Twelfth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

The photographic image and photography-based technologies play an important and varied role in almost all sectors of culture and society, and within the different disciplines that seek to develop knowledge about these domains. While the gradually developing fields of ‘visual social science’, as preferred venues for visual and image-based research, involve more than using (static) photographic image technologies, this study focuses on the central role of (still) photography. It provides a systematic and critical discussion of photography-based methods ranging from analysing existing or ‘found’ visual data of a variety of sources, the production of visual materials by the researcher, to approaches that try to actively involve the field through using visual materials in interview situations, or to prompt the subjects of research to become producers of their own visual data and views, and finally to the emerging opportunities to ‘communicate’ insight in novel, more ‘expressive’ ways. Photography as a technology and a multifaceted cultural practice clearly entertains varied exchanges within the social sciences but there is still a considerable amount of unrealized potential. Technological innovations need to be interrogated in terms of their specific advantages and limitations and translated in novel methodologies to become serviceable to research. They may literally expand our field of vision but at the same time they also involve more radical redefinitions of the position of the researcher and the researched, both in literal and more metaphorical sense.