Visual Ethnography

Some notes from Doing Visual Ethnography by Sarah Pink (1).

• “Pure image” and “pure word” are not viable. p.21.
• A purely visual approach to culture cannot exist. p.21.
• Ethnography is an approach to experiencing, interpreting and representing culture and society. Creating and representing knowledge based on the ethnographer’s own experiences. p.22.
• Not objective. Subjective (but loyal to experience.) p.23.
• Any experience is never just one thing. Open to interpretation. p.23.
• Reality is subjective and is known only as it is experienced by individuals. p.24.
• Gender, age, perception of photographer etc impacts how images and technology can be used. p.24.
• Modern / “conventional” ethnographic research oppresses female approach to knowledge. p.26.
• Female gaze, male gaze, colonial gaze. p.27.
• 4 contexts of fieldwork; fieldwork being carried out in the domestic interior, mobility of informants, online “field”, human imagination and dreams as a “field.” p.28-31.
• Is it possible to observe and record reality? Visible ≠ true. p.31.
• Research on people vs research with people. p.32.
• Reality cannot necessarily be observed visually. p.32.
• Images produced by individual photographers express  the shared notions of the individual’s society. p.35.
• Individuals produce images that respond/ refer to established connections that have developed in and between existing ‘visual cultures.’ p.35.
• Categories of photography (amateur, professional, family snapshot, etc.) are culturally constructed and individually understood and experienced. p.36.
• The distinction between categories is ambiguous. They can be in multiple categories simultaneously. p.36-37.
• Extraction of knowledge form informants < co-production of knowledge. p.39.

(1) Pink, S 2007, Doing Visual Ethnography, Sage Publications Ltd., London