeply understood as a result of seeing the images portrayed in the video. In these
instances, issues and themes are not only conveyed by, but also constituted in, the
image. A good example concerns the role of the aesthetic within the social order
of the office, to which we were alerted in Study Five. To see an assembly of logos,
décor, furnishings, posters, artefacts, signs, colour schemes and insignia conveys
a sense of the aesthetic texture of the organisation and its corporate landscape that
is difficult to capture in words alone.
In Study Six, then, researcher-generated images were used to illustrate
researcher-generated theories. Images were used by the researchers as a mode
of communication in their own right, to evoke ineffable aspects of social relations.
CONCLUSION
This chapter has explored some of the ways in which visual images, interview
texts and theoretical interpretations interrelate in the conduct of research projects
that utilise visual methodologies (see also Banks, 2001; Grimshaw, 2001; Rose,
118 ALAN FELSTEAD ET AL.
2001; Van Leeuwen & Jewitt, 2001). Several general points emerge from the six
studies described here.
Words and text, of researchers and respondents, colour the meanings attributed
to images. There is no escaping the ubiquitous framing power of texts. However, in
addition, images can change the way interview transcripts are read and serve as a
catalyst to theoretical reconceptualization. Even when simply used as illustration,
the presence of an image changes the way in which texts are apprehended. Images
communicate some messages more acutely and subtly than words ever can. Some
aspects of social life and lived experience are particularly suitable for visual
expression, such as the function of aesthetics in social organization. Hence, as
Pink (2001, p. 96) remarks: “the purpose of analysis is not to translate ‘visual
evidence’ into verbal knowledge, but to explore the relationship between visual
(and other) knowledge.”
In social science research there are many different ways in which the
relationships between pictorial images, interview transcripts and theoretical
interpretations can take place. It is necessary to be clear and explicit about what
kind of dialogue is intended and achieved. Interactions between images, interviews
and interpretations may occur in various sequences; one or the other may be the
driving or dominant force at any particular stage in the investigation. Furthermore,
images may play a variety of different roles in these interactions. Images may
record, reveal, elicit, illustrate, demonstrate or evoke meanings.
The camera never offers a simple “slice of objective reality.” It is not a simple
truth-revealing mechanism (Edwards, 1992; Winston, 1998). The picture is a
product of decisions about lighting, camera angle, framing, posing, editing, staging
and even faking. More generally, the picture is grounded in a set of assumptions,
premises and dispositions of the image-maker and the image-reader. In many ways,
these are even more difficult to excavate than those contained within the spoken
and written words. Far from being the nemesis of visual sociology, however, this
presents its opportunity. The image can reveal that which respondents cannot say in
words, are not aware that they know and do not realize is of immense relevance to
the project. Exploration of the field of vision – the visual habitus – of image-makers
offers a very fertile ground for understanding the experiential world of research
subjects. In this chapter we have seen the apparently irrelevant visual output of
respondents later reinterpreted as an opening into new modes of understanding.
For this to work, however, researchers must be reflexively aware and
theoretically informed. Reflexive understanding requires researchers to interrogate
their own unquestioned assumptions and taken-for-granted premises. It also
requires researchers to adopt a stance of openness to the visual field respondents,
reflected in a willingness not to dismiss their images but to seek to understand
what their pictures show. Such an attitude calls for a distinctive kind of theorising.
Images, Interviews and Interpretations 119
Theory is essential to visual sociology as to all sociological work. The
interpretative power of theory raises image making into a sociological enterprise
(Becker, 1974, 1998). It is theory that distinguishes visual sociology from
photojournalism and documentary recording. However, theory never exists in
isolation – it is always theory of something and always engaged in making sense of
empirical evidence. The truth of the photograph in sociological research consists
in its relationship to a theoretical framework that makes the researcher aware of its
significance and relevance within an overall structure of sociological explanation.
Without a theoretical framework that is explicit and systematically applied to
the image gathering process, there is a danger that the project will drift into
impressionistic description.
One of the key ways in which the conceptual framework of sociological theory
engages with the concrete process of making images is through the instructions
or task given to the photographer. We have seen how variations in the breadth and
specificity of the task given to image-makers – both researchers and respondents
– can have major implications for outcomes. “Fishing trips,” where the brief is
permissive and unrestrictive, may prove to be beneficial. However, they may also
descend into description or the mere collection of curiosities. Equally, a narrow
and pedestrian task that is ineffectively theorised will also be to be disappointing.
The ideal situation is one in which the task of the image-maker is clear, concise,
and fully informed by key theoretical perspectives.
A collaborative relationship with respondents, in a creative partnership, is
one way of achieving open-ended reflexivity. This is not to deny the ultimate
responsibility of the researcher for the project nor to suggest that the story
that the researcher tells is merely a rehash of commonsense translated into
sociological jargon. It is the researcher who brings the disciplinary understanding
and imagination that makes a sociological study – which may even contradict the
truth claims of respondents. However, dialogue and shared activity is highly likely
to open the researcher’s eyes and ears to the worlds of meaning that respondents
inhabit. In collaboration, the conventional roles of researcher and researched, if
not reversed, are reconfigured.
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POWER, INEQUALITY, CHANGE
AND UNCERTAINTY: VIEWING
THE WORLD THROUGH THE
DEVELOPMENT PRISM
Matt Smith and John Donnelly
The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled (Berger J., 1972, p. 7).
. . . reports of the suffering of distant others are morally meaningful to audiences in a way that
is much more complex and confusing than journalists intend. Their meanings also seem to be
much more complex than the existing social theories which deal with the matter seem to be
able to accommodate (Tester K., 2001, pp. 11–12).
. . . photography remains the least investigated media, under-examined even in the mainstream
of cultural studies, when paradoxically photography remains the prevalent form in which visual
images intrude upon us, are transmitted and viewed (Evans J., 1999, p. 129).
This chapter develops and explores connections between visual sociology and
the sociology of development. In doing so, it supports the argument that a focus
on the visual, on representation or on mediation should not be solely harnessed
to explorations of the cultural. Instead, the paper argues that visual sociological
methods and sensitivities can afford significant insights into the contemporary
theory and practice of development, and in doing so, are intimately connected
to issues of global social, political and economic relations, social justice and
inequality. However, the above quotations, which we will return to later in the
chapter, point to the problematic nature of the intersections between the sociology
of development, images of development and the meanings attributed to those
Seeing is Believing? Approaches to Visual Research
Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Volume 7, 123–145
Copyright © 2004 by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1042-3192/doi:10.1016/S1042-3192(04)07008-9
123
124 MATT SMITH AND JOHN DONNELLY
images by the audience. They point up the complexity of processes of perception
in the context of the inadequacy of existing analytical frameworks and the relative
lack of focused research. This chapter is an attempt to address these shortcomings
through a discussion of the role that the use of images can play in development
education and the contribution that a visual sociology of development can play
in highlighting issues of theoretical importance for understanding and promoting
development. In the process, this work is also able to contribute to wider social
theoretical understandings; if “development” is a classic example of a grand (if
troubled) narrative, then analysis of its visual production and reception can afford
a significant vantage point on debates around modernity and post-modernity.
The paper begins with a brief outline of the context of this work. The growth
and current state of the development industry, including its actors, theories and
practices, and the “globalisation of development” is explored. Section two explores
the connections between development, modernity and the visual, exploring some
of the ways in which visualisation has been included in the theory and practice of
development. Section three reviews and discusses the ways images of development
have been critiqued and shifted, highlighting the limitations of focusing on
stereotyping and suggesting a need for recognition of the increasingly contradictory
ways in which development is visualised. This theme is developed further in
section four which draws on qualitative research conducted into young people’s
responses to complex visual images of development. The section argues that
these contradictions – and the research technique – hold out the possibility of
transforming political engagement, as well as affording important theoretical
insights around development and agency in a global context. The chapter concludes
with observations on the urgency of further work in this area and the potential of
linking the sociology of development and visual sociology to do this.
SOCIOLOGY AND THE GLOBALISATION OF
DEVELOPMENT
In order to sustain our argument that a blending of visual sociology and
the sociology of development can be productive and politically engaged, we
need to locate the debate in the wider developmental context into which
sociological interventions can be made. As this chapter will demonstrate, popular
understandings of development, mostly mediated by visual imagery, reflect a
rapidly changing development industry, as well as affording significant social
theoretical insights. Thus, we need to briefly consider some of the key features
of the development landscape, and the ways in which sociologists might engage
in this, particularly in the context of the globalisation of development; the ways in
Power, Inequality, Change and Uncertainty 125
which processes of globalisation are transforming the actors and agents involved in
development, the roots of development authority and legitimacy and the changing
ways in which development is defined and understood. This already hints at an
important link with the visual; “development” must be understood as being linked
to the same processes and relationships which underpin a world increasingly
shaped by the visual image.
Debates around what development is, should be or has been occupy the centre
of the study, practice and politics of development. Thus, the study of development
cannot be divorced from its normative roots: it can be argued that moral engagement
is a sine qua non of the study of development and hence, sociological theorising of
development. The core concerns of the study of development – global inequality
and poverty, global social justice and strategies for improving the life-chances
of the majority of the world’s population – require an “engaged” approach
underpinned by a moral vision, rooted in a concern for justice, freedom and care
(Ignatieff, 1998; Quarles van Ufford & Giri (Eds), 2003; Tester, 2001). In itself,
this presents a complex challenge for researchers, but is made all the more complex
by the complex and shifting norms and frameworks of development practice as
well as the “growth of supraterritorial relations” (Scholte, 2000, p. 46) – in other
words, globalisation.
Whilst there is insufficient space to fully engage in these debates here, it is
important to acknowledge some of the central questions and complexities, as these
inform both the ways development is visualised, and the ways in which visual
images of development are “read.” For the purposes of this chapter, when we refer
to development we are referring to directed processes of social, political, economic
and cultural change in the context of poor nation states and communities; in other
words, we are not concerned simply with processes of change, but with the ways
in which these are engendered. What beneficial change is has shifted and moved
over time and between different actors and agencies in development. But rather
than follow a smooth transition through different visions, competing theories of
development interpenetrate and jostle for power – particularly in terms of their
adoption by key agencies. For example, modernisation theory’s privileging of
economic output remains, but its emphasis on the nation state has increasingly
shifted, via institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, to structures of global
governance and agents such as Trans-National Corporations. On the other hand,
the emphasis on participatory development, which focused attention on micro level
democracy, has been increasingly mainstreamed. Development theory’s survival
in an era in which grand narratives are increasingly dispensed with perhaps partly
explains the emphasis on policy and practice away from theory, leaving unresolved
the fundamental tensions of universalism vs. relativism which lie at the heart of
development; what is the balance between enabling diverse voices to be heard,
126 MATT SMITH AND JOHN DONNELLY
and sticking to fundamental rights to survive and thrive? As later sections will
show, analysis of the visualisation of development provides a key insight into both
the theoretical and political problems inherent in failing to adequately address this
dilemma, particularly in terms of democratising development through engendering
engagement with it. As we will also show, these insights are grounded in linking
visual sociology’s insights and sensitivities to the core traditions of sociological
investigation, such as a concern with structure, agency and morality.
Informed by and informing the shifting theories of development have been
changes in the key actors and agencies of development. In many respects, it is
fair to talk of a development industry, with diverse institutions, agencies, experts
and subjects, linked together in often complex and contradictory ways. Whilst
the state formed the centre of development theory and practice in the aftermath
of empire – Nehru’s India is a strong example – the growing emphasis on the
market has undermined this centrality. This has partly informed the growth of
multilateral agencies in promoting and sometimes delivering development, and
is also strongly linked to the rise of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs)
who, some claim, have stepped in to replace the state’s welfare function. The
perceived failure, amongst many, of the state-led and market-led systems, has
informed a new emphasis on civil society, both at national and global levels. It is
important to remember, though, that these spheres – state, market, civil society
– are not independent of each other. For example, NGOs compete with each
other to attract funding from the state and to market themselves with the public,
whilst the state employs NGOs and corporations to deliver development policy.
Indeed, the proclaimed emergence of a global civil society has generated a hugely
diversified but complex picture, with a growing number of civic actors engaging in
development in diverse ways, from grassroots networking and local development,
to global advocacy and development education. This diversifies the potential for
engagement as well as shifting the rationales for visualising development. A
key factor in the growth of global civil society organisations and networks has
been communications, particularly ICTs, in facilitating transnational organisation.
As a result, both text and images have been increasingly central features of the
development industry.
Change, contradiction and complexity in development theory and practice,
makes the maintenance of coherent moral engagement all the more challenging
and all the more pressing. In many respects, there is an irony in suggesting the
need to develop a visual sociology of development as part of the process of taking
the sociology of development forward, since it is the arrival of the approaches
often associated with the visual – post-modernism, post-structuralism, cultural
studies – that has unsettled the universals on which the sociology of development
so depended. Yet we wish to show that a visual sociology of development
Power, Inequality, Change and Uncertainty 127
can contribute to the reinvigoration of morally engaged theory and practice in
development.
What is implied by this emphasis on morality? This can be taken to be expressive
of a sense of responsibility as well as a need to understand and explain. If ethics
can be taken to relate to a responsibility to the “other,” then development ethics
can be taken to relate to a global responsibility for human rights and social justice
(Quarles van Ufford & Giri (Eds), 2003). It implies an ethical concern of care
for “distant strangers,” while at the same time providing an opportunity for shared
learning. This can be related to what journalist-turned-politician Martin Bell refers
to as a “journalism of attachment” – a journalism that is a kind of moral enterprise
informed by a sense of right and wrong and that cares as well as knows (cited in
Tester, 2001, p. 10). But a “moral voice” of care by itself is insufficient; this needs
to be supplemented by a moral voice of justice. Research by Gilligan (cited in
Tester, 2001, p. 66ff) and her colleagues has identified a “gender focus” (although
not a gender specificity) to these two moral voices, with men being more likely
to voice a justice-based concern and women more likely to voice a care-based
concern. Tester’s (2001, p. 66ff) discussion of these distinctions in relation to
the concept of compassion relates these different moral voices to an inescapable
moral incommensurability. We do not find this convincing. Rather than being
incommensurable, these moral voices are complementary. If for example we look
at some of the photographs taken by David Bailey for Band Aid (Bailey, 1985)
– and there are three differing photographs of the same child that reoccur in that
book that imprint themselves on the memory (pages un-numbered) – or some of
the photographs of Don McCullin from war-torn Biafra of an emaciated mother
trying to suckle her child or of a dying Albino boy (McCullin, 1995, pp. 79, 91. See
also his account of taking the latter photograph in his autobiography (McCullin,
1990, pp. 123–124) and the discussion in Cohen (2001, pp. 299–301)), our initial
reaction is one of pity, sorrow and hence a moral voice of care. But this is almost
immediately supplemented by an anger fuelled by reflections on the causes of the
inequality and poverty depicted, underpinned by a belief that what is represented
is wrong and hence exemplifying a moral voice of justice. A similar response is
elicited from the photographs of Sebastiao Salgado of workers in the Brazilian
gold mines, sugar cane workers in Cuba or canal builders in India (Salgado, 1993,
pp. 23ff, 300ff, 378ff). Cohen (2001, p. 299) finds Salgado’s work to represent a
purely aesthetic response to suffering and to represent “beautifications of tragedy,”
whereas in our opinion they clearly exhibit a moral voice of justice that invites us
to reflect on how people have to work to survive, why this should be necessary and
why things are not otherwise. Salgado imbues his subjects with a human dignity
that is perhaps denied by the earlier images mentioned but they are no less moving
or arresting for that.
128 MATT SMITH AND JOHN DONNELLY
At the heart of this argument is the reminder that development theory and
practice increasingly hinges on global social relations, and in particular, on visually
mediated relations between individuals and communities in the “North” and the
“South.” Everyday relationships with individuals and communities in the “South”
through the processes of global production and consumption are largely hidden
– few people are aware of the complex relations behind the supply of cheap
clothes, food and other consumer items – whilst few people have the opportunity
to forge direct relationships. Instead, relationships between North and South are
reified through visual imagery, often centred on poverty, famine and appeals
for money, through media reporting of “distant suffering,” calls to participate in
campaigns or through development education. As we will show, a visual sociology
of development has an important role to play in understanding the processes and
dynamics of these mediations and the moral engagements they engender, since, as
Tester argues:
. . . reports of the suffering of distant others are morally meaningful to audiences in a way that
is much more complex and confusing than journalists intend. Their meanings also seem to be
much more complex than the existing social theories which deal with the matter seem to be
able to accommodate (Tester K., 2001, pp. 11–12).
However, before we go on to explore how we can develop new insights through
a visual sociology of development, located in the shifting and complex context
outlined above, we need to acknowledge the different ways in which connections
between development and the visual have already been identified and articulated.
DEVELOPMENT, MODERNITY AND THE VISUAL
The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled (Berger J., 1972, p. 7).
That visualisation is closely linked to knowledge claims, and that theories and
practices of development are ultimately claims to particular, technical, authoritative
or authentic knowledge, provides us with an important starting point. Connected
to this, the other key starting point must be the embeddness of development theory
and practice within modernity and hence its connection to visualisation as offering
knowledge and certainty.
The economistic and technocratic approaches of development theory were
profoundly unsettled by interventions from authors highlighting the contested
nature of development knowledge. Whilst some – such as Booth (1985) –
developed a more traditionally rooted analysis, a range of critiques focused on
the connections between contested visualisations and mainstream development
Power, Inequality, Change and Uncertainty 129
theory and practice. These connect closely with debates around modernity and
postmodernity. Recognition of the privileging of “vision” in “Western” modernity
(Gregory, 1994, p. 64) leads us to acknowledgement of its important role in the
construction of “knowledge” of the “Third World” “other.” Perhaps the most
famous of these interventions was Said’s Orientalism, which explored the power
dynamics of colonialism through the “texts of empire,” and highlighted what he
refers to as “semiotical power” (Said, 1978, p. 125). Orientalism was problematic
in many ways, not least for its failure to provide a normative strategy, but it was also
hugely influential. Whilst not solely focused on visual images, Said nonetheless
did highlight the ways in which visual representations of the then Orient could not
be separated from practices towards the Orient; as suggested above, visualisation
cannot be separated from social relations. In the concluding chapter of the revised
edition (Said, 1995), Said draws connections between visual representations of the
“Orient” and the ways in which development interventions are also premised on
visual and textual constructions of the societies and communities of the “South.”
Central to his Foucauldian analysis is the claim that despite being ostensibly about
the “other” – whether the Orient or the developing nation-state – the “other” is
largely absent, their definition primarily reflecting the “self” (Said, 1978, p. 208).
Thus, although not explicitly addressing development, Said interrogates the visual
images generated by those studying, recording and categorising the Orient as a
means to understand the worldview which underpins domination and exploitation.
Extending this focus to development, and referring to contemporary media images,
Escobar asserts the importance of examining development
. . . in relation to the modern experiences of knowing, seeing, counting, economizing and the
like (Escobar, 1995, p. 12).
The idea that “to see is to know” was not only a fundamental tenet of colonial
domination, and appropriation – as Rydell notes, “to see is to know” was the
motto greeting arrivals at the anthropology exhibits of the World’s Columbian
Exposition of 1893 – but also underpins development theory and practice (Rydell,
1984, p. 44). This is reflected in data from research on the communication of
development in U.K. schools.1 For example, a geography teacher explains her
decision to focus on development in Egypt in terms of having been to Egypt and
hence seen underdevelopment:
Well I saw women washing in the Nile and I went on a felucca down the Nile. But mainly I
mean you go to Egypt you’re looking at the tombs and things. You can’t help noticing how
people live, the crowded nature of the cities. The way human life seems quite expendable really
(Interview, Sue Barton).
Thus, “seeing” is equated with “knowing”: development – a set of complex
processes – becomes seeable, reified and hence, knowable. Sue Barton perceives
130 MATT SMITH AND JOHN DONNELLY
having seen something in reality as offering greater authenticity and certainty;
she has seen “underdevelopment” in the women washing in the Nile and has
seen overpopulation in the crowded cities. Thus, she “ ‘conquer[s]’ truth,’ ” as
Driver puts it borrowing from Conrad, by “establishing a particular reading of the
landscape” (Driver, 1996, p. 348). “Seeing” the reality of being “developing” is
thus perceived as making the staff better equipped to teach about development;
“seeing is believing.”
The hidden role of the visual in development theory and practice has also been
taken up by a range of contemporary development theorists. A number of these
interventions drew on the post-structuralist interventions of that time, offering
analysis of development’s discourses, texts and narratives. For example, Mitchell
offers a critical analysis of USAID and World Bank policies toward Egypt by
analysing the ways in which the organisations visualised the topography and
resources of Egypt (Mitchell, 1995).
The elucidation of the ways in which visual imagery is embedded in the
practice of development points us to its relationship to knowledge, processes
of legitimation, authority and power. However, what it fails to do is provide a
normative framework; the emphasis is more deconstructive than reconstructive,
something that is incommensurate with engendering ethical development. Also,
the emphasis here has been on the role of visualising the objects of “development”
in the process of producing development knowledge. However, as discussed earlier,
the shifting roles and agencies and relationships of the global development industry
suggests we also need to focus attention on the ways in which development –
rather than development’s objects, as above – is in itself visualised and how these
visualisations are read. Indeed, one could argue that the rise of a global civil
society, with shifting patterns of accountability and authority, widens the number
and character of groups engaged in and interested in development, regardless
of geographical location, transforming the context and roles of visualisations of
development. As a result, we need to add a further layer to our analysis of the
connections between the sociology of development and visual sociology.
IMAGES OF DEVELOPMENT: CHARITY AND CHANGE
Whilst we have focused on the visual representation of development, this is perhaps
a more elusive ambition than it would initially appear to be. In this section, we
briefly explore some of the key methodological issues of visualising development,
before reviewing and analysing key trends in popular representations of poverty
and development in the “South.” In doing this, we lay the foundations for our
argument, in the subsequent section, for linking the sociology of development
Power, Inequality, Change and Uncertainty 131
and visual sociology as part of the process of development as well as affording
theoretical insights about development, inequality and agency.
One of the central problems in exploring the visual and development is the
tension between the snapshots that can be afforded by visual media, and the
long-term process of development. Since development is complex and contested,
involving numerous actors operating within and across a variety of spaces, is
defined by economic, political, cultural and social “structures,” is rarely a smooth
predictable process and takes considerable time, it does not immediately lend itself
to a methodology which centres on freezing a particular moment in time. Even
with the use of film and video, the time scales of development and its elusive
characteristics suggest that when we talk about visualising development, we are
actually talking about something else; images of the lack of development or of
development “signifiers.” Thus, we are in a sense returned to Said’s discussion of
the representations of the Orient which reflect and constitute particular ideas not
only about the individuals or institutions represented, but their societies, traditions,
authority, knowledge, legitimacy and so on. For example, an image of an African
child with flies around its eyes may draw on a whole constellation of ideas,
understandings, past imagery and assumptions to reflect a famine situation, and a
lack of development, even where such information is nowhere to be found within
the image. For this reason, we cannot divorce the reading of the image from its
constitution and formation; what we are talking about are the ways that images
draw upon development discourses – upon understandings and assumptions of the
reader – in order to tell a story about development. We will focus on such readings
and their implications in the next section. Here, we will examine the images that
have been produced and defined to infer a particular story or understanding of
development. In doing so, we can also learn about the assumptions made around
dominant readings of visual images of poverty and inequality.
At the heart of this are Non Governmental Organisations, who are dependent
on communicating with publics in order to sustain themselves, using a variety of
approaches, including mailed promotional flyers, newspaper advertisements and
television adverts. As we will see, the shifting agendas and approaches of NGOs
have reconfigured their use of visual images. As well as producing their own
communications, NGOs make extensive and sometimes hidden use of other media
organisations, such as by facilitating journalist access to particular geographical
areas. Given the importance of the context and background to readings, NGOs are
also particularly important since popular understanding of development charities
provides crucial contextual information which shapes readings of the images
presented. Whilst NGOs are key players, the wider media are also significant,
beaming world events into sitting rooms. We also need to acknowledge the
ways development visualisations may be produced in more unexpected ways. For
132 MATT SMITH AND JOHN DONNELLY
example, there has been a recent spate of car advertisements which present family
saloons and four wheel drives against a visibly “Third World” background, drawing
on ideas of development and modernity or its lack of it, to accentuate the vehicle’s
modernity.
Both NGOs and the media have been roundly criticized for the visual images
they deploy, as the following quotations indicate:
Development educators are now relatively unanimous in their rejection of the ‘charity’ vision
of the Third World, in which the motivating force was to inspire compassion and to awaken a
sense of ‘moral duty’ to help the less fortunate. Today most educators agree that this is a form
of ‘development pornography’ reinforcing a harmful stereotype in which the Third World is
presented as backward and hopeless. Not only is this felt to be morally questionable but also
inaccurate, ignoring indigenous Third World development efforts of considerable importance
for the North as well as the South (Arnold, 1988, p. 188).
There is no doubt that sympathy and hence generous giving is more easily elicited by images
of helplessness and distress . . . . together with the very mixed images contained in media news
and current affairs programmes, it is fundraising propaganda that dominates public perceptions
(Gladstone, 1989, p. 18).
Whilst, as we will show, these characterisations of visualisation of the “Third
World” now need updating, they highlight the ways in which visualisations of
development, or its absence and the resultant suffering, are complex and contested.
Stan Cohen argues that the original critiques of the images used by development
organisations to raise funds were rooted in the rise of dependency theory (Cohen,
2001, p. 178). Whilst modernisation theories placed blame for the failures of
development at the feet of the nations and people “failing” to develop, dependency
argued that this failure was rooted in global structures of inequality. Thus, real
and systemic change could not be achieved by charitable donations to distant
strangers, but required political action and global solidarity. This is in stark
contrast to images which rest on the construction and emphasis on difference
as a means of attracting funds through emotions such as pity and caring. In other
words, traditional, “stereotypical” visualisations do not construct a sufficiently
politically engaged narrative. This critique has continued, with Michael Edwards,
a leading commentator on the roles of NGOs, claiming that NGOs’ have produced
“a constituency that may be supportive in principle, but is largely ill-informed and
inactive in practice” (Edwards, 1999, p. 194). Thus, the messy and contested reality
of interventions for change can be seemingly smoothed away by images which
apparently depict the obvious truth of a morally complex situation. This can be
seen in the following example from research conducted into the communication of
development in U.K. secondary schools, in which an NGO which seeks to eradicate
leprosy visits one of the schools.
Power, Inequality, Change and Uncertainty 133
9c had a speaker from [an anti-leprosy organisation] . . . and we’re hoping to do something for
her during the summer. She was showing them you know, how easy it is to help. With a little
bit of funding you can change a child’s whole life from a disaster to . . . She kept it very simple.
She showed them a picture of a little boy with his hands all sort of curled up and a terribly sad
look on his face. And she showed them the same little boy with one hand cured or one hand
sort of treated and a great smile and how the other hand was going to be. Quite a small amount
of money can make that (Interview, Fiona Bamford, Acting Head of Theology, Cardinal James
School).
A particular story about someone in the “Third World” is told in order to generate
a caring and benevolent response. As the teacher says, she kept the story simple,
moving from a beginning, in which the child is suffering from leprosy, to a middle,
in which the agency funded cure takes place, and an end in which the child is now
happy. The story told in this instance is a seductive one in a number of respects:
it has a happy ending and is simple; a cause and effect relationship is identified
which is appealing in the direct and uncomplicated way it appears to better people’s
lives. There is also seductiveness in the identities this story constructs. In order to
accentuate a contrast between then and now, the child is represented at the start as
underprivileged and unhappy because of their leprosy and thus implicitly, because
of the lack of money in his country to cure it; the activity makes “extensive use of
very negative stereotypes of people from the South” (Sinclair, 1994, p. 55). That
the pupils are able to secure change and do have the money to do so empowers
them; where they live is constructed as a more desirable place to be and they
are defined as having benevolent power within the “Third World.” The structural
factors informing the persistence of leprosy and the links between those structures
and pupils, are not engaged with.
Critiques of the visual images used by NGOs, alongside shifts in approaches
to development and the wider focus on issues of difference and diversity, have
underpinned an unsettling of the approaches critiqued above. Rooted in ideas of
the possibility of change, the agency, knowledge and capacity of the South and
the new emphasis on empowerment, greater emphasis has been placed on positive
images which convey evidence of development and people who appear happy and
smiling. NGOs’ awareness of the problems around the images used resulted in
the development of a code of conduct by some NGOs (NGDO-EC, 1994, p. 132)
and produced heightened levels of sensitivity and awareness within organisations
about the ways in which popular images connect with their wider organisational
vision. Arnold argued that there has been a move away from a charity based vision
to one centred on “empowerment” (1988). This presents significant challenges,
particularly in terms of the ways in which different types of images may engender
different forms of engagement. There is also the risk of reifying NGOs’ project
based work as development. In some respects, development becomes visualised
134 MATT SMITH AND JOHN DONNELLY
like a children’s dot to dot picture, in which one links up images of a set of disparate
interventions, such as a new well, a forestry initiative and new school building,
and end up with an image of development. As well as a shift in style and content,
there have been shifts in the authorship of images of development. In recognition
of a lack of Southern voice, attention has been drawn to the relative absence of
Southern photographers, although it is claimed by some (e.g. Clark, 2004) that
this in fact has little impact on the images themselves. Reflecting the emphasis on
participation and actor-orientated approaches to development there has also been
a rise in enabling those whose development is being sought to photograph and
visualise development – or its absence or malfunctioning – from their perspective.
This provides an interesting contrast to the situation Lutz and Collins observe in
their analyses of National Geographic in which photographers capture indigenous
people’s encounters with modern technological artefacts on film as part of their
record (Lutz & Collins, 1993, p. 207).
Whilst new images are being produced and communicated, these often sit
alongside both more “stereotypical” images, and readings of images rooted in
the latter; interviews with NGO development education staff reveal the way that,
even if NGOs choose not to seek funds and to focus exclusively on an educational
approach, teachers often ask how money can then be raised. The increasingly
diversified work of NGOs, including the provision of services in the “South,”
raising money, running campaigns or educating constituencies, produces a set of
contrasting and often contradictory imperatives which frame the images they may
produce and communicate. Since, in many cases, different images are for different
audiences and different readings, this may not be problematic. On the other hand,
some individual communications in themselves produce contrasting visualisations,
reflecting the tension between acknowledgement of the problems of sterotypes, and
the simultaneous belief in their efficacy in raising funds. Thus, the visualisation is
perhaps better defined in terms of contradictions, rather than in more monolithic
claims about sterotypes (Smith, 2004). However, as the next section suggests,
contradictory and unsettling visual images are potentially significant in terms of
engendering and transforming engagement, as well as in terms of the ways that
their readings afford important theoretical insights around development and global
social relations; it is in relation to agency in a globalised world that the linking of
visual sociology and the sociology of development has its greatest potential.
CASE STUDY: THE “CHANGING WORLD VIEWS”
PILOT PROJECT
So far we have explored the ways in which visualisation and development intersect.
We have suggested that an increasingly complex development industry alongside
Power, Inequality, Change and Uncertainty 135
the importance of development imagery within that, are significant factors in
understanding and shaping the future of development theory and practice. To do
this, we have drawn upon sociological concepts and ideas to analyse contemporary
images of development, as well as reflect on the ways theorists have highlighted
the role of visualisation in their work. In this final section, we go further in seeking
to link visual sociology and the sociology of development by exploring the use of
images of development as a research, action and pedagogical tool. For we have not
developed work in which research participants take photos themselves – although,
since what the viewer brings is part of the constitution of the meaning of an image,
the distinction between viewer and photographer is perhaps unhelpful – but have
used images of development in the context of a research project with undergraduate
social science students into the ways the images are “read” and understood.
A number of sociological motivations underpin our approach. It was hoped the
readings would afford insights into the ways in which the participants positioned
themselves in a globalised context. In doing so, we hoped to learn something of the
ways relationships to others were understood and defined, particularly in terms of
the types of moral engagement particular images might engender. This is closely
connected to the fact that the audience does not approach such images “innocently”
but rather are carrying a baggage of social and cultural presuppositions and
preconceptions that will influence the meaning that they attach to the images.
This baggage not only relates to issues of class, gender, ethnicity and age, but also
to the “moral voice” that each member of the audience brings to the interaction:
social actors are also moral beings. The content of that moral voice may vary,
arguments relating to a (Western) moral universalism notwithstanding (Ignatieff,
1998), but the mapping of such differences, tensions and contradictions can provide
a foundation for moral engagement. Indeed, it was decided not to focus in particular
detail on unpacking the ways readings were shaped, but rather, to explore the
more general issues that the readings might raise in relation to the sociological
issues and imperatives just outlined. Connected to our interest in locating and
understanding moral engagement, the research was action orientated in that we
hoped that participation would also engender interest amongst the participants in
issues of development and justice. We were exploring the possibility of developing
a visual image based approach to help develop a sociological imagination amongst
the students. At the broader level, we also anticipated that responses to the images
would afford data relevant to understanding the significance of visual imagery in
the contemporary world. Underpinning all of these agendas was the hope that the
knowledge and understanding we would gain could be deployed in our work as
Sociology Lecturers seeking to teach the sociology of development.
Our approach presents the methodological challenge of what constitutes an
image of development. Photographs are snapshots of particular “moments” in
history, they freeze time as the shutter clicks. It is therefore difficult to incorporate
136 MATT SMITH AND JOHN DONNELLY
an idea of time or to document change within photography except by re-
photographing a particular subject at intervals. Yet development is precisely
a process, or set of processes, that occurs over time. How then might it be
represented? As we have mentioned above, it is perhaps easier to document
underdevelopment: the template photographs of hunger and famine, or poverty-
stricken slum dwellings, or people scavenging among rubbish being familiar
images. But how can the process of development and change be documented in a
still image? By photographs of factories, or schools, or new government buildings,
for example? While such photographs might be useful, it would be preferable to try
to incorporate aspects of the developmental process in the same image rather than
some simple “before” and “after” approach. Images that seek to combine elements
of the old and the new, of tradition and modernity, of processes of globalization
would contextualise and situate the subject matter, would exemplify patterns and
possibilities and thereby aid discussion and analysis. Such images might “unsettle”
preconceptions, jangle “taken-for-granted” assumptions, be difficult to “read.” This
fits into the tradition identified by Lutz and Collins which
Through the use of surrealist (or more generally modernist) techniques such as juxtapostion
and dislocation, this type of photographic practice raises questions about hegemonic definitions
of what is good, normal, and valuable (Lutz & Collins, 1993, p. 272).
They would thus invite reflection on the part of the audience and sensitize the
audience to the issues involved. The consequence would hopefully be a variety of
responses that would lead to deeper and more systematic analysis (Gaspar, 2003).
Such responses thus provide the basis for discussing development: visual sociology
becomes a basis for development education. By using images of development
of a less obvious and more “unsettling” nature – images that hopefully defy a
straightforward “reading” – it is hoped to elicit a range of responses that can be
used to highlight certain themes that in turn can provide the basis for theoretical
insight and moral engagement.
The intersections that we are seeking to explore should now be clear. We aim to
utilise the under-researched subject of the photographic image as a heuristic device
to engage students in thinking and reflecting on the processes of development and
to thereby engender both theoretical insight and the moral engagement intrinsic to
the study of development. This is the promise of a visual sociology for development
studies.
The above discussion has sought to justify the heuristic potential of a visual
sociology of development. In an earlier piece of work (Smith et al., 2003), the
authors explored the utility of such an approach. The aim of that research was to
investigate the perceptions of development, change and globalization that students
new to Higher Education were bringing to the teaching and learning environment,
Power, Inequality, Change and Uncertainty 137
thereby providing us as teachers with an improved basis for dialogue, reflexivity
and mutual learning. Images were seen as a particularly useful vehicle for this
purpose, since as Cohen (2001, p. 185) has pointed out, visual communication
can be said to have more impact than other media, attracts an immediate response
and is arguably the dominant form of communication in the contemporary world.
Moreover, photographic images can be seen as points of intersections of many
differing “gazes,” whose decodings can be related to broader historical and cultural
questions (Wells, 2003, p. 325). A number of issues are raised by the choice of
image to be used, since this will be shaped by/filtered through the moral, theoretical
and educational engagement of the “academic gaze” (Lutz & Collins, 1994/2003,
p. 370). Analysis of this aspect of the question cannot be pursued here, however.
In general, the images needed to satisfy a number of criteria:
� they needed to “engage” in order to facilitate the effort needed to step outside
the parameters of our own society and “think globally” (Cohen, 2001, p. 20); � they needed to avoid presenting an over-familiar or stereotypical scenario; � and as mentioned above, they needed to “unsettle” or be difficult to “read” in
order to maximise reactions and discussion.
The images were obtained from Panos Pictures, an independent photo agency
that specialises in Third World, development and global issues. One image (see
Photograph: Clive Shirley. Reprinted with permission of Panos Pictures.
138 MATT SMITH AND JOHN DONNELLY
below) was of a scene outside Freetown, Sierra Leone and depicted a communal
standpipe being used by local people in front of a huge billboard advertisement
for Coca Cola. A second image (see below) depicted an Aboriginal man from
Arnhemland, Australia carrying his daughter, who holds a large bottle of Coca
Cola, while he carries traditional hunting spears and is using a Sony camcorder.
The images were presented sequentially to small groups of students (between 4
and 10), who were invited to record their immediate thoughts and reflections both
on the sheets they were given with the images on and verbally. The discussion was
also filmed.
Photograph: Penny Tweedie. Reprinted with permission of Panos Pictures.
ANALYSING THE “STUDENT GAZE”
The interpretation remains with the viewer who, confronted with a disturbing frame, draws
on familiar politics and cultural models for cultural explanation. Thus, for diverse viewers,
the image of a starving African family may implicate American overconsumption, greedy
multinational corporations, corrupt local governments, or the lack of industry of dark-skinned
people (Lutz & Collins, 1993, p. 272).
Analysis of the data derived from the “student gaze” revealed a range of broad
responses that can provide the basis for dialogue, both in relation to the moral
Power, Inequality, Change and Uncertainty 139
engagement seen as intrinsic to study in this area and in relation to theoretical and
substantive issues in the sociology of development. Reading of our analysis along
with that of Lutz and Collins’ analysis of reader responses and readings of National
Geographic provides some interesting similarities and contrasts which there is
insufficient space for here. More detailed analysis would also allow reflection on
the degree to which these responses have been mediated by class background,
gender, age and ethnicity, although in Lutz and Collins’ work this seemed to be
fairly limited (Lutz & Collins, 1993, p. 224). In addition, our focus is on broad
responses and the way they reflect student attempts to negotiate the contradictions
and complexities the images suggest.
Four broad responses could be delineated from the data. One approach focused
on the nature of the world system and the dynamics of power therein. A second
approach emphasised the issues of poverty and inequality. The third approach
appeared to be more optimistic in stressing the element of community with regard
to the Freetown image. Finally, the fourth set of responses reflected confusion and
ambiguity, stretching to outright disbelief. However, it is important to remember
that these groupings do not necessarily correspond to particular individuals;
participants expressed readings that fell into a number of the categories, indicating
a further level of confusion. This shares similarities with Lutz and Collins’ work,
which also found a significant degree of self-contradiction. This might mean
deploying several voices within a single interview, or that
They express contradictions in more experimental or ambivalent ways; they try out sometimes
conflicting ideas with tentative or self-assured tones, hoping for one thing and settling on
another, seeing how things sound (Lutz & Collins, 1993, p. 226).
Let us examine each of these responses in more detail to see how they map onto
voices of moral engagement and sociological insight.
The first set of responses was reflected in statements relating to globalization
(understood as “Americanisation/Westernisation”), core-periphery relations, the
corporate power of multi-national corporations in a Third World/under-developed
country. These responses exemplify an approach based on a basic understanding
of the relations and dynamics of power within the contemporary world system
that provides a context for framing/“reading” the image. We called such responses
“critical-systemic” (Smith et al., 2003, pp. 4–5) to highlight the way in which
these responses indicated an element of critique that is fundamental to the learning
process and the attempt to locate the images within a coherent, albeit rudimentary,
analytical framework. In relation to the concerns of this chapter, these responses
can be seen to resonate with a strong moral voice. Underpinning the responses is
a clear concern for global social justice, thus facilitating the dialogue with moral
engagement seen as central to development studies. There is also a degree of
140 MATT SMITH AND JOHN DONNELLY
politicised awareness here. This both challenges those such as Rosler (1989/2003)
and Berger (1980/2003) who argue that images such as those used here deter/hinder
a political response, and facilitates dialogue with those development theorists such
as Leftwich (2000) who argue for the primacy of politics in development. More
generally, these responses provide an easy avenue into discussions of sociological
theories of development and underdevelopment. They also point to the wider
shift in the politics of development, in which major non governmental players are
placing increased emphasis on campaigns and advocacy in their armoury against
poverty. The very visual collapses of WTO trade talks have heightened attention
to global structures, often strongly mediated by the “development” prism, as has
the debt campaign which has sought to reframe the issue in terms of a politics of
justice (Yanacopulos, 2004).
The second set of responses overlaps somewhat with the first set, but with a more
substantive focus. Here the emphasis was on the issues of poverty and inequality.
Many references were made to the contrast between “poverty and affluence,”
“massive poverty and massive profit together,” “need v greed” etc. (Smith et al.,
2003, p. 5). Again, a strong moral voice can be detected here, but perhaps with
more of a focus on care than on justice.
This set of responses highlighted the significant influence of development
organisations, whose public faces are largely defined in terms of charity and
compassion, notwithstanding more recent emphasis on campaigning and advocacy.
It also suggests the ways in which emotion underpins such “readings.” Whilst
this may form an important motivating factor in charitable donation, it also
individualizes the response rather than politicising it. Again, this provides a
connection to what Lidchi refers to as the commodifying of the “South” (Lidchi
cited in Cohen, 2001). This suggests a less politicised type of engagement, but is
nonetheless a moral voice with which it is easy to engage and provides a basis for
dialogue and discussion. Connections with core substantive and policy concerns
within the sociology of development are again easy to draw and build upon.
If the first two sets of responses provide evidence of a strong moral voice and
easy connection to the central concerns of the sociology of development, the
other two sets of responses are more challenging but none the less interesting
for that. A third and unexpected response celebrated the community it saw in the
Freetown image. This highlighted the presence in the “South” of a “community
brought together by everyday activities,” a “community of necessity” but one
that nevertheless was indicative of a spirit that was seen to be lacking in the West.
While at first sight this might seem to be a positive and optimistic response, further
reflection invites a more critical appraisal. The response smacks of a paternalism
that reflects a superior and preferential Western lifestyle but which sees the people
of the “South” as poor but happy. Hence a paternalistic moral voice that sees
Power, Inequality, Change and Uncertainty 141
community as compensation for poverty. In some senses this presents a direct
reversal of the traditional “developed”/“developing” dichotomy, premised on a
decontextualised approach to a politics of difference; a parallel can be drawn with
the ways in which pluralist multiculturalism may celebrate cultural difference
to the point of fetishizing it and at the same time, failing to engage with the
conditions that produced that difference; “difference is spice,” as Kincheloe and
Steinberg put it (1997, p. 42). As a result, the dichotomy is reversed, meaning
that the structural connections remain invisible. There is then the risk that cultural
difference, as opposed to structural inequality, reframes the development question.
Such a moral voice is more problematic for the teacher, since it presents both
the risk of disengagement in the name of tolerance, as well as highlighting a
confused and idealistic notion of community. The latter is especially pertinent in
a context where water is becoming increasingly commodified and subject to “full
cost recovery” policies (as in Ghana). As the provision of water becomes subject
to “ability to pay,” this is more likely to provide a basis for community cleavage
than solidarity and to re-emphasise the sociological importance of power, poverty
and inequality. In terms of community, strong parallels can be drawn with the
Orientalist tendency to over valorise and celebrate the “other” as exemplifying
values that have been lost to modernity, providing the rationale for a protectionism
smacking of paternalism. In the context of teaching, this perspective needs to be
engaged with and challenged rather than endorsed, but also provides a basis for
dialogue and pedagogical discussion.
The final set of responses was perhaps the most challenging. These responses
exemplified a range of views that stretched from confusion to distaste to
outright disbelief. This group of students included those who found the images
most unsettling. Some students thought the images “ironic and mocking” and
representative of a “sick sense of humour.” Others were bemused: “why would
Coke advertise here?”, the images were “strange” and looked “unnatural” with
“weird” contrasts (this especially of the Aboriginal man with the camcorder).
Expectations had been shaken: the clothes the people were wearing “look bought,
out of place,” “strange that they have Coca Cola.” In particular, the image of the
Aboriginal man raised questions about how he could have obtained the camcorder,
what could he be filming, how likely was it that he would have a video to watch
his recording on? The contrast between his traditional hunting spears and the
high-tech camcorder was commented on, with his possession of the latter being
regarded as particularly difficult to comprehend. Some saw irony in this, others
questioned the camcorder’s affordability for the man, while others thought notions
of identity and stereotyping were being challenged and referred to “ethnocentric
idea of property” and questioned “instant assumptions about the wealth/material
possessions of black people.” At their most extreme, responses to the images were
142 MATT SMITH AND JOHN DONNELLY
of outright disbelief. A number of students commented that the images didn’t
look real or were “unbelievable”: “Is it real?”, “is it staged?”. These students
conjectured that “perhaps it was a publicity shot – given a bottle of Coca Cola
and camcorder to make an ironic portrait,” or “has a tourist given them the
camera, are they there for the benefit of tourists?” Whatever, the images were
problematic for the students and contained scenes that could not be seen as a
reflection of reality but which had to be explained as either having been staged or
manipulated for some purpose or other. The difficulties that this group of students
had in accepting the images betokens a far weaker moral voice, certainly when
compared to the first two sets of responses. The perceived irony and questioning
of these images exhibits an alienated moral detachment rather than the moral
engagement that development analysts would seek to engender. Perhaps such
a response is representative of the general influence of postmodernism, whose
influence on photography has been to “destabilise links between representation
and reality . . . images were no longer to be taken at face value” (Wells, 2003,
p. 149). They could also be linked not only to what Moeller calls “compassion
fatigue,” but to DfID’s report indicating that an important issue in putting young
people off engaging with development issues is their forced participation in charity
events whilst at school (DFID, 2000, p. 3). This presents a significant political risk
in terms of the potential intersection of such responses with views suggesting
that “distant others” are less deserving than the proximite needy. Nevertheless, the
challenge of and to this set of responses provides an opportunity for teachers to open
up a dialogue that might question ill-based assumptions and show how a sociology
of development could dispel such confusion and detachment through its analytical
perspectives.
The above discussion has demonstrated the complexity and contradictory nature
of student responses to images of development and globalization. A range of “moral
voices” has been identified – justice, care, compensation, alienation – as well as
a range of greater or lesser analytical awareness and more or less well-informed
assumptions and substantive knowledge.
It is our belief that the data generated by this research technique provides
the basis for reflexive dialogue with students and demonstrates the potential of
a visual sociology of development as a pedagogical tool for engendering a moral
and theoretical engagement with development studies.
CONCLUSION
Having sought to map a wider terrain of the relationships between the visual
and development, we have sought to offer a case study of the ways visual
Power, Inequality, Change and Uncertainty 143
sociology can afford insights into development that are increasingly significant
in our global age. In particular, our approach has offered insights into changing
global social relations, forms of political engagement, and issues of knowledge
and authority in a globalized world. In offering some explanation of the roots of
the range of responses, the potential relevance of a postmodern framework has
been highlighted. In many senses, this would seem like the framework or non-
framework of choice as a means of explaining the contradiction and confusion
that characterise not only these findings but other research in this area (e.g. Smith,
1999). However, given our focus on the need for moral engagements with issues
of justice and inequality, we are not happy with such an approach and wish, in
our concluding remark, to suggest an alternative analysis. For whilst a lack of
moral engagement, disbelief, cynicism and irony might fit neatly into various post-
modern frameworks, we are more persuaded by Lutz and Collins’ identification
of failings of liberal humanism, exemplified by the “ambiguous” photographs of
National Geographic:
In part, the ambiguities are those endemic to liberal humanism – the paternalism and
objectification that necessarily attend the benevolent stances of the powerful (Lutz & Collins,
1993, p. 279).
They argue that such images have acted as a “conservative force whose emphasis
of a common humanity obscures ‘American relationships with the third world’ ”
(Lutz & Collins, 1993, p. 280). This is not to say that the images we used could
be characterised in this way. But it does highlight the ways in which readers
of images have been schooled in representations, as well as in wider liberal
discourses of humanity and difference, whose impact is significant in relation
to moral engagement. Thus, it is not the advent of a post-modern world, but
the dominance of western liberal humanism that disengages whilst appearing,
through appeals to individualised care and compassion, to be engaged. We
would add to this the importance of global capitalism’s atomising impact, which
compartmentalizes and commodifies both images of development, and the forms
of engagement that may follow. Thus, engagement is highly individualized, often
in the name of valorising community. Linked to this, contradictory or ambiguous
images are likely to be disregarded in the name of offering easily interpreted
and “conclusive” images. Our argument would be that it is the dominance and
contradictions of liberal humanism, themselves initimately bound up with global
capitalism, that produce disengaged moral responses to the images we have used.
Such a conclusion thus places emphasis on addressing not only the images of
development frequently deployed – something which many NGOs and media
agencies are increasingly sensitive to – but on examining and understanding the
social relations inherent in the ways such images are produced and read. We
144 MATT SMITH AND JOHN DONNELLY
would see this is as the primary and important task of a visual sociology of
development.
NOTE
1. The names of teachers and schools have been changed to preserve anonymity.
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USING VISUALS TO RELEASE PUPILS’
VOICES: EMOTIONAL PATHWAYS INTO
ENHANCING THINKING AND
REFLECTING ON LEARNING
Andrea Raggl and Michael Schratz
FINDING A SILENT VOICE
Learning is a total human experience. Research rarely reaches the grounds of the
inner world of how students experience learning. Conventional methods relying on
spoken or written language suffer from the fact that the power relationship is slanted
in the adults’ favour when young people are confronted with verbal argumentation
or pre-fabricated questionnaires. Culturally and historically speaking, this has to
do with academic tradition, founded as it is on the written word. A move beyond
the “outer” world of spoken and written language requires other possibilities of
looking into the “inner world” of schools from the pupils’ perspectives without
their (and our) falling into the traps set by language.
Rob Walker initially stirred our interest in using a photographic method in
research, as it “touches on the limitations of language, especially language used
for descriptive purposes. In using photographs the potential exists, however elusive
the achievement, to find ways of thinking about social life that escape the traps
set by language” (Walker, 1993, p. 72). His aspiration to find a silent voice for
the researcher first took body in black and white photographs. For him, looking at
photographs creates a tension between the image and the picture, between what
Seeing is Believing? Approaches to Visual Research
Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Volume 7, 147–162
Copyright © 2004 by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1042-3192/doi:10.1016/S1042-3192(04)07009-0
147
148 ANDREA RAGGL AND MICHAEL SCHRATZ
one expects to observe and what one actually sees. Therefore, images “are not just
adjuncts to print, but carry heavy cultural traffic on their own account” (Walker,
1993, p. 91).
Those ideas were further developed in Schratz and Walker (1995), who argue
that there has been a curious neglect of visual imagination in the social sciences.
“Despite an enormous research literature that argues the contrary, researchers have
trusted words (especially their own) as much as they have mistrusted pictures”
(1995, p. 72). For them the use of pictures in research raises the continuing question
of the relationship between public and private knowledge and the role of research
in tracing and transgressing this boundary. “In social research pictures have the
capacity to short circuit the insulation between action and interpretation, between
practice and theory, perhaps because they provide a somewhat less sharply sensitive
instrument than words and certainly because we treat them less defensively. Our
use of language, because it is so close to who we are, is surrounded by layers of
defence, by false signals, pre-emptive attack, counteractive responses, imitations,
parodies, blinds and double blinds so that most of the time we confuse even
(perhaps, especially) ourselves” (Schratz & Walker, 1995, p. 76).
A further study of the theoretical background convinced us of the power of
pictures in carrying out research – visuals could be instruments in helping pupils
to enhance their thinking and to reflect on their learning experiences. Elliot Eisner
uses the term epistemic seeing as a kind of knowledge secured through sight.
For him “[p]rimary epistemic seeing depends upon awareness of the particular.
Secondary epistemic seeing refers to seeing the particular as a member of a larger
set” (Eisner, 1991, p. 68). Accordingly, we see visuals as a valuable tool that assists
the learner in becoming aware of the particular while referring to the wider world.
Ricki Goldman-Segall employs the notion of points of viewing, which
encompasses “where we are located in time and space, as well as how
our combination of gender identities, classes, races, and cultures situates our
understanding of what we see and what we validate. . .. It not only brings together
our various ways of seeing and interpreting the world around us, but it also
underscores the often digital, atomistic, and random nature of how we construct
and combine knowledges” (Goldman-Segall, 1998, pp. 3–4). In particular we use
photography as a silent voice to point towards a greater story, as it offers “both
participation and alienation in our own lives and those of others – allowing us to
participate, while confirming alienation” (Sontag, 1979, p. 167).
According to constructivist theory we do not regard human behaviour as
following a trivial cause-effect relationship (cf. Glasersfeld, 1997, p. 124). We
rather tend to see it in its wholeness, the elements of which are interwoven in a
network of interrelationships, each influencing the effects of the other. Therefore, it
is the study of the social significance of human behaviour – how things, events, and
rules of interaction become meaningful within the overall framework of reference
Using Visuals to Release Pupils’ Voices 149
– which signifies the changes of the overall system and its structure (cf. Simon,
1993, p. 26). There is not only one “reality” in organisations like schools, but
multiple realities. Taking pictures offers a challenging opportunity to bring to the
fore the different layers of reality of the pupils’ world at school. To do so, the
camera offers a special lens which can be focused on the single elements of school
life – shifting between the foreground and the background enables “unimportant
details” to become the main focus of interest.
By presenting different approaches to the use of photographs we want to give vi-
sual insight into the “interconnectedness” between places, rooms, areas – and feel-
ings, emotions, associations, which usually receive little attention in education, and
much less so in schooling, where teaching is mainly based on cognitive aspects of
the curriculum. By suggesting different approaches to using visuals in research, we
offer tools and methods on how to capture learning from a more holistic perspective.
Firstly, we show how photographs help in ethnographic work in class in order to en-
hance pupils’ thinking and to make them reflect on their learning. Then we present
a photographic method which has proved to be a valuable tool in self-evaluation.
PICTORIAL ETHNOGRAPHY
Intensive methodological discussions on how to find out more about student
perspectives in creative learning were at the heart of extensive fieldwork in an
international research project on the matter (CLASP).1 It was mainly the age of
the learners which caused a rethinking of traditional methods. During fieldwork
it became obvious that it is necessary to offer young learners appropriate ways to
express their own voices. Few publications feature the authentic voices of children
or teenagers (cf. Weiss, 1995, p. 142). There seems to be a lack of trust in what this
marginalised group thinks and feels, although the learners are the key stakeholders
in the learning process. If we want to carry out research into learning from the
young learners’ points of view we have to ask ourselves: Do we know how to invite
learners to tell us their stories? And to make these stories “visible?” Handing out
questionnaires does not lead to children’s real voices.
Inviting Pupils to Narrate
Children at every age like to narrate things about their learning if we as researchers
offer them challenging ways to do so. Photographs may be very helpful in inviting
them to portray their stories of learning. While working with photos, a coincidence
led us to realize how powerful they were in stimulating pupils to talk: Andrea was
observing 13-year-old learners who were selecting a topic for a presentation. To
150 ANDREA RAGGL AND MICHAEL SCHRATZ
help themselves do that, they had brought various newspapers from home. While
they were negotiating a joint topic, she found a photograph on the front page of
one of the newspapers: A little girl with a large cornet filled with sweets, which is
given to children in Austria on their first day at school. The caption read: “Yippee
school!” Andrea showed the picture to the pupil next to her and asked him: “What
do you think about this one?” He immediately answered:
That kid’s obsessed by school. She doesn’t know what it’s like yet, so she looks forward to it.
Just wait a year and she’ll hate school. The fun disappears, unless you’re enough of a swot to
like school, like Adrian. Then you even look forward to secondary school. When you first start,
you look forward to school, but then you only look forward to seeing your friends.
It was surprising to notice how in detail this pupil had described what he associated
with this picture. Up to that moment in our experience, pupils had given only brief
replies to questions about learning and school. Here are some more comments of
what other pupils associated with this photograph:
She has no clue of what school is about! Because ‘Yippee’ – no seriously, she doesn’t know
what school is about.
She shows she’s happy because now she can go to school and has her own schoolbag. She’s
proud of it. She wants to keep her exercise-books neat and have everything nice and tidy. She
has the feeling of being more accepted now, like grown-ups at work. Yeah, she’s sitting at
her desk with her neat exercise books and she’s writing something. She’s glad to go to school
because she’s got more responsibility now, more standing, sort of. She can say: ‘I’m going to
school as well.’ Nobody can tease her anymore and tell her she’s still a kindergarten baby.
She’s laughing. She’s happy because it’s her first day at school. She doesn’t know yet what
school’s about. She should be warned against it! It was the same with my little brother and I’ve
warned him. He was really looking forward to school so I told him: ‘NOW you’re happy. You
just wait! Later on it’ll be different.’ In the first weeks he really enjoyed school. They didn’t
get any homework and they did all sorts of interesting things like projects and he got to know
other kids, new friends.
The detailed associations of teenagers sparked by a question connected to a
photograph led us to further thoughts about how this approach could be used in
various other ways. The following examples show the possibility of a multifaceted
use of photographs to enhance children’s reflections. Visuals can be seen as a door
for the (adult) researcher into the thinking world of children and as an aid in getting
them to talk about their own perspectives. The following questions seem crucial
when choosing instruments that will involve pupils in research:
� Does the chosen method suit the age of the group under study? � Does it correspond to the breadth of their curiosity, their imagination and their
open mindedness? � Does it invite learners to talk?
Using Visuals to Release Pupils’ Voices 151
The following methods came up during the fieldwork, but have been changed by
learners in the research process. One of the main insights has been that reflection in
action (cf. Schön, 1991) may be difficult to do. Therefore, it is often useful to ask
learners to reflect on or about action. Photographs are a good way to help pupils
to recall learning situations, as we can see below.
Photographs Used to Reflect About a Former Project
A project called “design days” was carried out for a week in two parallel 2nd
year classes (6th grade) of an Austrian secondary school. Together with their
teachers and with the aid of parents, the pupils worked in self-appointed groups
on different tasks to refurbish their classrooms. For example one group of learners
worked with an artist and produced big paintings for their classroom.
Photographs were taken throughout the project and were shown to the learners
some months later. The students were invited to look at the pictures in pairs
in a quiet room next to their classroom. Forming small groups can reduce
peer pressure and encourage individual learners to talk freely. It is important
152 ANDREA RAGGL AND MICHAEL SCHRATZ
for the pupils to take part in the conversations on a voluntary basis. The
photographs roused their curiosity and helped them to recall those special days
again: “That’s a long time ago!” was the first comment students made in looking
at the pictures, or they started laughing when they saw themselves in them:
“Look! I had shorter hair there!” or: “I still had those old glasses then!”
Without being prompted, they were engaged in commenting the pictures along
the way:
I can still remember when we remodelled the classroom. I liked that project because we wanted
to have a nicer room. There used to be those ugly yellow curtains. Somehow it’s much friendlier-
looking now with the comfortable lounge and the new curtains. Now we’re used to the nicer
room but in the beginning it really attracted everybody’s attention.
Two girls were looking at the first picture. It showed the two of them making a
draft sketch of a dragon on a big piece of paper hanging on the wall. Then they
began looking at the whole scene, and Karen started to relate: “We were allowed
to do it in pairs and we could choose the topic. It was great to draw such a big
picture.” Sandra added: “You weren’t forced to be quiet. You were allowed to paint
on the wall, not just on a piece of paper – it was much bigger!”
The project had taken place some months before. With the photos it was easy
for the pupils to remember what it was about and what it had meant to them.
The comments of the learners showed us that those special days were connected
with pleasant emotions. When the two girls saw the picture of the nearly finished
painting Sandra said: “We made this! You almost don’t believe that you did it
yourself because it really looks cool.” Karen added: “Yeah, cool. Although the
artist had told us to draw these stupid lines. He just started to do it and we went
on to do it, too, and then it got really nice.”
Photographs Used to Reflect About Non-Directive Education
During a teacher’s discussion with the pupils about their experiences with non-
directive forms of learning, photographs were taken. In groups they had made
posters which they presented at assembly time. The pupils had taken the pictures
during their conversations. One photograph was taken against the window so that
it was quite dark. Only some shadows of the pupils were visible. The writing on
the poster read “Self-directed Learning.” Some months later these photographs
helped everyone to latch onto the discussion again. The dark picture was used to
ask the pupils individually for their points of view. We thus hoped to shed more
light onto the controversially discussed field of non-directive learning.
Using Visuals to Release Pupils’ Voices 153
154 ANDREA RAGGL AND MICHAEL SCHRATZ
In some subjects, all they do is give you eight exercises and they tell you that you have to
do them one after the other by yourself – that’s not self-directed work for me. Self-directed
learning for me means to let pupils do things themselves as much as possible – they can do
more or less everything on their own without asking anyone . . . except for some things where
you can’t avoid it. . . . And it means to work with interesting materials, at least for half of the
time in each lesson, because you remember things much more easily if you have materials to
work with . . . . I think every second or third lesson should be self-directed, or maybe a bit less.
Not every lesson anyway, that’s no good either.
Photographs can be used to point out contrasts e.g. by showing pictures of a more
teacher – centred lesson on one side and a more learner-oriented lesson on the
other.
I prefer non-directive learning because we can work in groups and I think it‘s easier to solve a
problem together [. . .] You don’t learn it until you do it yourself. We had a saying here in the
classroom from Confucius: Explain it to me and I will forget it; say it to me once again and I
will remember it; let me do it and I will learn, or something like that. But anyway, it does work
quite well. And working in groups is just more fun than working by yourself because we can
talk and joke, and if we work together, then things work out.
While comparing the two sides of the poster focusing on the two different types
of lessons, interesting discussions took place on the following questions:
� What are the main differences between these two settings? � Which setting do you think you learn more in and why?
Visuals offer the possibility to make meaningful body language visible and to
discuss the reasons why people act differently – for example, by using photographs
of students who are concentrating on their work or of others who look bored. With
the aid of photographs it is easy for learners to describe how their behaviour
depends on the whole setting:
Marc: For me non-directive learning is something different from normal lessons, because we
don’t just sit at our desks where you have to listen to the teacher. You don’t need to depend on
the teacher and you can do some things with your friends and that’s a lot more fun.
Carol: The teacher doesn’t stand in front of you and you don’t have to copy everything from
the blackboard – you work things out by yourself. And if you think about stuff yourself and
you get the solution, then you remember it more easily.
Ann: You have more freedom to do things in your own ways and you can try them out till you
find the right answer. First you think of how it could work. Yeah, first you look to see what you
could do to get the right answer and then you try it out.
Joanna: I feel like I can understand stuff much better, when I work it out myself. Because I have
the materials and I can try it out. Yeah, I can remember things better because I can try them out
and I can find the answers on my own.
Using Visuals to Release Pupils’ Voices 155
Pupils’ stories give important insights into how they experience learning. With
the appropriate methods it is possible to invite learners to tell us adults about
their perspectives. They are able to tell their story of the reality they experience
in the classroom. Adolescents show open mindedness, curiosity and imagination
– we as (adult) researchers can learn from them how to adapt our research
methods.
PUPILS USING PHOTOGRAPHS
IN SCHOOL EVALUATION
Schratz and Löffler-Anzböck (2004) believe that the camera can be used as a tool
to deconstruct the different layers of reality in a classroom or school at large. In
taking photographs, parts of the micro system of a school can be “deranged” by
isolating elements from the whole. In the notion of Eisner’s “epistemic seeing” the
photos taken of particular places or situations can make us aware of the particular
and at the same time refer to the wider world of school life, such as school culture.
We are convinced of the power behind putting the camera into the hands of pupils,
especially when they are confronted with the question “Where do you feel happy
in school and where not?”. This aspect seems to be an important indicator for the
quality of school culture seen through the pupils’ eyes.
How Does Photo Evaluation Work?
It might be helpful to use the following step-by-step approach which has proved
successful with various student groups (cf. Schratz & Löffler-Anzböck, 2000;
Schratz & Steiner-Löffler, 1995, 1998).
(1) Self-selected groups of four or five pupils are formed.
(2) Each group discusses the four places in school where everybody in the group
feels happy, and four places they all hate.
(3) The teams decide which arrangement will best show what they wish to express,
e.g. just the place or with people in it or . . ..
(4) The members of the teams take the photographs according to what has been
decided on in 3.
(5) When the pictures are ready,2 the groups each produce a poster where they
arrange the photos and write comments on/near them to highlight what they
like or dislike and why they do so.
156 ANDREA RAGGL AND MICHAEL SCHRATZ
(6) Each group presents their poster to the rest of the class. (Usually the pupils
get quickly involved in heated discussions about their situation in the school
and about the school system in general!)
(7) The pupils present their findings to a wider audience (teachers, head teacher,
parents, members of school board etc.) with a view towards any necessary
improvement.
What Can be Evaluated by Pupils Taking Photographs?
A great number of aspects of every-day school-life may be evaluated, such as:
� how the students feel at school; � how well students, and students and teachers, communicate with each other
and with the rest of the school community, including parents and “relevant
environments”; � how democratic the school is; � to what extent teachers have accepted a “new culture of curiosity and learning”; � what condition the school buildings are in.
How the school deals with the whole project, whether it is seen simply as another
way of teaching or whether it marks the beginning of an evaluation process, depends
on the culture of the school. The extent to which a school is prepared to undertake
and support pupil photo evaluation is, therefore, an indication of how confident
the school is.
Taking Pictures for Self-Evaluation
Schratz and Löffler-Anzböck (2004) have found out that when starting photo
evaluation, it is not so much the question of how a school goes about evaluating
itself that is most important. It is more likely a question of how to convince the
school that the pupils must not be forgotten when self-evaluation takes place. It is
an issue of how to find an attractive way of getting them actively involved (and not
just when it is time to fill in questionnaires!). In general, there are two different
ways of introducing photo evaluation to pupils:
� You either start the photo evaluation in a way similar to other project work, as a
class learning method, without emphasising the evaluation aspect (People may
not want to change things afterwards);
Using Visuals to Release Pupils’ Voices 157
� Or you start by describing the project as a part of a bigger whole: the self-
evaluation programme that the school has decided to work on, particularly with
a view towards pupil involvement.
Both approaches work. The one reverted to depends on the school culture. However,
the more schools are asked to evaluate their own situation, the more they will be
asked to apply evaluation methods and instruments which capture the pupils’ view
of how they experience living and learning in school.
Examples of Places Chosen by Pupils
After several years of experience with photo evaluation in several countries (cf.
MacBeath et al., 2000, 176–182), we can give the following examples of places
or situations highlighted by pupils.
� The pupils usually choose places where they are allowed to move freely, to feel, to
smell, to work with their hands, i.e. places like the gym, where the predominance
of regular school work is weakened. � Often they prefer places in school which symbolize “the way out,” for instance
windows or the front door of the school. (Comments by one of the groups: “We
have chosen the exit door because freedom lies behind it.”) � Some areas they regard as ambiguous: the headteacher’s office at the same school,
seen positively because “you always find a sympathetic ear there,” and negatively
because “you have to justify yourself there if you have done something wrong.” � Hidden and forbidden places like the staff room are very attractive on the one
hand, because they are taboo places, but on the other hand the pupils sometimes
expect “boring lessons” or even punishment to originate from there. � Often the positive or negative “appreciation” depends on the experiences they
have had with certain teachers in certain rooms; for instance, the crafts room
gets a “minus” because the members of the group do not like their craft teacher. � Another important aspect: the children are given the chance to break taboos. For
example, they can openly deal with the toilets, almost the only place in school
where they are without supervision, and which are very noteworthy places to
take photos of.
The pictures below give a glimpse of what pupils can come up when considering
the significance of space in their schools.
158 ANDREA RAGGL AND MICHAEL SCHRATZ
Some Dos and Don’ts
Since it might be a waste of time to invent the wheel over again, the following
“hints” may help teachers to implement photo evaluation in school in a manner
that will save time:
� Make sure that the setting will produce substantial evaluation results, for instance
by watching the process of decision-making in the groups. Who are the (opinion)
leaders and the outsiders among the pupils? � Watch your time resources: all groups must be able to take their pictures without
time pressure. On the other hand it makes no sense to allow for too many pictures
or too much time for each group. An important part of the process is learning to
deal with the available time resources. � Take the pupils’ ages into consideration. With younger pupils it might be a good
idea to have two teachers available to help them while working in groups. � Use only one camera and have the pupils prepare an exact plan of the procedure:
Who is going to take which photos? (If some of the pupils are allowed to use
their own cameras you will hardly ever get all the photographs in at the same
time, because they might not be developed simultaneously! It is necessary to
have all the photos ready for the further phases of the project.)
Using Visuals to Release Pupils’ Voices 159
� Taking pictures and looking at them may evoke strong emotions. Where do
you feel happy in school and where not? carries the following message: what
young people think and feel about things is so important that it is even worth
documenting through photographs that you will use to make your opinions
public . . . – so do not be puzzled if the students get deeply involved in their
“jungle of feelings,” as they called it. This expression refers to a good relationship
between the teacher and the students.
160 ANDREA RAGGL AND MICHAEL SCHRATZ
� Another difficulty: Decision-making in the groups requires maturity as well as
communication and conflict management skills. On the other hand, by engaging
the pupils in learning by doing, this evaluation approach is an opportunity to
deal with communication difficulties and conflict resolution; the venture may
develop into a lesson on how to handle conflicts and emotions for both students
and teachers! � If the pupils decide to take on responsibility for the consequences of what they
have discovered about their situation, the teachers should also be prepared to
collaborate. Otherwise the pupils will get the feeling that their evaluation work
is not taken seriously.
The reflections initiated by such a project usually do not arise often enough during
the routines of everyday schooling. They may, however, start off a chain reaction.
Other classes may be motivated to find and present the places where they feel
(un)happy. Teachers may suddenly realise that they have not given sufficient
thought to how they themselves feel about their workplace. In this sense the photos
produced by the pupils are a valuable instrument of internal self-evaluation. Since
the study probing aspects of the school culture is not done by external researchers,
but the pupils themselves are encouraged to “look at” their own life at school, this
approach is kin to action research aimed at improving social settings in school
situations (cf. Elliott, 1991).
What we have Learnt from Photo Evaluation
We have learnt that photo evaluation requires communication and negotiation,
because photographs deal with different realities: an image is not the “reality”
it represents. Evaluation by pupils often means intervening in the process being
examined. It foregrounds the commonplace insensitivity of everyday school-life
towards the emotional needs of young people. If the school lacks a tradition of self-
evaluation or the teachers lack experience in it, particular caution must be exercised
to make sure that there is sufficient communication and negotiation between all
those involved. Self-evaluation must be connected with a “new culture of curiosity”
and with up-to-date theories of learning.
Further Ideas to Follow Up on Photo Evaluation
Photo evaluation is not a one-off activity. After you have succeeded in “stirring
up” a number of pupils by showing them a way to deal with life at school, the
method offers further opportunities. Here are some suggestions.
Using Visuals to Release Pupils’ Voices 161
� Repeat the photo evaluation with the same pupils, one year later – and discuss
with them what has changed. � Find a way to publish (parts of) the findings, e.g. the school might produce
documentation and information material for parents. � Show some of the photographs to other pupils/teachers/parents . . . and let them
guess which they think were the positive and the negative pictures. � Ask teachers to take photographs of the places they like/hate in school and
compare their results with those of the pupils. � Take pictures of meaningful “social scenes” instead of places (with people
“acting out” such scenes). � Try out a photographic approach to certain topics in the curriculum. � Ask your pupils what else could be evaluated by using photographs; they will
surely have some excellent ideas!
Photo evaluation has meanwhile been used in several contexts in and out of schools,
such as in an exploration of the issues surrounding the teaching of reading in an
Irish primary school, within the context of home-school relations (cf. English,
1997), or in an international project called “Seeing beyond Violence,” in which
children in different continents used photographs to relevant data for violence-free
family care in their villages (cf. Children et al., 2004).
NOTES
1. CLASP is an international research project funded by the European Commission, with further financial support from participating countries. The project is directed by Bob Jeffrey from the Open University, U.K.
2. The time needed to get the photos ready depends on the type of camera (regular, digital, Polaroid).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We thank Francesca Brotto in her translation support for not just looking at the
English language of our text but for also going beyond its words.
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THE USE OF THE VISUAL MEDIUM
FOR PROGRAM EVALUATION
Rosalind Hurworth
INTRODUCTION
Early in my career (similar I suspect to most other evaluators I knew of around the
world) I had never considered using the visual medium as a major form of data
for evaluations. This was not surprising, as we had been just emerged from a fifty-
year period when the social sciences relied on quantitative, positivist approaches
with the result that pictorial images were perceived to be imprecise, subjective,
representations that could not be accepted as evaluation data.
So, the first time it struck me that visual data could prove a powerful force for
change was at the end of the 1980s when I attended a series of workshops on
qualitative methods. There, I met a fellow participant who was unusual in that
not only did she hold a degree in Sociology but also possessed qualifications in
Photography. She had used this combination of expertise most effectively, to carry
out a social justice project that aimed to gain improvements in housing within an
inner Sydney suburb. Photographs were taken of the homeless and those living in
poor conditions nearby, and these were mounted in the foyer of the local Town
Hall, with quotations from associated interviews placed under each photo. The
resultant exhibition made such an impact that the local Council made concerted
efforts, very soon afterwards, to improve housing for the less fortunate in the area.
About the same time I came across an article by D’Amico (1986) that revealed
once again how the use of photographs could empower the powerless. In this
instance the study focussed on poor settlements in Buenos Aires and photographs
Seeing is Believing? Approaches to Visual Research
Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Volume 7, 163–181
Copyright © 2004 by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1042-3192/doi:10.1016/S1042-3192(04)07010-7
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164 ROSALIND HURWORTH
had been taken by researchers studying “towns and society.” The photos were then
compiled in a book planned as a lobbying tool to encourage programs for social
change. Although the pictures had been taken by a university team, the residents
decided which photos should be included and the captions again were individuals’
comments as they talked to each other when viewing the photographs.
However, after this awakening to the potential power of the visual as a medium
to enable change and improvement, I then returned to my usual practices and did
not think of using visual data again until about five years later when I was contacted
by the (then) President of the Australasian Evaluation Society. He explained that
the organising committee for the forthcoming AES Conference had decided to try
something novel and cutting-edge by evaluating the conference using photographs
as data. However, the person contracted to undertake the task was no longer able
to do so. The problem was that the Conference was imminent, the project had been
well-advertised, and the printed program announced that there would be a plenary
session, during which the process would be described and results presented on
the final afternoon. The now panic-stricken President threw down the gauntlet and
challenged me to undertake the task. So through a “baptism of fire,” I found myself
thrown in at the deep end. Nevertheless, this led eventually to an enduring belief
that knowing how to manage this form of data collection should be part of every
evaluator’s “methods toolkit.”
Lessons From Others Who Had Considered
the Use of Visual Image for Evaluations
Once given the job of carrying out a photographic evaluation I realised that I needed
to find out more about how others had dealt with such tasks. The obvious course of
action was to look at relevant literature. However, I should have suspected that there
was relatively little, for in conversation with other evaluators, comments would
arise such as; “I’d like to use photos too, but there doesn’t seem to be much about
it in the evaluation literature” or; “Have you come across any good articles about
the collection and analysis of photographs in evaluation? – because I haven’t!”.
So I was not surprised when a thorough search failed to produce much beyond
material written by a few sociologists, anthropologists or qualitative researchers
(e.g. Ball & Smith, 1992; Brown et al., 1982; Collier & Collier, 1986; English,
1988; Hockings, 1975; Petersen & Brown, 1979; Wagner, 1979; Yogev & Shapira,
1982). However, I wanted material that was associated directly with evaluation and
a few gems emerged so that later I went on to produce an annotated bibliography
from the most useful material (Hurworth, 1996).
So what was talked about? Firstly, some authors wrote in general terms about
the potential of photographs for evaluations. For instance, Fang (1985a, b) listed
The Use of the Visual Medium for Program Evaluation 165
possible advantages such as: systematic recording of program activity; highlighting
specific events; illustrating a point; leading the evaluator to specific people,
activities and places; verifying findings; offering multiple perspectives of the same
event; and creating variety within reporting. In addition, he pointed out that during
the act of taking a photo, evaluators need to consider sampling of events to shoot,
record keeping, composition, obtrusiveness as well as technical aspects such as
film speed and lighting.
Other articles reported evaluations that had actually used photographs or videos
as data and then went on to consider the ramifications. For example, Brown,
Petersen and Sanstead (1980) discussed the potential for using photography within
program evaluation generally, and then proceeded to show how they applied
photographic evaluation to studies of a student orientation program and a hall-
of-residence program. During their discussion, the authors explored the potential
of the camera to evoke evaluative responses and to produce images for the reporting
of findings before going on to enumerate issues associated with ethics, bias and
obtrusiveness.
The use of photography as an evaluation technique was also discussed by
Watchman (1978) in relation to an evaluation of the ESSENCE environmental
science curriculum project. In this case images were used in order to carry out
clarification and monitoring forms of evaluation. Consequently, the camera was
used during site visits in an attempt to portray the workings of the project and to
convey an understanding of the associated curriculum in schools.
Also writing about the use of the camera in educational settings Falk (1976)
described how photographs were used to assess the extent of student participation
in an outdoor education program for 10–14 year olds. Several more traditional data
collection methods to evaluate levels of participation were found to be lacking and
so it was decided to try photographs as data. The camera was placed in a fixed
position at a location that ensured coverage of at least 90% of students and then
shots were taken at two-minute intervals. The data collected was then organised
to record the ratio of students involved to the number of students involved in the
activity. The task was approached quantitatively and validity was regulated by
seven people coding each photo. Overall, photography was found to be a useful
and relatively unobtrusive tool for providing a measure of involvement and Falk
drew the conclusion that photography could be an invaluable tool for evaluating
curriculum outcomes and impacts on student behaviour.
In similar vein Hine et al. (1970) reported on the use of photographs to evaluate
the success of a school art program. Each of 144, 9–10 year old children were asked
to take three shots of an object during the school year to see if learning would carry
over and influence what they did in the way of selecting and positioning objects they
chose to photograph. Results indicated that for the authors the use of photography
166 ROSALIND HURWORTH
as an evaluation technique was sound and of particular value for children who have
had a limited environmental enrichment.
Another evaluator who found the visual image to be particularly effective was
Margolis (1990) who reported that photographs and videos can portray the reality of
a program in a way that words cannot. Consequently, in a street outreach program in
San Franscisco visual representations were used to illuminate the social processes,
events, relationships and meanings of both the culture of intravenous drug users
and that of the outreach program workers.
However, perhaps some of the most comprehensive information about the use
of the visual image was provided by Patricia Templin, one of the most prolific
writers about the use of photographs in evaluation. She concentrated on technical
aspects of carrying out data collection such as how to sample and how to maintain
equipment (Templin, 1978, 1979a, b, 1981, 1982).
So, armed with this information produced twenty to thirty years ago, how has
the use of the visual medium been applied to evaluation settings with which I have
been involved in the last few years? And what lessons have been learnt? These
matters seem to be particularly necessary to address because, although there has
been a considerable revival of interest in the use of the visual medium for research
(Banks, 1995, 2001; Emmison & Smith, 2001; Prosser, 1996; Rose, 2001; Walker,
1993), the world of evaluation has remained virtually silent about the use of the
visual image since the late 1980s.
Firstly, I present situations where the use of photography and video seems to
have had particular potency in the field of evaluation and to present some examples.
Indeed, I will show that in some instances visual data is really the only form of
data that can be used. I then go on to suggest ways that the visual image adds value
to evaluations before considering ways that common criticisms to the approach
can be overcome.
TYPES, AND EXAMPLES, OF EVALUATION WHERE
THE VISUAL MEDIUM HAS BEEN FOUND TO BE
PARTICULARLY USEFUL
I, my students and others have found the use of photographs or videos to be
particularly useful when:
(1) There is a Wide Range of Activity to be Documented
Examples
(i) an evaluation of a school fête (with food stalls, white elephant stalls, rides,
competition booths etc.);
The Use of the Visual Medium for Program Evaluation 167
(ii) an evaluation of an international conference (Hurworth & Sweeney, 1992)
(where there were wide-ranging activities such as registration, paper sessions,
poster presentations, social events, meals etc.).
(2) Stakeholders are unable to participate in other forms of
data collection, such as surveys or in-depth interviews
[even though the evaluation question(s) may suggest otherwise]
Examples
(i) studies of small children
e.g. a project to examine kindergarten effectiveness for three year olds
(Hurworth & Fergusson, 1988). Because the children involved were so young,
traditional techniques, such as the use of interviews or questionnaires, were
out of the question and so it was decided to use the visual medium as the main
way to collect data. Using a quasi-experimental design, the group was divided
in half with 20 children who attended a program (experimental group) and 20
who remained at home (control group). 1200, 30 second clips of children’s
activity and behaviour were collected and coded at the beginning and end
of the program, thereby enabling an assessment of each child’s change in
cognitive and social behaviour.
(i) physically or mentally handicapped program participants
e.g. an evaluation of a program for those with severe cerebral palsy.
Again common forms of data collection were totally inappropriate as these
participants had little or no mobility, speech or writing ability. So to assess
program engagement and level of success, the only solution was to take
pictures and make videos of eye movement and expression.
(iii) those for whom English is a second language or who have low literacy levels
e.g. one of my students works for the Salvation Army and trains past
alcoholics and drug addicts (often with migrant or disrupted educational
backgrounds) to enter the workforce as kitchen hands, waiters or chefs. They:
enter (often in an unkempt state); are cleaned up; undertake initial training;
go on to work/serve in the Salvation Army’s canteen for their own hostel
residents; do more training; and then finally work in full chef’s uniform/waiter
livery with full silver service in a restaurant that is open to the public. However,
in order to obtain another round of funding, the program had to be evaluated.
The trainer realised that conventional evaluation methods were unlikely to be
appropriate for this group and so decided to make a short video to depict the
initial, mid-point and end stages. The presentation of this to decision-makers
took just a quarter of an hour. After reviewing the dramatic changes that had
taken place, the program was re-funded for another two years.
168 ROSALIND HURWORTH
(iv) large groups of people or the public
Again, with large numbers of people, it is not feasible to administer surveys
or to conduct interviews, so for mass education programs the visual image
may be the best or only option. Examples include:
(a) an evaluation of police crowd control programs at sporting events;
(b) photographic monitoring of the sun-protection behaviour of sports’
spectators (Borland & Theobald, 1990). This evaluation arose because
Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world and so the
response has been to introduce an education program for the public called
“SunSmart.” This involves messages about applying sunscreen, wearing
sunhats, and covering the body. In order to assess the program’s impact
it was decided to carry out a longitudinal, photographic survey of public
behaviour during certain major summer sporting events. So, examining
and coding photographs (regarding the wearing of hats, widths of brims,
lengths of sleeves etc.) at the same events annually (taking weather
conditions into account) was considered an effective way to measure
changes in spectator sun protection behaviour.
Mass education programs (such as “Sunsmart”). Can use photographs as data.
The Use of the Visual Medium for Program Evaluation 169
(3) The Visual Image can be Used as an Unobtrusive Measure
Example
To examine the degree of acceptance of the Sunsmart Program outlined above,
further photographs of people in swimwear were examined in summer editions
of women’s magazines over a fifteen year period. The photographic images were
coded according to tanning levels portrayed (and as hoped, as years progressed,
the levels decreased and there was more evidence of hat-wearing and of less torso
exposure).
(4) The Objectives of a Program are Abstract and are Therefore Difficult to
Articulate or Measure
Example
Another former student was a captain in the Royal Australian Navy. Similar to the
example just described at 2 (iii), the program for which he was responsible was
Photographs can depict programs that have abstract objectives (such as
“Teamwork”).
170 ROSALIND HURWORTH
under threat and he needed to demonstrate that it was of benefit to participants.
This course had to be completed before applying for promotion from Petty Officer
to Warrant Officer and the objective for the program was to increase teambuilding
capacity. As this is an abstract concept, those involved found it extremely difficult
to talk or write about the program in a way that would provide rich and useful data.
In desperation the Captain came to discuss how he might overcome these problems.
I suggested that he take a series of slides, spanning the variety of program activities,
showing how men worked in teams. He did this and captured some very powerful
images (such as 9 men standing on a one metre square slab, pulling men through
tyres under water and helping to convey men from one tree to another thirty feet
above ground). After a ten-minute presentation of forty slides, the “powers that
be” congratulated him on running an excellent program and it was re-funded for
another three years.
(5) Programs are Highly Visual in Themselves, Such as Programs in the Arts
Example
Our Centre was commissioned to determine best practice elements of successful
Arts Programs in Victorian schools. While visiting sites to collect material for
case studies, many photographs were taken of art artefacts, dramatic productions,
musical events and so on. This helped to convey exactly what was occurring and
being produced in schools (Owen et al., 1989).
(6) A Program Leads to Change Over Long or Short Periods of Time
Examples
(i) There are currently many evaluations taking place of local Land Care
programs. In Australia rural areas have been resourced to tackle problems
such as increased salinity, soil erosion and river pollution. Frequently in Land
Care literature and evaluation reports, photographs are provided to illustrate
“before and after.” For instance; “Here is a photograph of the area denuded of
soil and this is the same area three years later with reafforestation and grasses
sown to bind the soil.” These images provide strong and immediate evidence
of change.
(ii) Sometimes photographs reveal the historical evolution of programs. For
instance, Dowdall and Golden (1989) examined photos of a mental institution,
taken over a hundred years, to show how the treatment of patients has changed
over that period.
The Use of the Visual Medium for Program Evaluation 171
(7) The Physical/Locational Context of a Program is Particularly Important
Examples
(i) Post occupancy evaluations of buildings. This type of evaluation has been
pioneered in recent years by Watson (1995) an architect in New Zealand, so
that architects are responsive to the changing needs of people who use the
buildings that architects have designed. Using both a walkthrough interview
with various stakeholders as well as the use of photographs of building
elements, discussion forms the basis of recommendations to improve future
building designs and usage.
(ii) An evaluation of whether a particular location is suitable as a leadership
Centre for schools. In this instance, interviews produced supportive evidence
from those attending a leadership program that the rural location chosen as
the site was appropriate. Photos taken by the student participants were able to
illustrate and support interview statements contained in a report (Bell, 2004).
(iii) An evaluation of programs run in Ugandan schools. If a report were presented
as text only then there could be misperceptions of the context or it could
be difficult to imagine. By providing pictures of what schools look like in
Uganda, the reader gains greater understanding of program location, resources
and difficulties.
(8) Carrying out Interactive, Empowerment, Participatory or
Collaborative Evaluations
The use of photographs can foster interactive type of evaluations to effect social
change by asking participants to take the photos themselves or to be discussants
within photo-interviewing approaches.
Examples
(i) Using photos to bring about change in a community development and housing
project.
The North Melbourne Tenants’ Association (NTMA) is a representative
body for people of diverse ethnic origin living in public housing in that suburb.
The NTMA’s Community Officer was keen to empower residents and a photo
project was perceived to be one way to achieve this by encouraging residents
to work together to practice decision-making. Eventually, a dozen residents
became involved and the group decided they wanted to answer the question:
What is it like to live in North Melbourne? They wanted the photographs
to reflect both positive and negative aspects and, consequently, the project
172 ROSALIND HURWORTH
evolved into an evaluation of local living conditions. Each team member
was allocated a disposable camera and eventually 120 photos were taken
from which 100 shots were selected providing an effective lobbying tool for
change. Displays of photos were mounted outside polling stations and the
library at the time of local government elections. Within days of the elections
change occurred. The Dept. Housing sent tradesmen to deal with particular
maintenance problems highlighted by the photographs.1
(ii) Informing and improving women’s health
A form of photo-interviewing is referred to as photo novella (picture stories)
or photovoice (Wang et al., 1996) where participants show the photos they
have taken to talk about their significance and meaning. Consequently, these
types of interviewing aim to be a tool of empowerment enabling those who are
marginalised to communicate to policy makers where change should occur. An
example of this approach was carried out by Wang, Burris and Xiang (1996)
who used the technique with rural women in China to inform and influence
improvements in women’s health.
WHAT ELSE CAN THE VISUAL IMAGE ADD
TO EVALUATIONS?
While being appropriate for particular types of evaluations the visual image can
also:
� provide visual communication � enable non-verbal information and imagery not available by any other means � enable improved understandings about context and interactions � invoke visual description that helps to develop insights � allow the evaluator to understand events, settings and people more easily � help to the interpret meaning of behaviours by connecting ideas with visual
counterparts � be more hard hitting than prose � provoke emotional responses � assist to document a culture.
In relation to types of data collection, the use of the visual medium can additionally:
� form an extension of participant observation � be considered a form of document analysis
Furthermore, in connection with evaluation reporting it also allows:
The Use of the Visual Medium for Program Evaluation 173
� variety in reporting � (in some instances) long and tedious reports to be dispensed with altogether, as
presentation of short videos or sets of pictures only requires a few minutes in
comparison with the considerable time required to read lengthy reports. This is
greatly appreciated by extremely busy decision-makers!
WAYS OF OVERCOMING ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH
THE USE OF THE VISUAL IMAGE IN EVALUATIONS
What has been presented so far in this chapter has promoted the positive attributes
of the visual medium for evaluation. However, there are always cynics or detractors
who argue that the collection and use of photographs as data is prone to criticism
because of shot selection and subjectivity associated with interpretation (even
though we know that variable selection and interpretation of results from statistical
procedures can also be considered equally subjective!). Often there are claims that
images can only be thought of as “happy snaps” with no rigour attached.
One person who considered such issues was Becker (1979). He raised questions
about the veracity of interpretations and suggested that if we are going to use the
visual medium for applied social science, we need to know whether images can be
trusted as evidence, i.e. whether and how they “tell the truth.” He then presented
some clear ways of thinking about this problem. Firstly, he began by clarifying
the question “Is it true?” and then provided a way to proceed, saying we must
first specify what we are receiving the “truth” about and to ask ourselves what
evaluation questions the photograph might be answering. However, he suggested
that it is also possible to raise our own questions. Becker then discussed threats
to rigour while emphasising that: the truth may not be the whole truth; the truth
will not usually be thought trustworthy by the use of photographic images alone
but will need multi-method triangulation such as using photos in conjunction with
interviews or document analysis; we can never be absolutely sure of the truth of
an assertion; and no single standard of proof is acceptable for all stakeholders
and evaluation purposes. To conclude, Becker compiled a catalogue of specific
problems in the use of photos as data such as faking shots, the production of art
rather than reality, poor sampling, the lack of adequate theory and editing what
can be seen. Similarly, Templin (1978–1982) attempted to tackle matters such as
sampling.
However, I suggest that for use in evaluation it is a matter of trying to be
just as rigorous as with any other data collection technique in order to produce
credible and trustworthy data. Additionally, strengths and limitations must be
acknowledged in both design and data collection phases.
174 ROSALIND HURWORTH
Therefore, I suggest that common criticisms raised can be addressed in a number
of ways such as by:
1. ENSURING THERE IS A STRONG EVALUATION
QUESTION/THEORY TO DRIVE THE PROJECT
It is impossible to arrive at a site to take photographs without some kind of
theoretical base to drive the evaluation. Therefore, to create rigorous projects there
have to be questions in place. For example, in relation to the conference evaluation,
the question that allowed us to make sense of the situation being photographed
was; “Are the needs of the delegates being met?” and for the kindergarten study; “Is
the program effective in terms of cognitive and social growth?” Of course, if using
a qualitative approach, new questions may arise as more visual images are taken
and analysed. This can help to refocus the evaluation and guide the investigative
process.
2. USING TRIANGULATION, IF NECESSARY, TO
STRENGTHEN THE EVALUATION DESIGN
In order to avoid criticism, one common way is to triangulate using multiple
methods. By using photographs or videos in conjunction with other methods such
as interviews, surveys or focus groups, collaborative evidence can be assembled.
Indeed the combination of photographs with interviews has been considered
a strong approach for evaluations. For example, Dempsey and Tucker explained
the techniques and challenges of using photo-interviewing as a tool for evaluation
(Dempsey & Tucker, 1994; Tucker & Dempsey, 1991). They explained how this
tool offers great promise when trying to collect holistic material, claiming that the
approach is flexible and can detect unpredictable as well as expected behaviours.
They also argued that the use of photographs in this way acts as stimuli as
well as verifiers, and prompts reflection that goes far beyond typical evaluation
interviewing contexts that do not use visual cues. They also outlined a nine-step
process associated with how to carry out photo interviewing effectively before
demonstrating how the approach was used successfully within several settings
such as evaluations of a graduate 40-hour media course, a graduate hypermedia
workshop and a high school chemistry program. Since then, I have looked at the
development of photo-interviewing for research and evaluation in some detail and
emphasised the strength of this approach (Hurworth, 2003).
The Use of the Visual Medium for Program Evaluation 175
3. CHOOSING A RIGOROUS SAMPLING TECHNIQUE
There are various sampling approaches available (see Templin’s work) each of
which has advantages and disadvantages that need to be articulated. These are
now examined with an example of the type of an evaluation question appropriate
for using the particular sampling technique outlined.
(a) Fixed time sampling
Process: Pictures are taken from a fixed position at regular intervals (e.g. once
an hour).
Example: An evaluation of the use of a particular area/space in a library to
see whether it is used effectively or whether it should be used for some other
purpose.
Advantage: Reveals shifting patterns accurately (as long as the camera is set
at the right angle and isn’t moved).
(b) Sampling across time
Process: Pictures are taken at regular intervals across a full range of activities
during a set time period.
Example: An evaluation of an all-day rehearsal for a school musical with
photographs taken every half hour of the stage, behind stage and orchestra
areas.
Advantage: Shows progression of a range of activities over a set time period
(although it may fail to show interesting activities between times).
(c) Event-based sampling
Process: One element of a program, rather than the whole program, needs
evaluating and so photographs/videos are taken of this type of activity only.
Example: In regard to a school fête the principal needs to know how effective
the food stalls are and whether to increase the number for the following year.
Advantage: Focuses on events in a certain category.
(d) Dimensionally-based sampling
Process: When there are constraints of either time or space, making it
impossible to cover the whole range of activities, a sample of each category
may be selected.
Example: Emergency management training covers all types of emergency from
fire-fighting to mine disasters and from tanker oil spillages to terrorism. It
may not be possible to take photos related to all aspects of such training when
evaluating it and so the evaluator might decide to take three shots pertaining
to fire-fighting training, three related to dealing with mine disasters, three
associated with training to deal with terrorism etc.
176 ROSALIND HURWORTH
Advantage: Offers some degree of representation of what happens across a
program.
(e) Shadow sampling
Process: Involves following one person or group through an entire day/routine
in a program.
Example: What is it like to be a training officer in an agricultural extension
program?
Advantage: Offers a focus and deeper understanding (although care must
be taken with subject selection and to make sure that program activities are
covered).
(f) Snowball Sampling (also known as Web or Network) sampling
Process: Asking a stakeholder who, or what else, might be photographed or
videoed.
Example: You are interested in documenting well-decorated art classrooms.
You know of one and ask the teacher there if they know of another. They
send you to another school where you ask this second teacher if they know of
another setting and so on.
Advantage: Gives access to unknown examples, as long as the person asked
possesses knowledge and networks.
(g) Theoretically informed sampling
Process: The evaluation question may require the evaluator to take pictures
differently e.g. from different angles, from behind subjects or lower down to
get a child’s viewpoint etc.
Example: What does work in a hospital ward look like from the patient’s
perspective? In this case photos may need to be taken lying down in a hospital
bed.
Advantage: Can address the evaluation question directly.
4. ALLEVIATING THE EXTENT OF
PHOTOGRAPHER/FILMER INFLUENCE
Similar to participant observation, there will always be some evaluator effect
that influences program participants’ behaviour. This can be exacerbated with
the introduction of equipment such as a camera or video-camera. However, we
have found that increased presence (i.e. prolonged engagement) is likely to lead to
camera acceptance. Indeed, after a while those being viewed come to ignore the
equipment. For instance, in the conference evaluation described earlier, everyone
would turn to look at us during the first day but by the third day virtually ignored us.
Then for the effectiveness of kindergarten for three year olds evaluation we realised
The Use of the Visual Medium for Program Evaluation 177
that reactivity might occur and so decided to pay several visits and “filmed” each
time without any film in the video camera. This allowed children to become familiar
with us coming to film so that when it was “for real” they were able to ignore the
filming activity and simply acted normally.
5. ENSURING ORIGINAL IMAGES ARE NOT
TAMPERED WITH
Similar to how evaluators maintain entire interview tapes and transcripts without
editing or changing the language in any way, visual images must be treated in the
same way. This means ensuring there is minimal distortion regarding line, angle or
light. It also means making sure that there are no: altered photos; retouched photos;
composite negatives; highly edited videos; use of models; falsifying or staging the
setting; cropped photos; and out-of focus images. In other words images are meant
to capture “reality” and “truth” rather than to create “art.”2
6. RECOGNISING ETHICAL AND PRIVACY ISSUES
In an article written in 1990, Fang and Ellwein concentrated some discussion
on the issue of ethics when using photographs in evaluation. They emphasised
that the public nature of photographs carries ethical implications for application
in evaluation practice but mainly they expressed concern about accuracy of
representation, lack of a proper sampling plan, and non-explanation of selection.
However, they did emphasise that informed consent must be obtained.
In the same year, Lubeck (1990) also discussed such issues in relation to
photographs taken within a community mental health facility. Within such a
program environment, special issues can arise with the use of photographs such as
possible exploitation of the in-mates who may not understand the implication of
the photographer’s release form. This is also true of visual images taken of small
children or school students. Consequently, in evaluation projects where we have
been involved with educational settings, we have always asked parents, teachers or
schoolchildren whether certain photographs or videos can be used. Another way
to deal with such issues is to take photos from the rear, side, or from a distance so
that individuals are not able to be identified easily.
7. EXPLAINING ANY SELECTION BIAS
The evaluator needs to explain any selection bias imposed by the client, political
situation, the evaluator’s own convictions or by social taboos. For instance, in one
178 ROSALIND HURWORTH
evaluation there were fewer photos than intended when examining a swimming
program for Moslem girls in schools. Parents were not keen to have their teenage
daughters photographed and so their wishes were respected.
Another way to overcome a common criticism that “only the best (and therefore
atypical) pictures have been chosen” to illustrate a report is to include galley proofs
as an appendix. This then demonstrates that there were additional, similar photos
from which to choose.
8. MAKING ANALYSIS PROCESSES TRANSPARENT
Similar to all other types of social science data collection the analysis of the
visual image must be carried out and reported rigorously. In fact, the advantage
of pictorial evidence is that it can be analysed quantitatively, qualitatively or
by using both approaches (Hurworth & Sweeney, 1992). In addition there are
now a number of qualitative data analysis software packages such as Atlas-ti,
HyperRESEARCH, Qualitative Media Analyzer or VisualText which have the
facility to deal specifically with photographic and video images.
CONCLUSION
I have endeavoured to demonstrate that the visual image can be a particularly
useful, powerful and rigorous tool that can be used in a range of both qualitative
and quantitative evaluation designs.
However, there are still some evaluation clients and funders unwilling to
recognise the visual image as a major data source on the grounds of subjectivity,
possible bias of the photographer and reactivity of those being photographed
or filmed. To overcome such criticism, evaluators and stakeholders need to be
encouraged to move away from the view that photographs and videos are merely
subjective and illustrative. They need to realise that the use of visual images as
a source of data requires the same kind of approach and decision-making as any
other type of rigorous data collection for evaluation purposes, that is:
What sampling approach will be utilised?
How do we ensure rigour and trustworthiness when using this data collection
method?
What ethical issues have to be considered?
How will images be analysed?
Will the use of visual images assist in answering evaluation questions?
The Use of the Visual Medium for Program Evaluation 179
Will they provide useful information from which to make decisions?
How will results be conveyed?
Once these major issues have been addressed, then it is more likely that those
commissioning and carrying out evaluations will accept the use of the visual image
as a mainstream data collection tool within the evaluator’s repertoire.
NOTES
1. For further details of this and some of the other projects above see Hurworth and Sweeney (1995).
2. Until recently these actions have been easier to promise and achieve but with the increasing use of digital cameras all of this will need to come under scrutiny. This is because getting rid of unwanted photos or video clips, cropping, editing and so on are attractive features of this recent technology.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Pat Allatt is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Teesside, U.K.
Tim Dant is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of East Anglia, U.K.
Carolyn Dixon is a researcher and an independent artist.
John Donnelly is Senior Lecturer in the Sociology and Criminology Division at
the University of Northumbria, U.K.
Alan Felstead is Professor of Employment Studies at the Centre for Labour Market
Studies at the University of Leicester, U.K.
Barbara Harrison is Professor of Sociology at the University of East London,
U.K.
Rosalind Hurworth is Director of the Centre for Program Evaluation within the
Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Nick Jewson is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Labour Market Studies at the
University of Leicester, U.K.
John Martin is Principal Lecturer in Economic and Social History at De Montfort
University, U.K.
Ruth Martin was the Research Assistant for the “Asian Leicester” project.
Sarah Pink is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences at the
University of Loughborough, U.K.
Christopher Pole is a Reader in the Department of Sociology at the University of
Leicester, U.K.
Andrea Raggl is a Research Assistant in the Department of Teacher Education
and School Research at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
Michael Schratz is Professor of Education at the Department of Teacher Education
and School Research of the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
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184
Matt Smith is a Lecturer in the Sociology and Criminology Division at the
University of Northumbria, U.K.
Sally Walters is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Labour Market Studies at the
University of Leicester, U.K.
