Sarah Pink shares insights in her book Doing Visual Ethnography: Images, Media and Representation in Research on how photography, video and hypermedia can be used in conducting ethnographic research. In order to understand Pink’s argument in the book it is important to define two of her key terms: ethnography and reflexivity. First, Pink defines ethnography “as a methodology … an approach to experiencing, interpreting and representing culture and society that informs and is informed by sets of different disciplinary agendas and theoretical principles. Rather than a method for the collection of data, ethnography is a process of creating and representing knowledge (about society, culture and individuals) that is based on ethnographers’ own experiences. It does not claim to produce an objective or truthful account of reality, but should aim to offer versions of ethnographers’ experiences of reality that are as loyal as possible to the context, negotiations and intersubjectivities through which the knowledge was produced.” (22)
Second, Pink defines reflexivity in relation to ethnography the following way: “A reflexive approach recognizes the centrality of the subjectivity of the researcher to the production and representation of ethnographic knowledge. Reflexivity goes beyond the researcher’s concern with questions of ‘bias’ or how ethnographers observe the ‘reality’ of a society they actually ‘distort’ through their participation in it.” (23) Moreover, Pink argues that “by focusing on how ethnographic knowledge about how individuals experience reality is produced, through the intersubjectivity between researchers and their research contexts, we may arrive at a closer understanding of the worlds that other people live in. it is not solely the subjectivity of the researcher that may shade his or her understanding of reality, but the relationship between the subjectivities of researcher and informants that produces a negotiated version of reality. (24)
In the introduction she contrasts the scientific-realist approach with what she calls the ‘reflexive’ approach to the visual in ethnography. Pink critiques the scientific-realist approach to the visual in ethnography when she writes: “The approach of those visual sociologists who have aimed to incorporate a visual dimension into an already established methodology based on a ‘scientific’ approach to sociology … does not allow the potential of the visual in ethnography to be realized.” (5) The visual is subordinated to the project of a scientific sociology and forced to “subscribe to the dominant discourse.” (5) Pink continues her critique of the scientific-realist approach by arguing that “to prove the value of the visual to a scientific sociology that is dominated by the written word, thus effectively evaluating the worth of images to research on the terms of a sociological agenda that has rejected the significance of visual meanings and the potential of images to represent and generate new types of ethnographic knowledge.” (6) Thus, scientific-realists suppress insights and knowledge that could emerge if the visual in ethnography would not be subordinated to the project of scientific sociology.
In contrast, Pink is an advocate of the ‘reflexive’ approach to the visual in ethnography. Pink argues “that to incorporate the visual appropriately, social science should, as MacDougall has suggested, ‘develop alternative objectives and methodologies’ (1997:293).” (6) According to Pink this entails, “abandoning the possibility of a purely objective social science and rejecting the idea that the written word is essentially a superior medium of ethnographic representation. While images should not necessarily replace words as the dominant mode of research or representation, they should be regarded as an equally meaningful element of ethnographic work. Thus visual images, objects, descriptions should be incorporated when it is appropriate, opportune or enlightening to do so.” (6) Ultimately Pink agues, “that there is no essential hierarchy of knowledge or media for ethnographic representation. Academic epistemologies and conventional academic modes of representation should not be used to obscure and abstract the epistemologies and experienced realities of local people. Rather, these may complement one another as different types of ethnographic knowledge that may be experienced and represented in a range of different textual, visual and other sensory ways.” 96)
In her discussion on ‘reflexive’ approach to visual ethnography Pink raise the question of appropriateness of visual ethnographic methods. She states that “researchers should maintain an awareness of how different elements of their identities become significant during research. For example, gender, age, ethnicity, class and race are important to how researchers are situated and situate themselves in ethnographic context. [….] In some fieldwork locations where photography and video are prohibitively costly for most local people, their use in research needs to be situated in terms of the wider economic context as well as questions of how the ethnographer’s own identity as a researcher is constructed by her or his informants. (24) This points to the significance of how the context should be taken into consideration in determining whether or not visual ethnographic research is suitable. There is a need to also choose the technology wisely that will be used in the visual ethnographic research. How do we encounter and learn about our neighbor – does our research give people dignity or does it undermine their dignity?
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