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Photography, Literature, and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Approach for the Representation of the Truth and the Reality

The verisimilitude of truth of photography has placed it as an unequalled medium representing and expressing the reality. Yet, its widespread use as an art, the selection and exclusion of certain subjects that may be related to the ideology held by the photographer problematize such assertion. This essay will critically engage, through a few examples, with this difficulty in twentieth century's context. The problem of photographic representation, say of poverty, or war or labour exploitation will be addressed as in many cases they end up becoming fashionable clichés. While so doing, the essay will show how the use of literary narrative and photographic representation together may address the problem, and that may again confront difficulties in an age ubiquity of images.

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The visual vernacular: embracing photographs in research

A Qualitative Space
Open access
Published: 02 June 2021
Volume 10 , pages 230–237, ( 2021 )

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The increasing use of digital images for communication and interaction in everyday life can give a new lease of life to photographs in research. In contexts where smartphones are ubiquitous and many people are “digital natives”, asking participants to share and engage with photographs aligns with their everyday activities and norms more than textual or analogue approaches to data collection. Thus, it is time to consider fully the opportunities afforded by digital images and photographs for research purposes. This paper joins a long-standing conversation in the social science literature to move beyond the “linguistic imperialism” of text and embrace visual methodologies. Our aim is to explain the photograph as qualitative data and introduce different ways of using still images/photographs for qualitative research purposes in health professions education (HPE) research: photo-documentation, photo-elicitation and photovoice, as well as use of existing images. We discuss the strengths of photographs in research, particularly in participatory research inquiry. We consider ethical and philosophical challenges associated with photography research, specifically issues of power, informed consent, confidentiality, dignity, ambiguity and censorship. We outline approaches to analysing photographs. We propose some applications and opportunities for photographs in HPE, before concluding that using photographs opens up new vistas of research possibilities.

Using Visual Methods to Hear Young Men’s Voices: Discussion and Analysis of Participant-Led Photographic Research in the Field

What’s in an Image?: Towards a Critical and Interdisciplinary Reading of Participatory Visual Methods

The Ethics of Visual Research and Participant Empowerment

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

A Qualitative Space highlights research approaches that push readers and scholars deeper into qualitative methods and methodologies. Contributors to A Qualitative Space may: advance new ideas about qualitative methodologies, methods, and/or techniques; debate current and historical trends in qualitative research; craft and share nuanced reflections on how data collection methods should be revised or modified; reflect on the epistemological bases of qualitative research; or argue that some qualitative practices should end. Share your thoughts on Twitter using the hashtag: #aqualspace

Introduction

Smartphones, tablets, and other devices are increasingly embedded in everyday life, influencing how many people interact, think, behave and connect with other people [ 1 , 2 ]. Many people Whatsapp, tweet and text, and/or use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for professional, social, educational and entertainment purposes. Images are increasingly accessed and used where words would have been used in the past. Indeed, more than 10 years ago, van Dijck [ 3 ] suggested that “digital cameras, camera phones, photoblogs and other multipurpose devices are used to promote the use of images as the preferred idiom of a new generation of users.”

The increasing use of digital images for communication and interaction in everyday life has given a new lease of life to a source of research data long embraced by sociology and anthropology [ 4 , 5 ]. In contexts where smartphones are ubiquitous and with groups of “digital natives” asking participants to share and engage with photographs, this aligns with their everyday activities and norms more than textual or analogue approaches to data collection. Thus, it is time to consider fully the opportunities afforded by digital images and photographs for research purposes [ 6 , 7 ].

This paper joins a long-standing conversation in the social science literature which advocates moving beyond the “linguistic imperialism” of text [ 8 ] to embrace visual methodologies. This conversation has relatively recently made its way into health professions education (HPE): for example, various authors have proposed video [ 9 ], video-reflexivity [ 10 ] and drawings [ 11 ] for research purposes. However, the use of still images or photographs in research remains niche to some areas of inquiry (e.g., exploring patient experiences, particularly mental health and experiences of serious illness (e.g., [ 12 , 13 , 14 ]) and some healthcare professions disciplines (e.g., nursing: [ 15 ])), and is an under-exploited approach in HPE research (see below for notable exceptions). Yet it is a method which offers many possibilities, particularly in respect to giving research participants more agency and power in the research process than is the case in traditional qualitative data collection approaches such as interviews.

In this paper, we discuss ways of using photographs in research, focusing on the use of photography within participatory research inquiry. We consider ethical and philosophical challenges associated with photography research, as well as its unique strengths. We outline some popular approaches to analysing photographic data. We finish with a brief consideration of how photographs could be used more in HPE research.

The photograph as data

Photography has been described as a silent voice, another language to communicate with and understand others, and a way of accessing complexities which may not be captured by text or oral language [ 16 ]. As instances of Latour’s “immutable, combinable mobiles” [ 17 ]—literally things which do not change but which carry action and meaning across time and place, as objects of memory and of relationship—photographs allow us to see what was “happening” at a particular point in time.

Photographs can be a source of data (photo-documentation and existing images) and a tool for eliciting data (photo-elicitation and photovoice). Each of these approaches are explained below.

Photo-documentation

Photo-documentation has been used in clinical medicine for nearly two centuries [ 18 ] Clinical photographs and images are vital for training purposes, to illustrate a clinical finding, steps in a process or procedure, or for comparative (“before” and “after”) purposes. They are an integral part of patient’s clinical notes in numerous specialties and are also used to offer the patient insight into realized or expected treatment results [ 19 ].

This way of using photographs—as objective records documenting an objective something—is quite different from how photographs are used in social science research. In fields such as sociology and social anthropology, photography has been used as a tool for the exploration of society [ 4 , 5 ]. Photographs help others understand how societies are culturally and socially constructed, to critically uncover the meaning people place on certain activities, places, things and rituals and to record and analyse important social events and problems. It is on this second use of photographs in research that we focus from this point onwards.

Existing images

A second way of using photographs in research is analysis of publicly available images: in other words, analysis of secondary (photographic) data. There are examples of this approach in medical education in relation to the messages given by images on public-facing documents and webpages, and how these might influence student choice of medical school [ 20 , 21 ]. Visual data is also used in research examining the relationships between architecture/space and learning [ 22 , 23 ]. Photographs can show us how people and things relate to each other. For example, what can we learn from a photo illustrating how staff are distributed around a coffee room, or around the table during a morbidity and mortality (M&M) meeting? Documenting the materials of a research space in a photograph serves as a mechanism for tracing the complexity of the field (see Fig. 1 and its accompanying explanation).

A photograph as an elicitation tool. Collected as part of a sociomaterial study to document the material complexity of simulation led by MacLeod. This photograph of a manikin in a typical simulation suite could serve as a useful elicitation tool in a study of simulation. Rather than asking research participants to use their memories to imagine a simulation suite, the photograph provides concrete detail, helping to reorient participants to the space. Rather than using a phrase like “simulation is complex”, the photograph serves as “evidence” of the complexity, documenting multiple non-human elements involved in a simulation at a particular time and place. This clarity can provide a jumping-off point for more detailed and specific conversations about the topic being studied

Photo-elicitation

In photo-elicitation (sometimes called photo production [ 24 ] or auto-photography), the specific area of focus is typically decided by the researcher. The photos are either taken by the researcher or participants.

In researcher-driven photo-elicitation the researcher decides on what people, objects, settings and/or scenes they find interesting or potentially important enough for a picture. These photographs are then used as prompts for discussion within an interview with the researcher. The photo(s) is a prompt to elicit data, akin to an open question in a semi-structured interview. Unlike interview or focus group questions however, participants not only respond to photographs with extended narratives but also supply interpretations of the images, drawing from and reflecting their experiences.

In participant-driven photo-elicitation, control of data collection is handed over to participants who have the freedom to pick and choose the representation(s) which is most salient to them in relation to the question under study. For example, to explore children’s experiences of hospital, Adams and colleagues [ 25 ] asked children to photograph architectural or design features that most interested them in a vast hospital atrium (the hospital’s primary non-medical space, full of shops, restaurants and so on). The children’s photographs were then used as the anchor to dialogue [ 26 ].

Participant-driven photo-elicitation empowers the participant to both choose the image and drive the dialogue about the image. Consider a picture of an alarm clock set to an early hour. This becomes meaningful only when the photographer explains that this image signifies their transition from student to first trained job. While the participant’s perspective on the transition to practice could potentially be accessed using traditional words-alone methodologies, photographs are different because they present what the participant felt was worthy to record, help capture the immediacy of the experience and stimulate memories and feelings. In other words, one of photo-elicitation’s strengths, and how it differs from interviews and focus groups, is its potential to collect data that not only taps into the perspective of the participant but does so at the time of the experience.

Images seem to prompt a different kind of reflection on lived experiences. Harper [ 26 ] suggests that images prompt emotions and thoughts in ways that narrative alone cannot. By seeing what they did, informants may help the researcher to better understand their behaviour. Moreover, by viewing and discussing photos together, the researcher and participant actively co-construct meaning. In this way photo-elicitation offers a way to potentially enrich and extend existing interview methodologies and give a combination of visual and verbal data for analysis purposes [ 27 ]. Furthermore, the act of interpreting an image creates a critically reflective space within the research process which is lacking in interview methods. Leibenberg suggests that “collectively then, images introduced into narrative research create important links that participants can use to more critically reflect on their lived experiences and to more accurately discuss and share these experiences with others” [ 28 , p. 4].

Arguably however, if the main source of data is not the photographs themselves but the transcripts from photo-elicited discussions, this may still privilege participants who are more skilled verbally—maintaining the “linguistic imperialism” of text, or, more accurately, of transcribed responses [ 8 ]. While this criticism cannot be wholly dismissed, the many empirical studies referred to in this paper suggest that photographs help make abstract ideas accessible and encourage reflection in groups which are less literate and who do not routinely engage in reflection. Moreover, there are approaches to data analysis which privilege the image, not the accompanying text (see below).

A specific research method within the bracket of photo-elicitation is photovoice. Developed by Wang and Buriss in 1997, photovoice involves asking community members to identify and represent their community through specific photographs and tell the stories of what these pictures mean, promoting critical dialogue and potentially catalysing social action and change [ 29 ]. Photovoice allows people to see the viewpoint of the people who live the lives, and as such is considered an example of participatory research [ 30 ]. For example, MacLeod et al. [ 31 ] asked adolescent youth to take photographs pertaining to the health of their community. The adolescents created a platform for discussion, and helped the researchers, who were medical students, learn about the community they were serving. Photovoice is often used to access and explore patient experiences, particularly mental health and experiences of serious and/or life-threatening illness [ 12 , 13 , 14 ].

The ease of taking photographs with a mobile phone has opened up new ways to utilise the photovoice methodology, particularly the method of “time-space diaries” [ 32 ] or digital journals. Participants record what is meaningful to them across time and activities, such as what and where they ate over a full day, or salient events in the first few weeks of medical school. Just like non-research social media activity, a series of images can provide insight into real, lived experiences and give participants a voice to reflect on their everyday lives on issues relevant to the research topic. Consider a resident taking pictures of things and people who were significant to their first experience of a full weekend shift. The nature of the images may change over time, reflecting exposure to different patients, working with different colleagues, task demands and fatigue.

In summary, the nature of photographs as data varies according to who produces them, whether they are independent of the research or created specifically for the research, how they are used in the research process and whether they are used in conjunction with narrative (verbal) data. These key decisions can be synthesised, according to Epstein et al. [ 33 ], into three basic questions:

Who is going to make or select the images to be used in the interviews?

What is the content of the images going to be?

Where are the images going to be used, and how?

How photographs and accompanying narratives can be analysed is discussed next.

Data analysis

There are two main ways of approaching photographic data analysis. The first, the dialogic approach, focuses on analysing the verbal or written reflection on the content of photographs and what they symbolise. This approach is fundamentally constructivist, “locating visual meaning as foundational in the social construction of reality” [ 34 , p. 492]. Traditional ways of analysing verbal/transcribed data such as thematic analysis [ 35 ], content analysis [ 36 ], grounded theory [ 37 ] and various forms of discourse analyses [ 38 ] are appropriate for analysis of photograph-prompted dialogue. In this approach, the photographs themselves are usually used merely for illustration purposes, if at all [ 38 ].

Alternatively, the data can be within the photograph itself, separate from its capacity to generate dialogue and independent of any explanation. Photographs can provide new ways of seeing the phenomena under study from their visual features. For example, in their analysis of existing images on medical school websites and prospectuses in 2019, MacArthur, Eaton and Marrick [ 21 ] recorded information including gender, ethnicity, assumed role and setting, of each person on each image. They found a predominance of hospital-themed images, compared to few community-themed images. They concluded that these images signalled to students a strong preference for hospital-based settings, despite a strong national drive to recruit more general practitioners.

This approach to analysis is referred to as “archaeological” because images inherently reflect the social norms of a point in time. Consider your graduating class photograph. Clothes and hairstyles which were chic at the time may look old-fashioned and incongruous when viewed many years later. In this way, photographs contain “sedimented social knowledge” [ 34 , p. 502], manifest through the photographer’s choices of scenes, subjects, styles, compositions and so on. An educational example of this is presented in Photograph S1, found in the Electronic Supplementary Material (ESM).

Grounded, visual pattern analysis (GVPA) combines both approaches [ 39 ]. Via a structured, multi-step process of analysis, GVPA investigates the meanings individual photographs have for their photographers and also attends to the broader field (sample) level meanings interpreted from analysis of collections of photographs. Paying attention to absence (what is not photographed) is also important [ 40 ]. The analysis process ends by building conceptual contributions rather than purely empirical ones from the photographic data (see Photograph S2 in ESM).

Whichever analysis approach is taken, as with any qualitative research, it is important to consider quality and rigour in respect to the credibility, dependability, confirmability and transferability of the data [ 41 ]. Providing details of the sampling strategy, the depth and volume of data, and the analytical steps taken helps ensure credibility and transferability. Photo-elicitation allows participants to work with and direct the researcher to generate data that is salient to them, thereby increasing the confirmability of research outcomes. Allowing participants to clarify what they meant to convey in their photographs is inherently a form of member checking. As for all research, ethical considerations should be considered and addressed, as well as a clear statement made on formal research ethics committee approval or waiver. Thought must be given to the power relationship between researcher and participants and how this might affect recruitment, the nature of the data and so on. Reflexivity, reflecting on the extent to which similarities or differences between researcher and researched may have influenced the process of research, is particularly critical in photo-elicitation studies [ 42 ]. Keeping written field and methodological notes as well as a reflexive diary is important for dependability and confirmability.

Finally, in terms of data presentation, in our discipline most journals have a limit on the number of tables, figures and/or images allowed per paper, and most do not publish colour photographs. This limits the visual data which can be presented in an article. However, journals also offer the option of supplementary e‑files. We suggest that one or two pictures in an article can support key evidential points, with additional data made available electronically.

Ethical considerations associated with photographs in research

As with any method, care must be taken to ensure the proper use of photographs for research purposes. Here we briefly consider the main ethical issues of power, informed consent, anonymity, dignity and image manipulation. We direct readers to Langmann and Pick [ 43 ] for more in-depth discussion.

In any researcher/participant situation, there is a power dynamic that privileges the “expert” researcher over the object of study, the participant. Certain ways of using photographs in research, specifically photo-elicitation, can change this dynamic and empower participants by giving them an active role in the research process, making them the experts, and allowing the researcher greater insight into participant perspectives [ 29 , 30 ]. Photo-elicitation also gives those who are not verbally fluent another way to express themselves effectively, avoids the use of survey questionnaires and other research instruments that might be culturally biased, and places participants as equals—able to reflect and decide how they want to represent themselves visually [ 43 ]. Photo-elicitation is thus firmly rooted in an approach to inquiry that draws on Paulo Freire’s (1970) critical pedagogy [ 44 ] and fits within the broader participatory action research method [ 29 , 30 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 45 ].

The use of mobile phones for data collection is considered a way of connecting younger groups with research [ 46 ], connecting with populations in more remote and rural communities across the globe [ 47 ] and with “difficult to reach” populations (e.g., [ 14 ]). However, it is important to again acknowledge the “digital divide” and the associated power differential: marginalised populations and certain societal groups may not have access to equipment to take and share photographs. Where this is the case, the researcher must consider whether to supply the necessary equipment or whether an alternative method of data collection is more feasible.

Informed consent

Informed consent is particularly challenging with photographs. It is difficult to ensure that every person in an image has given their consent to the photo being taken and used for research purposes. Where images are participant-generated, clear instructions about the purpose of the research and the photographs, and the processes of ethical consent, are essential [ 48 ].

Confidentiality

Confidentiality is an issue, particularly if a photograph includes a person’s face. Faces can be pixelated or blurred to protect participants’ identities, but these approaches may objectify the people in the photo and make the photographs less powerful [ 48 ].

Our third point relates to dignity. Langmann and Pick [ 43 ] suggest three ways of considering dignity in research photography: being sensitive to the social and cultural norms of the communities being researched, being aware that those who are the focus of the research will benefit by the presentation of an authentic view of the situation and considering the impression the photograph will give if and when it is published. In all cases, it is the researcher’s responsibility to exclude photographs which are not covered by ethical approvals, as well as any potentially harmful or compromising photographs.

Photographs can mean different things to different people [ 24 , 49 ] and meanings may change over time, depending on context and how they are associated in terms of text and other images (for example, one’s interpretation of a photograph taken as a teenager is likely to differ when viewing it as an adult). This ambiguity makes some researchers uncomfortable. However, if one takes a social constructivist stance, that we live in a multi-reality world, then this possibility of multiple meanings from a photograph adds to the data.

Conscious and unconscious “self-censorship”, including when, where or what to photograph, or editing a photo to convey an intended message, is inherent in photo-elicitation [ 45 ]. However, self-censorship is not an issue if one accepts that the purpose of photo-elicitation is to access the social reality of another individual.

Strengths of using photographs in research

Participation and co-construction.

As mentioned earlier, photo-elicitation and photovoice maximise opportunities for participant agency and engagement in the research process, allowing participants to work with and direct the researcher. Furthermore, in dialogic approaches, research involves a joint process of knowledge-production where narratives are co-constructed between participant and researcher through discussion. By using participant-driven photographs, the researcher gains an understanding of what the content of the photos means to the participants without imposing their own framework or perception of a topic on the process.

Participatory research requires trust, a safe space between participant and researcher, so people can express their thoughts and views. Wicks and Reason [ 50 ] suggest that establishing this safe space must be considered throughout the research process: empowering participants in the earlier stage of the research process can also build the connection and trust between researcher and participant—and reduce participant inhibition later on. This may be particularly useful where the topic is sensitive or taboo. For example, Meo [ 51 ] reported photo-elicitation was useful in tapping “class and gendered practices” (p. 152) in greater depth than with interviews alone.

Giving power to participants within the research process can be challenging for researchers. Adjusting to participants as co-researchers may be new and unfamiliar. Continuous flexibility and reflexivity on a personal (e.g., personal assumptions, values, experiences, etc. that shape the research) and epistemological (e.g., the limits of the research that are determined by the research question, methodology and method of analysis) considerations are critical [ 52 ].

Photographs provide structure to an interview, giving the researcher something to return to, to elicit more detailed discussions and/or trigger memories and reflection [ 53 ]. In addition, participants often give information about people or things outside of the photo (the invisible) as well as on who and what are visible [ 52 ]. Similarly, the researcher may be able to access parts of participants’ lives that would be difficult to see into otherwise. For example, Bourdieu argues that visual methods of research may be particularly helpful in investigating habitus, ways of being, acting and operating in the social environment that are “beyond the grasp of consciousness” [ 54 , 55 ].

Snapshots in time and of space

As mentioned earlier, photographs are inherently snapshots in time. They also provide snapshots of space, a means of examining the material assemblages of space, of how things are ordered and used [ 56 ]. For example, a photo of students in a learning space would illustrate who sits with whom, the spatial relationships between humans (e.g., student and student, students and teachers) and the non-human (e.g., bags, laptops, phones, snacks) (see Fig. 2 as an example).

An example of a photograph representing the assemblage of time and space: Students distributed in the space of a contemporary learning suite. Photograph from a publicly facing webpage on a medical school website. This photograph provides an example of how a photograph captures space and time. It provides a glimpse at a contemporary medical school. The photograph serves to document the complexity of modern medical schools, making clear the digitized learning environment. Such a photograph might evoke emotion and a sense of progress, in particular, when contrasted with more traditional images of students learning in a stadium-style lecture theatre

Applications and opportunities

Looking forward, we encourage researchers to consider the use of photographs as a source of data, as a way of accessing data that might otherwise have been obscured or overlooked if we had relied solely on language-based data. We encourage readers to consider what might be learned were we to augment current understanding by incorporating photographic data sources into healthcare professions research. In Table S1, found in ESM, we suggest some outstanding research questions and topics that could be explored. The list found there is by no means exhaustive. Rather it reflects our own interests and observations and should be regarded as a springboard to help readers consider diverse ways in which photographs may add richness in research endeavours.

There are many ways of conducting qualitative research in health professions education research (HPER). All have their affordances and limitations. In this article, we have offered a critical examination of how photographs can be used to generate rich and potentially different data to that generated through talk-only data collection. Using photographs in HPER research opens up new vistas of research possibilities, whether as a means of accessing snapshots of people and situations in time and space and/or as a means of engaging participants collaboratively, to explore taken-for-granted lived experiences which may not otherwise be accessible. This is a fertile area for future research and the empirical potential is vast, ranging from reflective practice to widening participation to questions which are as yet unknown.

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Acknowledgements

This paper was inspired by JC’s move to Singapore, a society which uses photographs rather than text in all spheres of life—as proof of payment or parcel delivery, to illustrate a point, to share information, to advertise an event, etc.

The authors neither sought nor received any funding for this project.

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Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

Jennifer Cleland

Division of Medical Education, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada

Anna MacLeod

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JC suggested and coordinated this collaborative effort, initiated the writing outlines and drafts. AM helped create and revise outlines and drafts. Both authors contributed significantly to the intellectual contents, gave approval of the version to be published and agree to be accountable for the work.

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Correspondence to Jennifer Cleland .

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J. Cleland and A. MacLeod declarethat they have no competing interests.

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This is not applicable as no human or animal subjects were involved in the creation of this paper.

Supplementary Information

40037_2021_672_moesm1_esm.jpg.

Table S1 Potential applications and opportunities for using photographs in qualitative HPE research. This is arranged by area of Interest (e.g., simulation), potential research question, philosophical underpinnings, methodology, method and analysis for ease

40037_2021_672_MOESM2_ESM.jpg

An archeological example of the complexity of distributed medical education. Taken in the audio-visual control room of a video-conferenced medical education program (from MacLeod’s photograph research cannon)

40037_2021_672_MOESM3_ESM.docx

This example features a photograph from a publicly facing webpage on a medical school website. The combination of the photograph and its accompanying text would lend itself well to a Grounded Visual Pattern Analysis (GVPA)

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Cleland, J., MacLeod, A. The visual vernacular: embracing photographs in research. Perspect Med Educ 10 , 230–237 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-021-00672-x

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Received : 28 October 2020

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Accepted : 21 April 2021

Published : 02 June 2021

Issue Date : August 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-021-00672-x

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Photography as a Research Method with Learners in Compulsory Education: A Research Review

This article offers a review of thirty-one research articles from 2001–2019 on the use of photography as a research method with learners in compulsory education. Understood within the scope of ‘visual’, ‘participatory’ and ‘arts-based’ research methods, many scholars have linked the increased use of the photographic method to greater awareness of the rights of the child and changing understandings of children as full ‘human beings’ with agency rather than simply vulnerable ‘human becomings’. Nevertheless, photography is still a relatively under-utilised approach in research with learners in school-based compulsory education and its use is not widespread globally. Against the background of the history of visual and photographic methods in general and in education in particular, this article highlights two key themes in the empirical research literature: why the photographic method is used (dealing with representation, participation and emancipation); and how the photographic method and the photos themselves are used (pre-generated and participant-generated photographs). It closes with a reflection on what may be holding back its expansion, including key ethical concerns, and a proposal for encouraging its use in education.

1 Introduction

It has been argued that the research methods that social researchers use should be applied creatively so that they can be made ‘fit for purpose’ ( Kara, 2015 ). With this responsibility in mind, a plethora of visual ( Banks, 2001 ; Pink, 2001 ; Rose, 2001 ), arts-based ( Leavy, 2008 ; Knowles & Cole, 2008 ) and participatory ( Reason & Bradbury, 2008 ; Chevalier & Buckles, 2013 ) methods have been evolving, particularly over the last four decades. Scholars have linked this development to a number of shifts, two of which can be related to children and young people and school-based research. The first shift is in understandings of children and young people that came around the time of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, and particularly the legal obligation for the ‘best interests’ of children to be taken into consideration, and the views of children to be taken into account on anything that affects them ( Lundy, 2007 ; Lansdowne, 2011 ; Hanna, 2019 ). The second shift relates to the movement within the sociology of childhood that began to more vocally advocate the appreciation of different childhoods where children were increasingly seen not as a vulnerable collective who needed protection, but as individuals holding agency to act on their world and the capacity for independent thought: as fully-fledged ‘human beings’ rather than simply ‘human becomings’ ( James & James, 2004 ). These two shifts, it may be argued, lead to the conclusion that children and young people should be allowed to ‘represent’ themselves to the world ( Prout, 2001 ). Therefore, it is sometimes argued that these, more creative methods hold the potential to offer a more holistic, inclusive and flexible approach to exploring social realities – and a more enjoyable and engaging research experience – particularly with children and young people as research participants ( Thomson, 2008 ; Stirling & Yamada-Rice, 2015).

One method that may be included within this shifting methodological landscape is photography. Used widely within anthropology from the late 19th century, it now holds a firm place in 21st century research methods literature ( Banks, 2001 ). However, while photography has been used fairly frequently as a method in some other fields, as will become clear from the limited number of research articles that were available for this review, it is still a relatively under-utilised approach in school-based compulsory education. This is despite the enduring and perhaps growing salience of visual culture due to the widespread use of social media among younger people in particular ( Woodfield, 2014 ), a conundrum that this Special Issue seeks to take some steps towards addressing.

Against such a background, this article offers a review of thirty-one empirical research articles from the past eighteen years (2001–2019) on the use of photography as a research method with learners in compulsory education. It considers the development of visual and photographic methods in research in general and within educational research in particular. Then it presents the scope of this research review and the search strategy employed to find the articles included within it. Following this, it moves on to the two main themes that emerged from reviewing the research papers, namely: why the photographic method is used (dealing with the key motivations of representation, participation and emancipation); and how the photographic method and the photographs themselves are used (distinguishing between pre-generated and participant-generated photographs). It closes with a reflection on what may be holding back its expansion, including key ethical concerns, and a proposal for encouraging its use in education.

2 Visual and Photographic Methods in Social Research

Photography has variously been described as a ‘visual’, ‘visual ethnographic’, ‘participatory’ and ‘arts-based’ method, depending on how and with whom it is used. Photography first began to be used as a research method within anthropology and ethnography in the early 20th century, when photographic equipment became accessible to researchers ( Banks, 2001 ). In this sense the camera was usually used by the researcher-photographer as a way of capturing an aspect of a community: as ‘photo-documentation’ ( Rose, 2001 ). Since then, the method has seen various evolutions, and particularly a significant movement towards being used as a way of involving participants in the research process itself, either through using ‘found’, researcher-produced or pre-existing photographs, or through participants producing photographs themselves.

Key scholars who have been active in the field of visual ethnography over the past two decades include Sarah Pink (2001) , Gillian Rose (2001) , and Marcus Banks (2001) , who have explored the various debates and dilemmas that have arisen as the method has evolved. For example, in her monograph, Pink (2001) proposes that images are everywhere, ‘inextricably interwoven with our personal identities, narratives, lifestyle, cultures and societies, as well as with definitions of history, space and truth.’ (p. 17) She therefore concludes that visual ethnographic researchers must appreciate the interlinkage between the oral/aural and the visual, for ‘[j]ust as images inspire conversations, conversations may invoke images…images are as inevitable as sounds, words or any other aspect of culture or society.’ (p. 17) Rose (2001) highlights issues of representation in terms of the extent to which an image can represent an object, person, place, time or concept; related to this is the issue of ‘audiencing’ which can influence how a particular image is understood and interpreted, a huge challenge for researchers in any qualitative research but perhaps particularly in visual research. Banks (2001) proposes that visual research is a ‘collaborative project between image maker and image subjects’ and so, social researchers ‘[can]not pretend that they can somehow transcend their humanity and stand outside, merely observing’. (p. 112) There have also been notable contributions from Claudia Mitchell (2011) in her monograph Doing Visual Research and Pat Thomson’s (2008) edited collection Doing Visual Research with Children and Young People . Many of the key debates explored in these monographs and volumes emerge also from the articles selected for this research review and will be returned to later.

In terms of photography in particular, it may be said that its use as a research method has expanded significantly, being used in very different ways to cover different topics and work with different groups of people, to serve different ends and to address or challenge some ethical issues. There have been notable edited collections published from the 1960s onward, such as John Collier’s collaboration with Malcolm Collier in their book Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method . ( Collier & Collier, 1967 ) One of the best-known pioneers in this area has been Caroline Wang (along with Burris in the early days) who from 1997 began to publish on ‘photo-voice’ or ‘participatory photography’ in health and community contexts (see, for example, Wang, 1999 ). ‘Photo-voice’ is a method that involves participants documenting their experiences through photography and then discussing them, with a view to bringing about criticality, empowerment and change, all within a participant-led environment. ( Wang, 1999 ) It is an approach that has been used quite extensively within community settings, where a research participant will often have the use of a disposable camera and will therefore be able to take photographs within their daily lives. In this way, Wang has inspired a whole generation of researchers who wish to use a participatory approach to research, where participant-researchers are fully informed and leading and moulding the research in some way. It is also strongly associated with ‘photo-elicitation’ (Collier & Collier, 1986; Harper, 2002 ) whereby participants describe the photographs and sometimes write short inscriptions for them, that may or may not be shared publicly. However, ‘found’ or researcher-generated photographs have also been used as a way of sparking discussion or debate or tapping into a memory. Both of these approaches will feature in the themes of this research review below.

What may be apparent so far is that the best-known scholars in photography as a research method appear to be located outside of the field of education. While its use within social science research in general may be traced to the 1960s, as Kaplan, Lewis and Mumba (2007) noted, it is very difficult to trace the origin of the photographic method within compulsory education; in 1998 Wetton and McWhirter wrote on health education, in the same year, Prosser (1998) discussed the fact that text is normally more highly valued than images in educational research, and the earliest research paper that could be found for inclusion in this review was from 2001, which investigated sociability and cooperation among 4–5 year olds in England, using researcher-generated photographs ( Broadhead, 2001 ). There are some notable, more recent contributions specific to education that will interest the reader. There is extensive treatment of photographic methods in Miles and Howes’ (2015) edited collection Photography in Educational Research: Critical Reflections from Diverse Contexts . There is also the Wylie Handbook of Ethnography in Education from 2018 which includes a chapter on visual ethnography in education that refers to photography and covers such aspects as ‘participatory photography’ and ‘photo-elicitation’ interviews as well as the challenges of getting access to research sites due to institutional review boards ( Holm, 2018 ). However, while compiling this research review, what became clear was that, although photography as a research method is quite common within the early years of education, as well as in community (non-school) settings and other anthropological or sociological research ( Barker and Smith, 2012 ), it appears to be used less often with learners within compulsory education. Returning to Kaplan et al., they noted this in their work over a decade ago (2007) but it could be argued that the field has not expanded significantly since then. This is despite the fact that the method is clearly and continually being developed in other fields, while appreciation and understanding of visual culture grows. This is a curious point that will be explored more fully in the concluding section of this article, where ethical concerns and understandings of children will feature.

3 Scope of this Review and Search Strategy

This research review is a qualitative, narrative review (Efrat et al., 2019) focused solely on the use of photography as a research method with learners in compulsory education. This type of review aims to ‘survey the state of knowledge in a particular subject area and offers a comprehensive background for understanding that topic.’ (p. 21) It is based on articles in English language journals that report empirical research as this is the only language in which I am fluent. Therefore, it is unsurprising that many of the articles have been written by English native speakers in English-speaking countries.

In terms of search strategy, I followed Reed’s stages (2017). I did an initial general search based on Google and Google Scholar, looking for ‘photography as research method’ to check on terminology. After reading generally about visual and photographic methods, I then turned to academic databases, beginning with Scopus. I did a Boolean search of titles, key words and abstracts, with my search terms refined to ‘photography’, ‘education’/’school’/’learning’ and ‘research’ and ‘method’. I limited the disciplines to ‘arts and humanities’ and ‘social sciences.’ I also limited the search to research articles and excluded books and book chapters. I did not limit the time period at this stage, although I was aware from my initial reading that very little was available from before the early 2000s. I also did not limit the country focus. This brought up 135 research articles. I also used the references in the selected relevant papers that were more broadly on ‘children’ and ‘photography’ to plug gaps, particularly of papers that did not appear on Scopus. Some of these used the term ‘participant photography’ or ‘photovoice’ or ‘visual’ or ‘arts-based’. Finally, I searched the Taylor and Francis journal website to fill in any remaining gaps. After a brief review of titles and abstracts, I excluded papers that did not relate to compulsory education (a significant number). Once I had briefly scanned these articles, I also excluded those that did not focus on the use of the method with learners specifically.

In total the review is based on 31 articles that report empirical research studies. The findings focus on key themes that emerge from this research review. The list of papers included in this review can be found in Table 1 and in list form at the end of this article.

Cover Beijing International Review of Education

4.1 Why Photography is Used: Representation, Participation and Emancipation
4.2 How Photography and Photographs are Used: Pre-generated, Researcher-generated and Participant-generated Photographs
5 Summary and Reflecting on the Prospects for Photography as a Research Method in Education
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The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd edn)

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20 photography as a research method

Gunilla Holm, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki

Published: 02 September 2020
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This chapter discusses the development of photography as a research method in the social sciences. It describes the different types of photographs used, such as archival photographs and photographs taken by the researcher, and it focuses especially on photographs taken by participants. The uses of different approaches to obtain photographs and issues of interest concerning each approach are presented. The most common approaches to analyze photographs, such as content analysis, discourse analysis, and ethnographic analysis, are described. Interesting and challenging questions about the interpretation and presentation of photographs are raised, such as the impact of the researcher’s and participants’ habitus on the interpretation of photographs. Finally, ethical issues in research using photographs are considered, especially the meaning of informed consent, and confidentiality in photographic research is emphasized.

We encounter numerous photographs or visual pictures many times every day. They might range from photos on billboards to mug shots in a newspaper or photos of family members on a person’s work desk. We notice and process most of these images on a superficial level, but some impact us more. They affect us more profoundly, emotionally, or intellectually. Overall, our culture is becoming more and more visual, with images saturating our environment not only through the more traditional modes like television, newspapers, and magazines, but also through smartphones and social media, like Facebook. Despite living in a visual age (Gombrich, 1996 ) and the visual saturation of our culture, photographs are underutilized in social science research.

This chapter explores how photography has been used in social science research and what the current developments are. Commonly, we refer to visual methods and visual research, but here we can distinguish between two major kinds, namely, film/video research and research using photography. Within both fields are many ways of using videos and still photos. For example, with regard to video, the researcher can do the videotaping, but in recent research family members also act as co-researchers, videotaping another family member at home in the absence of the researcher (Holm, Sahlström, & Zilliacus, 2018 ; Sahlström, Pörn, & Slotte-Lüttge, 2008 ). Likewise, for photography, photos can be taken by the researcher or the research participants, or existing photographs can be used. Videos and photographs require different kinds of analyses and are reported in different ways. Although there is a considerable variety and complexity of work arising from the two methods, in this chapter I provide an in-depth discussion only of the use of photographs in social science research.

Even though some people thought that digital photography might bring about the end of photography, it simply changed photography and made it even more popular. For example, since 2010, when Instagram was launched, 40 billion photographs have been shared, and 95 million photographs are now shared every day ( https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics ). On Facebook, on average 350 million photographs are shared on a daily basis ( https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/47-facebook-statistics/ ). Furthermore, there are 3.5 billion photos shared every day on Snapchat, one of the most popular social messaging/ photo-sharing apps in the world ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/257128/number-of-photo-messages-sent-by-snapchat-users-every-day/ ). In addition, the estimates for the number of advertisements we see every day range between 4,000 and 20,000, but on average we are exposed to about 5,000 advertisements per day ( https://stopad.io/blog/ads-seen-daily ).

The emphasis on visual images and visual culture is also evident in the numerous textbooks on visual culture produced since 2010. A classic text in social sciences first published in 1999 is Evans and Hall’s Visual Culture: The Reader (Evans & Hall, 2010 ). The book theorizes photography and provides theoretical perspectives, as well as a gender and race perspective on photographs. The difference between a visual and a textual research culture is well expressed by Kress and van Leeuwen ( 2006 ) in their statement,

But even when we can express what seem to be the same meanings in either image—form or writing or speech, they will be realized differently. For instance, what is expressed in language through the choice between different word classes and clause structures, may, in visual communication, be expressed through the choice between different uses of colour or different compositional structures. And this will affect meaning. Expressing something verbally or visually makes a difference. (p. 2)

This difference is important in visual research. Different data and different results are obtained through different ways of doing research. The search for a better understanding has led to a rapid increase in the use of photography in social science research. Visual culture research includes many kinds of visuals, such as art pictures, graphs, and maps (for a comprehensive overview of different kinds of visuals, see Margolis & Pauwels, 2011 ; Reavey, 2011 ).

There has been a proliferation of books on general visual research methods, including those by Emmison, Smith, and Mayall ( 2012 ), Margolis and Pauwels ( 2011 ), Mitchell ( 2011 ), Reavey ( 2011 ), Spencer ( 2011 ), and Stanczak ( 2007 ), as well as methodology books such those by Harper ( 2012 ), Pink ( 2012a ), and Rose ( 2016 ). Likewise, much has been published on specific aspects of visual research, such as visual ethnography (Holm, 2018 ; Pink, 2013 ) and the analysis of visual data (Ball & Smith, 1992 ; Banks, 2007 ). We also see the increasing popularity of visual research methods in social sciences; in addition to journals like Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Review, Visual Communication, Visual Studies , and Forum: Qualitative Social Research , many other journals now also publish photographs. In addition, the Society for Visual Anthropology and the International Visual Sociology Association provide avenues and conferences for presenting visual research.

Across the social sciences, photography as a research method has a long history in fields such as anthropology and sociology (see Eberle, 2018 ), but it is fairly new to psychology and education. However, in sociology, photography continues to hold a marginal position, mainly because it is considered too subjective. In anthropology, film has been more important. Harper ( 2004 ) described gathering information as a function for photography in the social sciences. Here, he used Bateson and Mead’s book Balinese Character, A Photographic Essay (1942) as an example; these researchers “used 759 photographs (selected from more than 25 000 taken during their fieldwork) to support and develop their ethnographic analysis” (Harper, 2004 , p. 232). In his discussion of photography in sociology, Harper described photography as being used mostly with the researcher as the photographer. A similar tendency can be seen in anthropology. Although earlier anthropologists and sociologists like Collier and Collier ( 1986 ), Prosser ( 1996 ), and Grady ( 1996 ) wanted to make photography fit into a “scientific” framework by providing exact methods for how to use photographs in research, contemporary ethnographers like Pink ( 2013 ) rejected this approach. Pink argued for developing the way photography is used in research based on the questions and context of the study. The method can develop in the field, and she does not see the text as superior to the photographs, but as complementary and working together. Drew and Guillemin ( 2014 ) pointed out that by prioritizing the text over the visual data and using the photographs as illustrations, researchers do not see the importance of their visual data. However, more and more research uses photographs as primary data. For example, Bowles ( 2017 ) described how the photographs taken by women porters in Ghana were used for differential situational photonarratives about their marginalized social position. Likewise, Brigham, Abidi, and Zhang’s ( 2018 ) study of immigrant and refugee women’s immigration experiences in Canada was focused on the “photo-stories” produced to gain a deeper understanding of their multifaceted lives.

The field of psychology has engaged with photographs throughout its history, starting with Darwin’s use of photographs in his work. “A historical analysis of the role of the visual within psychology can reveal its instrumental effects in providing the context for ‘the psychological’ to become observable and therefore, measurable and more ‘scientific’ ” (Reavey, 2011 , p. 2). As Reavey ( 2011 ) pointed out in her book, Visual Methods in Psychology , qualitative research in psychology is a marginal field. The use of visual methods is thus at the margins of a marginal field of study. Contributing to this marginality, according to Reavey, is the notion that photography as a method has been considered more appropriate for “use with children and those deemed less ‘able’ to communicate thoughts and feelings.… In this sense, the ‘visual’ has traditionally been given the status of a naïve or more simplistic form of communication” (p. xxvii). Overall, qualitative research in psychology has focused on language- and text-based materials. In experimental psychology, photos are sometimes used as material for memorization or evaluation tasks (Mandal, Bryden, & Bulman-Fleming, 1996 ; Mavica & Barenholtz, 2012 ). In psychology related to health, education, and similar fields, there is some research using photography as a method (e.g., Brazg, Bekemeier, Spigner, & Huebner, 2011 ; Clements, 2012 ) and especially using photovoice in mental health research (e.g., Becker, Reiser, Lambert, & Covello, 2014 ; Sibeoni et al., 2017 ), but a search of psychology databases yields very few studies using photography.

In education, photos have been used in archival research related to, for example, school and space (Grosvenor, Lawn, Nóvoa, Rousmaniere, & Smaller, 2004 ) and schooling and the marginalized (Devlieger, Grosvenor, Simon, Van Hove, & Vanobbergen, 2008 ; Grosvenor, 2007a , 2007b ). Photography has also been used with preschool children to obtain an understanding of the children’s perceptions of their own surroundings and communities (Clark & Moss, 2001 ; Einarsdottir, 2005 ; Serriere, 2010 ). The photographs are helpful especially if the children’s language is not yet well developed (Clark, 2004 ; Prosser & Burke, 2008 ). Joanou ( 2009 ) pointed out that there are increased ethical considerations when working with marginalized groups of children, using as an example her study on children living and working on the streets in Lima.

The use of photography in research with children is the fastest growing application of its kind. Most of this research is done in relation to the school setting and preparation for school (Hilppö, Lipponen, Kumpulainen, & Rajala, 2017 ; Miller, 2016 ), but research is also done on children’s perspectives on, for example, their outdoor environment (Clark, 2007 ; White, 2015 ) and their city (Ho, Rochelle, & Yuen, 2011 ). Others discuss more generally the topic of using photography with children ranging from 2 years old to teenagers and children’s photographic behavior (Sharples, Davison, Thomas, & Rudman, 2003 ; Stephenson, 2009 ; Warming, 2011 ).

In this chapter, I discuss photography as a research method, review the types of photographs used in research (e.g., archival photographs, photographs taken by the researcher), and focus especially on photographs taken by participants. The uses of different approaches to obtain photographs and issues of interest concerning each approach will be presented. The most common approaches used to analyze photographs are briefly described, and interesting and challenging questions about the interpretation and presentation of photographs are raised. Finally, ethical issues in research using photographs are considered.

Photography as a Research Method in Qualitative Research

In this chapter, a distinction is made between images and photographs. As stated earlier with regard to visual culture, images can also include such things as artwork, cartoons, drawings, and maps. In research studies, children are often asked to draw pictures, on which interviews are then based (Ganesh, 2011 ). Drawings in combination with texts focused on schooling were also the focus of Holm’s ( 1994 ) analysis of the teen magazine Seventeen (1966–1989). In this study, the text and drawings placing an emphasis on how girls should behave and look made a strong counternarrative with regard to the importance of education for girls. The emphasis was on conforming to norms, on being stylish and pleasing, and on not challenging or upsetting male students. Skorapa ( 1994 ) analyzed how cartoons about schooling can either challenge or perpetuate stereotypes and the dominant ideology of schooling. Cartoons are not only amusing, but also often deal with cultural tensions, changes, and conflicts (Provenzo & Beonde, 1994 ).

In 1997, Jipson and Paley ( 1997b ) published an unusual book called Daredevil Research: Re-creating Analytic Practice , in which several of the chapters on postmodern research challenge our notions of how research should be reported. Many of the chapters incorporate or build on visual images. In Paley’s ( 1997 ) chapter “Neither Literal nor Conceptual,” the text blends with abstract black-and-white images. In another chapter by Jipson and Paley ( 1997c ), text blocks are imposed in the middle of the pages, which, in turn, are a map of the space. In yet another chapter, the text itself constitutes an image by being written in one to four interweaving curving columns (Jipson & Wilson, 1997 ). Although we rarely see this kind of experimenting with the use of visual images, these examples and other more arts-based visual research (see, e.g., Jipson & Paley, 1997a ; Knowles & Cole, 2008 ; Leavy, 2018 ) provide a sense of the endless possibilities of using images. Furthermore, photography itself provides many options; the kinds and uses of photographs are numerous. Because of the myriad of possibilities and the increasingly common use of photography, this chapter is limited to the use of photography in social science research.

One of the difficulties in using photography as a research method is the ambiguity that exists in photographs. Although photographs traditionally were thought of as portraying reality—the simple truth—this is no longer the case among researchers, even though many viewers still consider photographs as showing the truth. We acknowledge that photographs are constructed; they are made. Harper ( 2004 ) argued that this construction and subjectivity can be seen very clearly in photographs by early British anthropologists because they are all taken from the colonizers’ perspective. Interestingly, Chaplin ( 1996 ) argued that photographs are both taken and made, as opposed to just made or constructed. They are taken in the sense that they give researchers the information and details they need, more like a record or a document, but the researcher also makes decisions on what to photograph and how to set up and process the photograph.

The photographer always has a reason for taking the photograph. There is an intention behind the photograph. The photographer wants to see something specific or wants to send us a “message.” If the photographer is also a participant in the research, then the intended communication is connected to the researcher’s intentions as well. The researcher also influences the process by selecting a particular photo to be viewed by others. Consequently, there is also the intended audience: For whom is the photo taken? And, finally, there are the individual viewers. Photographers and researchers have their aims and intentions, but they cannot influence or control how the viewer interprets the photo. Sometimes the intended audience is only the researcher, and most of the photos will be seen and analyzed only by the researcher. These photographs are taken exclusively for the research and the researcher.

Whatever the case, without an accompanying text, many photographs can carry multiple meanings for the viewer (Evans & Hall, 2010 ; see also Grosvenor & Hall, 2012 ). The possibility of multiple meanings and the ambiguity attached to photographs has made many, especially positivist, researchers uncomfortable with using or accepting photographs in books and articles. A good example of this is the disappearance of photos from the American Journal of Sociology under the direction of positivist editor Albion Small, even though the journal earlier had published numerous articles with photographs (Stasz, 1979 ).

Photographs as Illustrations or for Documentary Purposes

Photography can be considered a data collection method, but not all photographs are used as data to be analyzed. The most common uses for photographs in social science research have been as illustrations and documentation. Documentary photography has a long history in fields like anthropology and sociology (see Eberle, 2018 ; and Harper, 2012 ), as discussed earlier, but also in fields like history, where archival photographs are often used. In cultural studies, a good example of historical analysis of documentary photographs is Steet’s ( 2000 ) study of the construction of the Arab world in the magazine National Geographic . Steet analyzed 100 years of photographs in the magazine, visually (and textually) constructing men and women as well as patriarchy and orientalism in the Arab world. In contrast to Steet’s extensive material, Magno and Kirk ( 2008 ) analyzed only three photographs when examining how development agencies use photos of girls to promote their agencies’ work concerning the education of girls. However, they used an elaborate analysis template with six categories: surface meaning, narrative, intended meaning, ideological meaning, oppositional reading, and coherency (coherency meaning, in this case, whether the photographs and the text argued for the same thing). Banks ( 2007 ) explained the difference between using photographs as illustrations and using them as anthropological visual research in that photographs as illustrations “are not subject to any particular analysis in the written text, nor does the author claim to have gained any particular insights as a result of taking or viewing the images” (p. 11).

Wang ( 1999 ) described a nontraditional approach to documentary photography as underpinning the photovoice method. She sees photovoice as theoretically grounded in critical consciousness and feminist theory and as an effort by “community photographers and participatory educators to challenge assumptions about representation and documentary authorship” (p. 185). Photovoice is an approach to using photography as a method for collecting data that is merged with social activism and political change, particularly with community involvement. The main goals of photovoice are, according to Wang, Cash, and Powers ( 2000 ),

(a) to enable people to record and reflect their community’s strengths and concerns, (b) to promote critical dialogue and knowledge about important community issues through large and small group discussion of photographs, and (c) to reach policy makers and people who can be mobilized for change. (p. 82)

Wang used this approach mostly for health-related research. Other researchers, like Duits ( 2010 ), claimed to use photovoice but without the community improvement goal; these kind of studies more closely resemble participatory photography research.

Archival Photos

Many archival photos were originally taken for documentary or illustrative purposes. The most frequent use of archival photos is in some form of historical research. Digital archives are becoming common, making it easier to search for particular kinds of photos. However, it is also very demanding to work with thousands of photos on a particular topic (Park, Mitchell, & de Lange, 2007 ). Photos are commonly of interest in newspaper or magazine research because they often are perceived as documenting or illustrating “objective” reality or providing evidence of historical events. For example, Martins ( 2009 ) included a couple of photographs in her study of deaf pupils in a boarding school, illustrating and providing “proof” of the kinds of exercises the pupils had to do. A similar use of photos can be seen in Amsing and de Beer’s ( 2009 ) article on the intelligence testing of children with mental disabilities. Photos of the test and a testing situation show the reader “how things were done” in the testing of these children. However, in contemporary historical research, photos are critically examined with regard to how they construct an argument in interaction with the text in a particular context. Grosvenor and Hall ( 2012 ) emphasized the importance of examining archival photos in relation to the text when creating meaning because “words when used with images can anchor meanings; change the words and the original meaning can be displaced, even though the image that it captures remain the same” (p. 26). A common problem with archival photos is that they are anonymous, in the sense that nothing is known about them: neither the photographer’s intentions nor the context in which they are taken (Martin & Martin, 2004 ). Hence, the use of these kinds of photos for research is limited.

Photo albums are also a form of private or family archives. Because family albums and photos are very familiar to us as researchers, it is important to be aware of one’s own notions and constructions of families, of what one sees as a “normal family.” A reflexive approach is necessary so that the researcher does not impose his or her own views of families on the interpretation of albums. These kind of albums also bring forth an ethical issue, since photos often contain images of family members and other people who have not given permission for their photos to be part of a research project (Allnutt, Mitchell, & Stuart, 2007 ).

Collier and Collier ( 1986 , p.10) described documentary photographs as “precise records of material reality.” Photographs document the world for further analysis at a later stage. However, Collier and Collier argued that many anthropologists have used photographs as illustrations but not as documentary data for research. Most anthropology and sociology researchers have themselves been photographers, and often these photographs have been taken as illustrations or for documentary purposes.

Photographs Taken by Researchers

Traditionally, photographic surveys (see Collier & Collier, 1986 ) of, for example, visual aspects of workplaces or institutions were used as a way to systematically document and produce material to analyze so that the researcher could draw conclusions about working conditions, types of work, and the like. As Pink ( 2012 ) pointed out, the photos taken in these kinds of surveys do not say anything about whether the objects or physical surroundings are meaningful to participants or what meaning they hold for participants. In this case, the researchers decide what they find interesting or potentially important enough to photograph. Photographs taken by researchers can also be used in photo-elicitation interviews, but still, it is the researcher who sets the tone for what is important to discuss. It becomes the researcher’s interpretation of “reality” that is considered important and analyzed. In a well-known context, the researcher can provide both descriptive meaning and stories about each object (see Riggins, 1994 ), and this can make researcher-produced photographs very valuable for understanding processes. For example, Mitchell and Allnutt ( 2008 ) described how it is possible in photo documentary research to follow “social transitions or change by identifying shifts in material objects, dress, and so on” (p. 267). Rieger ( 2011 ) called the study of social change rephotography and suggested it for studying social change with regard to places, participants, processes, or activities. Hence, in this way, detailed photographic surveys produce data to be analyzed rather than photographs for documentary and illustrative purposes.

There is no agreement on what the best approach is for researchers to take photos in the research setting. Some argue that by taking photographs immediately, at the beginning of the study when entering the scene, the camera can function as an opening device to create contact with the participants. Others argue that it is necessary for participants to get to know the researcher first, so they can feel comfortable with the camera and with being photographed.

Photographs Taken by Participants

Having participants take photographs, also called participatory photography , is the most frequently used photography method in the social sciences since 2010. It is also commonly used in visual ethnographies, especially with young people (Holm, 2018 ). Photographs taken by the participants for the purpose of, for example, photo-elicitation interviews encourage the participants to take a more active role in the research by indicating what is meaningful for them to discuss in the interview. It also gives participants more control over the interview (Clark-Ibáñez, 2004 ; Majumdar, 2011 ). Some researchers prefer to call this type of photography, in which participants construct and take the photos, photo production (Majumdar, 2011 ; Reavey, 2011 ). Radley ( 2011 ) pointed out that photos produced by participants also allow for interviewing about the circumstances of the production, which will give a more comprehensive insight into the participants’ intentions. However, even if the participants produce the photographs, the researcher’s presence is evident because the participants take the photos for the purpose of the research. In this chapter, I am not making a distinction between photographic interviews and photo-elicitation interviews. Most researchers less familiar with participatory photography tend to use the term photo-elicitation interviews as covering all kinds of participatory photography. The focus here is instead on the issues surfacing in participatory photography.

Clear instructions about the purpose of the research and the photographs must be given to participating photographers. Even so, participants often deviate from the instructions. In a study in England on young people’s constructions of self and the connection to consumer goods, participants were supposed to photograph goods they considered important. Instead, they all photographed mostly their friends. Hence, the participants redefined their task (Croghan, Griffin, Hunter, & Phoenix, 2008 ). Commonly, participants are asked to take photos during the study, but frequently they contribute photos that were taken previously, but which they think exemplify the topic. For example, in a study of language minority ninth graders’ perceptions of their identifications and belonging to the Swedish language minority group in Finland, we (Holm, Londen, & Mansikka, 2014 ) found this to be common. Because the study was done in the fall, the students found it difficult to photograph some things they thought were important for their identification. Therefore, they brought in many photos of, for example, flowers and parties taken in the summer that they believed exemplified being part of the language minority group (Figures 20.1 and 20.2 ).

The flowers portray the beautiful Swedish language.

Crayfish is something we eat with our friends. We always do it with Swedish-speaking Finns.

Likewise, participants most often are asked to be the photographers themselves, but it is also common for participants to ask others to take photos of them. In a study with doctoral students about what it means to be a doctoral student, several students asked others to photograph them instead or used previously taken photos in which they themselves were included (Holm, 2008a ). The photo in Figure 20.3 was taken by a friend of a student who is a participating doctoral student.

Photo of a doctoral student taken by a friend.

The time of the year influences the study in other ways as well. Especially in countries with dark, gloomy winter weather, wintertime photo projects will produce more indoor photos and dark, gray outdoor photos. In a study on elementary students’ perceptions of what community means to them and what their community consists of, the children took many outdoor photos of friends, their homes, and family cars, but the days when they happened to have a camera were overcast winter days. The indoor photos of their classrooms, schoolmates, and teachers are also quite gloomy, despite the smiling faces. Hence, looked at out of context, there is a somewhat downcast mood over the photos even though the neighborhood is very lush and green, with a vibrant street and porch life in the summer. Consequently, photos taken in summertime would have looked much more upbeat and cheery (Figures 20.4 and 20.5 ).

The time of year affects how photographs may look; this classroom photo was taken during the wintertime, which gives it a gloomy look.

Outdoor wintertime scenes may hide the true nature of an environment.

The importance of clearly communicating to the participants in multiple ways the purpose of the research and the participants’ task cannot be overemphasized. The study of students’ perceptions of the meaning of community and their own community was originally a comparative study between a school in the United States and a school in Finland. The students in Finland were Finnish speakers attending an English-language school, and the researcher was American. The students understood that their task was to photograph their school community instead of their community in general, which resulted in photographs mostly of their friends at school.

A weak common verbal language can also be overcome if participants express themselves through photographs. Veintie and Holm ( 2010 ) studied how indigenous teacher education students from three different tribes thought of knowledge and learning in an intercultural bilingual teacher education institute in Ecuadorian Amazonia. Spanish was the common language, but it was also the second or third language for everyone. To ease the limitations for the students to express indigenous thinking about these concepts in Spanish, the students took photographs that were then used as the basis for interviews. As researchers, we assumed that many photos about learning and knowledge would be related to schools and the teacher education institute because they were very prominent in the small community. Instead, the photographs portraying learning always involved people and actions and were mostly taken in the community (see Figure 20.6 ). In interviews, students also explained that learning is not given, but that learners are given the opportunities to observe and practice what is to be learned. Students also expressed knowledge as lived knowledge. Therefore, many students could not participate in the study because their families and homes were too far away to be photographed. Knowledge was grounded in their communities and their ancestors. The school-based photographs were only a small part of the pictures showing learning and knowledge. Instead, learning and knowledge were based on social interaction. Images of books, newspapers, Internet, and television were completely absent because they held no meaning and were not present in the students’ lives. These aspects of knowing and learning would have most likely not emerged if the students would have only been interviewed.

An Ecuadorian student’s photo of an object that represents community knowledge and learning.

Ethical Issues in Participatory Photography

Access to research sites for qualitative and especially ethnographic research can be difficult. Many institutional review boards and sites like workplaces, schools, and organizations are cautious about providing access, particularly to vulnerable populations like children and the ill. The very openness of the qualitative, ethnographic design may raise concerns. It is impossible to know in advance exactly what questions will be asked or what situations will be observed. Likewise, the analysis may be perceived as being too open and imprecise. These issues are often amplified with regard to including photography as a research method (see, e.g., Miller, 2015 ). The cautiousness is justified because the risks are higher when participants can be identified. There is no confidentiality if a photograph includes a person’s face. If the researcher is also the photographer, there is more control over what will be photographed, and the researcher can use his or her ethical judgment in each situation and refrain from taking photographs that could potentially harm or compromise participants or the research site. Conversely, if the participants are the photographers, very clear instructions can be given about what should be photographed, but there is no guarantee that participant photographers will keep to the topic or particular settings. It then becomes the responsibility of the researcher to exclude potentially harmful or compromising photographs from being published or publicly presented.

Getting official permission and access is a first step, but securing informed consent from participants or the people who participants include in their photographs can be complicated. It is difficult to know if participants fully understand how their own photographs or the photographs of others might be used later. The concept of publishing photographs in a book is easier to grasp, but the lack of control over photos appearing on websites or the fact that they might be shown and discussed in conferences across the world is more complicated. Institutional review boards seem to perceive the risks for taking advantage of children as lower if the children themselves take the pictures (Holm, 2008b ), which means that it is somewhat easier to receive institutional review board approval for these kinds of studies, even though institutional review boards tend to be concerned about children taking potentially risky photographs (Kia-Keating, Santacrose, & Liu, 2017 ). However, children taking photographs requires informed consent from guardians, beyond the informed assent of the children themselves. Involving children means more difficulties in gathering guardians’ consent and children’s assent forms. In most studies, some guardians will not give their consent although their children want to participate; conversely, some guardians will give their consent but their children will not want to participate. One way to avoid having to exclude children who want to participate is to make the photography assignment part of a school or organization project in which all children participate, but only the children who receive their guardian’s permission participate in the research.

Guardians are a form of gatekeepers; more unpredictable gatekeepers include institutions such as schools, day-care facilities, hospitals, and businesses or organizations. For example, in an ethnographic study of a school for pregnant and parenting teenage girls, the girls were going to photograph their lives as pregnant and/or parenting teenagers. However, after the study was set up, the school principal decided that the girls could not take photos of any males or of their children in diapers or taking baths. This restricted the girls so much that, in the end, they mostly took photos of each other posing at school. The restrictions were understandable, because there were several fights in school about the fathers of the babies (e.g., one man had fathered three children with three different girls) or the girls’ boyfriends, who sometimes switched from one girl to another. Likewise, the restriction about not taking nude pictures of babies was understandable because the principal wanted to protect the babies from potential abuse, especially in light of the fact that several girls had themselves been abused in different ways. However, the restrictions were imposed on the girls without an explanation of why the rules had suddenly changed. These kinds of rules imposed from above reinforced the general management and control attitude of the school with regard to the girls’ schooling (Holm, 1995 ).

Certain studies are difficult to do without the participants acting as co-researchers/photographers. Janhonen-Abruquah ( 2010 ) studied the daily transnational lives of immigrant women. The women kept photographic diaries of their everyday mundane activities, revealing the importance of cross-border communication between women in extended families living in different parts of the world. The women decided what and who they photographed. Because of the often fairly private family situations portrayed, Janhonen-Abruquah decided to blur the faces in the photographs to protect the participants’ identities (Figure 20.7 ). This approach allowed photos of people to be used without obtaining permission from everyone included, which would have been difficult for the women to do. However, if someone familiar with the women reads the study, it might be possible for that individual to recognize people in the photos based on surroundings or other features. Although this is a feasible way to deal with a difficult situation, it also objectifies the people in the photographs (Wiles et al., 2008 ) and makes them more remote and less interesting. Allen ( 2015 ) argued that blurring can be de-empowering and de-identifying as well as objectifying the person in the photograph.

Researcher (right) discussing with a research participant (left). Reprinted with permission from Janhonen-Abruquah, H. ( 2010 ). Gone with the Wind?: Immigrant Women and Transnational Everyday Life in Finland . University of Helsinki. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-10-6136-3

Conversely, the alternative is to not use photos, but merely describe them. In Newman, Woodcock, and Dunham’s ( 2006 ) study on bullying, it was also essential to blur or box out faces to protect children, but the photographs still give a sense of the bullying, which gives additional information and understanding compared to a mere written description.

A similar situation emerged in the study of elementary school students’ sense of community. The students had to take their own photos because much of their community was located at home, centered around their families, pets, toys, and bedrooms—places not accessible to the researcher. Young children also tend to focus on their immediate family and home environments because they are less mobile (Fassetta, 2016 ). Therefore, protecting the children’s and their families’ confidentiality often makes it difficult to publish young children’s photographs.

Preparations for Participatory Ethnography

Even though many people have some experience with cameras and photography, it is useful to have a session before the project to talk about the basics of photography. Even taking photographs for a research purpose requires some planning. For example, it might be useful to talk about how light and colors influence how a photograph is perceived (see Holm, 2008a ). Likewise, it is useful to talk about literal and metaphorical photos (Elliot, Reid, & Baumfield, 2017 ). How does one take photographs of abstract or missing things? Can the photographers manipulate their photos, now that manipulation is fairly easy to do if they have access to computers? Can the photographers bring an unlimited number of photographs, or do they have to pick a certain number of the most important ones? How will the participants deliver their photos to the researcher?

The issue of manipulation is no more important when using photography as a data collection method than in using other methods in qualitative research. Unethical researchers can always manipulate data. Interview and observation sections can be left out as easily as photographs can be left unanalyzed. However, all manipulation is not the same. If the participants manipulate/edit their own photographs, that could be considered part of the data. Unedited and edited photographs could, for example, be compared to study differences between the current and desired situations. The difference between posing for a photo, where clothing, pose, expression, and surroundings are arranged, and editing a photograph can be marginal. They are both ways of arranging the photo to convey an intended message. A researcher manipulating photos for the purpose of misrepresentation is a very different issue, however. With digital photography, the total number of photos can become unmanageable. In a study in four countries on consumer behaviors of poor people, the group of researchers took 10,400 photos but analyzed only 612. In these kinds of cases, the question arises of why exactly these 612 photos were selected for analysis (Lindeman et al., 2010 ). A detailed description of the elimination process would help dispel thoughts of manipulation resulting from the selection of certain photos.

If a group of people are to take photographs, a brainstorming session is useful at the beginning of the project in which participants generate ideas about what kinds of things might be possible to photograph. This session is not intended to tell participants what to photograph, but rather to encourage them to explore as a group possibilities for constructing and producing photos related to the research theme (Holm et al., 2014 ). In the study on doctoral students’ perceptions of their studies mentioned earlier, we did not have a brainstorming session. When students as a group viewed everyone’s photos, there was real disappointment that some students had not thought about photographing certain themes they considered very important. They also discovered that, as a group, they had forgotten certain themes altogether, such as the importance of fellow doctoral students, seminars, and professors. In other words, they were so overwhelmed by life outside the university that, in most cases, they forgot to photograph the university scene (Holm, 2008a ).

Photography works well as a method for research and advocacy using the kind of concrete portrayal/documentation of problems used in photovoice. Many researchers argue that young people are especially comfortable with and knowledgeable about photography. Many also argue that it is easier for young people and children to photograph and then discuss difficult and complicated issues. Especially when dealing with less verbal students or students with another first language, photography might be a good method (Cremin, Mason, & Busher, 2011 ; Lodge, 2009 ; Sensoy, 2011 ; Wilson et al., 2007 ).

Habitus and Metaphorical Photographs

Bourdieu ( 1990a , 1990b ) and Sweetman ( 2009 ) argued that photography can be used for exploring abstract and difficult-to-grasp concepts like habitus. Following their claims that photography is a possible way to explore habitus, we (Holm et al., 2014 ) set out to study the habitus of Swedish language minority–speaking teenagers in Finland. How do these teenagers see themselves as being a member of a language minority group, and how do they perceive the entire group? The photos they took can be divided into two categories. One category included literal depictions of Swedish-speaking theaters, newspapers, street signs, and the like (Figure 20.8 ).

A literal photograph. One can understand both languages; street signs are in both Finnish and Swedish.

The other category included metaphorical photos (see also Elliot et al., 2017 ) showing, for example, being a minority group member, community, togetherness, feeling threatened, and being worried about the future of the language group (Figures 20.9 – 20.11 ).

A metaphorical photograph showing the proportion of Swedes to Finns in Finland.

A metaphorical photograph; Finland-Swedes are melting away slowly in Finland.

Finland-Swedes are like trees in a storm. Often we just bend, but if it is storming too hard we will break.

Interestingly, in interviews, students had difficulty explaining what it means to belong to a language minority group. In the interviews, students focused mostly on the language, whereas with the photos, they brought forth a variety of aspects. In the photos, the language was just one aspect among many. The students also tended to use photographs of nature for their metaphorical visual statements. They often said in interviews that language minority members stick together and that they have a sense of belonging. In the photos, this was expressed through nature, as in Figures 20.12 and 20.13 .

I think this little path is like the Finland-Swedes, all the rest around are the others in Finland.

A lone swan in the big sea like a Finland-Swede.

The students photographed more deep-seated thoughts about the group’s future and stereotypes about the group, as well as their attachment to nature and the archipelago where many of their families originated. Likewise, Croghan et al. ( 2008 ) found that young people took photographs of sensitive issues related to their identity positions such as religion and race, issues that were not brought forth in interviews.

This kind of literal and metaphorical division can also be seen in photos taken by Palestinian children and youth living in refugee camps in Lebanon (Mikander, 2010 ). They took photos to show what their lives are like. In this case, too, the children and the researcher had no common language. Here, too, there were many photos portraying the children’s thinking, habits, and ways of being. An example of a literal photo is one of a living room wall (Figure 20.14 ). The viewer’s eye is drawn to the picture of Yasser Arafat, but the child took the photo to show the hole in the wall. She wanted to show how they continue to live without permanent wiring, as if their housing was temporary.

A Palestinian child’s photograph of a wall in her home; although the viewer’s eye is drawn to the picture of Yasser Arafat, the child’s focus is the hole in the wall.

In Palestine, young people’s ways of thinking about their future can best be told through a series of photographs of a burning cigarette (Figure 20.15 ). They begin with full lives, with seemingly a lot of possibilities and hope. Their lives shrink with age, and in a metaphorical way their development stops when they finish school because they do not have opportunities for further education. Dreams about future families are also hampered by the severe housing shortage. Hence, their life prospects are very limited.

The life opportunities of a youth in Palestine are metaphorically depicted as a burning cigarette.

Other abstract aspects of life, like absence, seem to be more difficult to photograph. In a study in which doctoral students photographed their lives as doctoral students, four photos of four students’ families were similar, but depicted different things. One photo was of a Chinese wedding; the second depicted a Korean mother, father, and child; the third showed a Ugandan mother with four children; and the fourth was of an American father with two children. In all photos, the people looked happy. Without accompanying text, it was impossible to know how different the intended messages were. The American photo indicated that, for this doctoral student, her husband and children were her first priority, even if the doctoral studies required much of her time. However, all the other photos indicated that the international students were studying alone in the United States and were missing their families, who had remained in their home countries. The question for them had been, “How do you photograph the absence of someone?” Many of the issues, like ethical questions and habitus, brought up here in relation to participatory photography are also important for other kinds of photography in the social sciences. However, they are often brought to the forefront in participatory photography because the participants take the photographs.

Analysis and Interpretation

No one “best” specific method exists for analyzing or interpreting photographs. In social science studies, most researchers use the same methods for photographs as for text. Early books on visual research methods (see, e.g., Collier & Collier, 1986 ) tended to give fairly precise instructions on how to organize, categorize, and compare photos to be able to conduct a good analysis. All researchers must organize and group their photographs in some way, especially when we talk about hundreds and thousands of digital photos. However, researchers develop their own styles, often in connection with how they analyze their textual data. Many researchers use software programs to organize photos; others group them by hand. However, categorizing or grouping photos is just a beginning, as with textual data. According to Harper ( 2003 ), taking and analyzing photographs is aided by theory, just as when collecting and analyzing any other kind of material. He also sees photographs as helping to build theory by forcing us to look at specific things in the field or to confirm theory. Harper ( 2003 , p. 195) states “Indeed, the power of the photo lies in its ability to unlock the subjectivity of those who see the image differently from the researcher.” Theory, the researcher’s own and the participants’ previous knowledge and experiences, previous research, and the participants’ descriptions of the photographs all contribute to an understanding of the photographs.

How the analysis of photographs is done is not discussed much, if at all, in most research reports and visual research books, even though Ball and Smith wrote about analyzing visual data in 1992. However, literature does exist on various kinds of content analysis, semiotic analyses, and interpretive and other methods (see, e.g., Margolis & Pawels, 2011 ; Rose, 2016 ). As Spencer ( 2011 ) pointed out, how a research study is designed, how data are collected, and how results are understood depend on the underlying paradigm. Therefore, some researchers simply state that a study was analyzed based on a particular paradigm.

Content Analysis

A mostly quantitative content analysis is used for large numbers of photographs because it yields basic information about the frequencies of certain types of photos, on the basis of which various comparisons can be made. Rose ( 2016 ) presented detailed steps to be followed to conduct a reliable content analysis. She emphasized a careful selection of images and rigorous coding. However, Rose cautioned that a high frequency count does not mean that the occurrence is important. In addition, frequencies do not indicate how strongly a photo exemplifies a category or anything about the mood of photos. The intentions of the photographer are also excluded from content analysis. Even though the analysis is quantitative, there is also a qualitative element in the interpretation of the frequencies and the presentation of the results.

Margolis and Rowe ( 2011 ) described their use of a grounded theory approach to content analysis, which differs substantially from the approach discussed by Rose ( 2016 ). In Margolis and Rowe’s approach, the coding is theoretically based, which also allows them to pay attention to absent categories. Their categories overlapped, as opposed to the usual requirement of mutual exclusivity, and they also expanded the number of categories and merged categories during the analysis.

Discourse Analysis

In popular culture studies, as well as in other social science research, various forms of discourse analyses are used in the analysis of photographs in relation to text. There is no specific visual discourse analysis, but Spencer analyzed specific images as examples of the use of discourse analysis. Rose ( 2016 ) made a distinction between discourse analysis I and discourse analysis II, describing discourse analysis I as paying “rather more attention to the notion of discourse as articulated through various kinds of visual images and verbal texts than it does to the practices entailed by specific discourses” (p. 192). She described discourse analysis II as working “with similar sorts of material, but … much more concerned with their production by, and their reiteration of, particular institutions and their practices, and their production of particular human subjects” (p. 220). Rose presented highly detailed and in-depth descriptions, with examples of how to conduct these kinds of discourse analyses. However, it can be useful to remember that there are many ways of doing discourse analysis (e.g., see Laclau & Mouffe, 1985 ).

Ethnographic Analysis

Many researchers use some kind of interpretivist analysis without being specific about it. Pink ( 2012b ) summarized the ethnographic approach very well:

The academic meanings that ethnographers give to visual images are also arbitrary and are constructed in relation to particular methodological and theoretical agendas. Individual researchers classify and give meanings to ethnographic images in relation to the academic culture or discipline with which they identify their work. Moreover, ethnographers are themselves subjective readers of ethnographic images and their personal experiences and aspirations also inform the meanings they invest in photographs and videos. A reflexive approach to classifying, analyzing and interpreting visual research materials recognizes both the constructedness of social science categories and the politics of researchers’ personal and academic agendas. (p. 117)

Hence, an ethnographic approach entails using one’s already established or newly developed ways of organizing data. This organization and categorizing or beginning analysis might be quite intuitive and begin in the field. In many cases, the field and academic work intersect on a weekly basis, which influences how the researcher sees the data. In the academic setting, photographs are interpreted more closely from particular paradigms and theoretical frameworks and thus receive different meanings than they would in the field. In this kind of ethnographic approach, text and photographs are equally important and interact and inform the understanding of each other, as well as the relations between the two. The categorization in this approach differs from that of earlier approaches (see Collier & Collier, 1986 ) in that photos might be grouped in several ways. For example, they could be grouped according to the content, symbolic meaning, or origins of the photographers. The sequential order in which the photographs are taken is not necessarily important for the analysis because the photographers’ or participants’ thinking might not be linear. Rather, the way participants think about the way the photographs connect to themselves and their worlds might be more important.

At times, text and photographs might produce different but connected stories. Harper ( 2004 ) described, with regard to Agee and Evan’s ( 1941 ) work on sharecroppers during the Depression, how the text and photos are juxtaposed and where “neither form repeats or replaces each other. Rather they develop in tandem” (p. 232). In my research on the schooling of teenage mothers, the photos, on the one hand, told the story of happy, playful girls posing alone or with other girls, but always without children. This was the story they wanted to show outsiders. The text, on the other hand, told the story of the girls’ more private thoughts about their unhappy childhoods of abuse and abandonment, as well as their worries about being young mothers, often without any support network. Together, the two stories give a much fuller view of the girls than either one does separately (Holm, 1995 ).

Issues in Interpretation

The context of the production of the photos can be important. In our study of minority-language teenagers’ perceptions of their own identifications, the geographical region in which they lived and produced their photos was closely tied to their identifications. Likewise, the larger societal context with regard to the general standing of the language minority group influenced how worried the teenagers were about the future of the entire group. The academic context in which the photos are interpreted produces interpretations different from the interpretations produced in the field.

The interpretation of the photos will always vary somewhat from person to person depending on previous experience. An interesting question concerns how much the researcher needs to know about and understand the context in which the photo is taken. How much of the historical context do we need to understand to interpret archival photos? On one level, we can make some sense of photos of people living in difficult circumstances (as, for instance, during the Depression), but without the knowledge of this historical context, our interpretation will be superficial. Likewise, how much of the context do we need to know and understand of the participants who took the photographs?

As researchers, we found in our study of the Swedish-speaking students’ photographs (see the earlier description of the study; Holm et al., 2014 ) that having a habitus similar to that of the participating photographers facilitated understanding of their photographs. Metaphorical photographs were especially easier to interpret. For example, photographs of the feeling of being harassed or that the future is somewhat insecure for the minority group immediately rang a bell for us. We had all had that feeling or experience at one point, although in different settings. Figure 20.16 shows the sun disappearing like the Swedish language is doing, according to the student; this feeling of doom is familiar to all Finland-Swedes, like the participants and the researchers in this case, who live in areas where the Finnish language is dominant. Without the text (or without an interview about the photos), this photo would simply be a photo of a beautiful sunset. Outsiders would get some sense of the situation from the text, but for the researchers living in the same societal context, the photo immediately brings to mind the larger debates about abolishing compulsory Swedish-language instruction from schools, hostile comments by members of an anti-Swedish (and anti-immigration) party, personal comments that Swedish speakers should emigrate to Sweden, and the like. Hence, knowing the societal context helps the researchers to more fully understand the deep thinking of the student taking the photo.

Swedish is disappearing from Finland (photo taken by Eva, a student participant).

In analyzing and interpreting photographs taken by participants, it is important to pay attention to photographs not taken as well, since they can be important (Drew & Guillemin, 2014 ). They can be missing because it is too difficult or painful to find ways of showing one’s thoughts, as Frith ( 2011 ) found in her study of women in chemotherapy who did not have enough energy to take photographs when they were feeling most ill. Other issues might be too intimate or sensitive. Missing photos can also be a result of restrictions placed on the participating photographers by gatekeepers (Holm, 1997 ).

There are numerous books about different kinds of analyses of photographs and visual data in general. However, most researchers do not recount in their articles what kind of analysis has been used. In the methods section of articles, researchers discuss what kinds of data were collected and how they were collected, but few proceed to discuss what was done with the data after collection. Most indicate that the data were “analyzed.” Some use phrases such as photographs “can be read,” “in line with the social constructionist paradigm,” “we looked for salient patterns/images/issues,” and the like. The reason for this lack of discussion about the actual analysis might be that there is not one specific approach and that the field is relatively new for many researchers. Many researchers treat photos in the same way as verbal texts, but often do not provide even basic information about the method used. Some researchers mention that photographs were categorized, but usually there is nothing more explicitly said about the analysis or interpretation. However, more recently some researchers have provided closer accounts of the process of analysis and interpretation (e.g., Holm, 2018 ; Velasco, Beckmans, O’Driscoll, & Loots, 2014 ).

Presentation of Research Using Photography as a Research Method

In social science studies, the most common way to present research using photography is still to translate most of the photographs into text, although more journals are willing to publish a few photographs as part of an article. However, only journals like Visual Studies, Critique of Anthropology , and Visual Communication will publish photo essays in which most of the article consists of photos accompanied by short texts or captions and the participants’ story (Banks, 2007 ). There also tend to be more photos in books and book chapters than in journals. One reason for this might be, as Miller ( 2015 ) pointed out, that reviewers for refereed journals tend to give unreasonable or nonrelevant critique by asking, for example, about the frequency of photographs or if they are staged. E-journals are ideal venues because some of them, like Forum: Qualitative Social Research , are open-access journals and publish photography-based articles. Hypermedia online journal articles, like a special issue of Sociological Research Online , go a step further than regular online publishing by including, for example, live video clips. Online journals could also link directly to interactive websites where data sets of photographs and interview transcripts as well as the results, including the photographs, could be available. Rose, in her book Visual Methodologies (2016), provided examples of such websites. Although some researchers publish their work using photographs on websites, this is not a realistic option—at least not as the only venue—because most academic researchers still work in institutions requiring publishing in refereed journals.

Ethical Issues in Photography as a Method

Ethical issues have emerged throughout the chapter with regard to gaining access, securing informed consent, and promising confidentiality. Of foremost concern in photographic research is whether participants understand what informed consent means and for what purposes the photographs can be used. Institutional review boards are especially strict with regard to protecting participants from harmful or compromising photographs. However, many argue that it is not possible to foresee all possible situations in advance, and hence giving consent should be ongoing throughout the study (Pauwels, 2008 ; Wiles, Coffey, Robison, & Prosser, 2012 ). It is possible to produce consent forms in which participants specify what kind of uses they consent to. For example, some participants may allow their photographs to be used for analysis but not for publication. Other participants might not want anonymity; rather, they want viewers to know who they are and/or that they have taken a particular photograph (Grinyer, 2002 ; Wiles et al., 2008 ), although this is not always possible if others are involved in the study. Conversely, there can be difficulties with photo release forms if someone is suspicious of signing forms (Banks, 2007 ) or does not understand the language or meaning of the form.

Ultimately, the researcher must make judgments about ethical issues surfacing over the course of the study. Participants’ rights to refuse to be photographed or to photograph certain things must be respected at all times. Likewise, it must be possible to withdraw from the study at any time. In describing the difficulties of taking photos of very poor consumers in four different countries, Lindeman et al. ( 2010 ) described how the fieldworkers were torn between doing what the study required with just a couple of weeks of fieldwork and respecting people’s right to not to want to be photographed or have their poor homes photographed. They noted,

The issue of interfering in peoples’ lives was also present when we wanted to take photos and videos. In principle we always asked for permission before filming or taking pictures, but in some instances we also had to take sneak picture of things of high importance to the research. (Lindeman et al. 2010 , p. 9)

In the pressure to collect data quickly, the researchers made poor ethical decisions.

Researchers using previously taken photos as well as researchers working with new photos face questions of ownership and copyright (Rose, 2016 ). With regard to new photos, some researchers try to prevent potential problems by clarifying photo ownership on the forms used for permission to conduct research. This might be a good idea, especially if the participants take the photos and think of them as their own.

Overall, collaborative research in which the photographs are more of a coproduction might be a more ethical approach to visual research. Giving copies to and discussing photos with the participants whenever possible is also a way to give participants a better sense of which photos will be used and how they will be used. In using photography as a research method, the one aspect present in all studies and throughout all studies, from beginning to end, is the responsibility of the researcher to make good ethical judgments to produce research that does not harm participants in any way.

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09 May 2024

Cubic millimetre of brain mapped in spectacular detail

Carissa Wong

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Rendering based on electron-microscope data, showing the positions of neurons in a fragment of the brain cortex. Neurons are coloured according to size. Credit: Google Research & Lichtman Lab (Harvard University). Renderings by D. Berger (Harvard University)

Researchers have mapped a tiny piece of the human brain in astonishing detail. The resulting cell atlas, which was described today in Science 1 and is available online , reveals new patterns of connections between brain cells called neurons, as well as cells that wrap around themselves to form knots, and pairs of neurons that are almost mirror images of each other.

The 3D map covers a volume of about one cubic millimetre, one-millionth of a whole brain, and contains roughly 57,000 cells and 150 million synapses — the connections between neurons. It incorporates a colossal 1.4 petabytes of data. “It’s a little bit humbling,” says Viren Jain, a neuroscientist at Google in Mountain View, California, and a co-author of the paper. “How are we ever going to really come to terms with all this complexity?”

Slivers of brain

The brain fragment was taken from a 45-year-old woman when she underwent surgery to treat her epilepsy. It came from the cortex, a part of the brain involved in learning, problem-solving and processing sensory signals. The sample was immersed in preservatives and stained with heavy metals to make the cells easier to see. Neuroscientist Jeff Lichtman at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his colleagues then cut the sample into around 5,000 slices — each just 34 nanometres thick — that could be imaged using electron microscopes.

Jain’s team then built artificial-intelligence models that were able to stitch the microscope images together to reconstruct the whole sample in 3D. “I remember this moment, going into the map and looking at one individual synapse from this woman’s brain, and then zooming out into these other millions of pixels,” says Jain. “It felt sort of spiritual.”

Rendering of a neuron with a round base and many branches, on a black background.

A single neuron (white) shown with 5,600 of the axons (blue) that connect to it. The synapses that make these connections are shown in green. Credit: Google Research & Lichtman Lab (Harvard University). Renderings by D. Berger (Harvard University)

When examining the model in detail, the researchers discovered unconventional neurons, including some that made up to 50 connections with each other. “In general, you would find a couple of connections at most between two neurons,” says Jain. Elsewhere, the model showed neurons with tendrils that formed knots around themselves. “Nobody had seen anything like this before,” Jain adds.

The team also found pairs of neurons that were near-perfect mirror images of each other. “We found two groups that would send their dendrites in two different directions, and sometimes there was a kind of mirror symmetry,” Jain says. It is unclear what role these features have in the brain.

Proofreaders needed

The map is so large that most of it has yet to be manually checked, and it could still contain errors created by the process of stitching so many images together. “Hundreds of cells have been ‘proofread’, but that’s obviously a few per cent of the 50,000 cells in there,” says Jain. He hopes that others will help to proofread parts of the map they are interested in. The team plans to produce similar maps of brain samples from other people — but a map of the entire brain is unlikely in the next few decades, he says.

“This paper is really the tour de force creation of a human cortex data set,” says Hongkui Zeng, director of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. The vast amount of data that has been made freely accessible will “allow the community to look deeper into the micro-circuitry in the human cortex”, she adds.

Gaining a deeper understanding of how the cortex works could offer clues about how to treat some psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases. “This map provides unprecedented details that can unveil new rules of neural connections and help to decipher the inner working of the human brain,” says Yongsoo Kim, a neuroscientist at Pennsylvania State University in Hershey.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01387-9

Shapson-Coe, A. et al. Science 384 , eadk4858 (2024).

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Title: breaking language barriers in multilingual mathematical reasoning: insights and observations.

Abstract: Existing research predominantly focuses on developing powerful language learning models (LLMs) for mathematical reasoning within monolingual languages, with few explorations in preserving efficacy in a multilingual context. To bridge this gap, this paper pioneers exploring and training powerful Multilingual Math Reasoning (xMR) LLMs. Firstly, by utilizing translation, we construct the first multilingual math reasoning instruction dataset, MGSM8KInstruct, encompassing ten distinct languages, thus addressing the issue of training data scarcity in xMR tasks. Based on the collected dataset, we propose different training strategies to build powerful xMR LLMs, named MathOctopus, notably outperform conventional open-source LLMs and exhibit superiority over ChatGPT in few-shot scenarios. Notably, MathOctopus-13B reaches 47.6% accuracy which exceeds ChatGPT 46.3% on MGSM testset. Beyond remarkable results, we unearth several pivotal observations and insights from extensive experiments: (1) When extending the rejection sampling strategy to the multilingual context, it proves effective for model performances, albeit limited. (2) Employing parallel corpora for math Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) across multiple languages not only significantly enhances model performance multilingually but also elevates their monolingual performance. This indicates that crafting multilingual corpora can be regarded as a vital strategy for enhancing model performance in a specific language, especially in mathematical reasoning tasks. For instance, MathOctopus-7B improves its counterparts that trained on English from 42.2% to 50.8% on GSM8K testset.

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Telehealth Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement vs Usual Care in Individuals With Opioid Use Disorder and Pain : A Randomized Clinical Trial

1 Department of Psychiatry, Division of Addiction Psychiatry, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Piscataway, New Jersey
2 Rutgers School of Public Health, Piscataway, New Jersey
3 College of Social Work, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
4 Center on Mindfulness and Integrative Health Intervention Development, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
Correction Numerical Error in Results of Abstract and Article Text JAMA Psychiatry

Question What is the relative efficacy of Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) as an adjunct to methadone treatment as usual (usual care) as compared with usual care only?

Findings In this randomized clinical trial of 154 individuals with chronic pain in methadone treatment for an opioid use disorder, relative to usual care, MORE plus usual care demonstrated efficacy for decreasing drug use, pain, and depression and increasing methadone treatment retention and adherence.

Meaning Phase 3 clinical trials of MORE and the development of strategies to train clinicians to integrate MORE into methadone treatment programs are warranted.

Importance Methadone treatment (MT) fails to address the emotion dysregulation, pain, and reward processing deficits that often drive opioid use disorder (OUD). New interventions are needed to address these factors.

Objective To evaluate the efficacy of MT as usual (usual care) vs telehealth Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) plus usual care among people with an OUD and pain.

Design, Setting, and Participants This study was a randomized clinical trial conducted from August 2020 to June 2022. Participants receiving MT for OUD and experiencing chronic pain were recruited at 5 clinics in New Jersey.

Interventions In usual care, participants received MT, including medication and counseling. Participants receiving MORE plus usual care attended 8 weekly, 2-hour telehealth groups that provided training in mindfulness, reappraisal, and savoring in addition to usual care.

Main Outcomes and Measure Primary outcomes were return to drug use and MT dropout over 16 weeks. Secondary outcomes were days of drug use, methadone adherence, pain, depression, and anxiety. Analyses were based on an intention-to-treat approach.

Results A total of 154 participants (mean [SD] age, 48.5 [11.8] years; 88 female [57%]) were included in the study. Participants receiving MORE plus usual care had significantly less return to drug use (hazard ratio [HR], 0.58; 95% CI, 0.37-0.90; P = .02) and MT dropout (HR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.18-0.96; P = .04) than those receiving usual care only after adjusting for a priori–specified covariates (eg, methadone dose and recent drug use, at baseline). A total of 44 participants (57.1%) in usual care and 39 participants (50.6%) in MORE plus usual care returned to drug use. A total of 17 participants (22.1%) in usual care and 10 participants (13.0%) in MORE plus usual care dropped out of MT. In zero-inflated models, participants receiving MORE plus usual care had significantly fewer days of any drug use (ratio of means = 0.58; 95% CI, 0.53-0.63; P < .001) than those receiving usual care only through 16 weeks. A significantly greater percentage of participants receiving MORE plus usual care maintained methadone adherence (64 of 67 [95.5%]) at the 16-week follow-up than those receiving usual care only (56 of 67 [83.6%]; χ 2 = 4.49; P = .04). MORE reduced depression scores and ecological momentary assessments of pain through the 16-week follow-up to a significantly greater extent than usual care (group × time F 2,272 = 3.13; P = .05 and group × time F 16,13000 = 6.44; P < .001, respectively). Within the MORE plus usual care group, EMA pain ratings decreased from a mean (SD) of 5.79 (0.29) at baseline to 5.17 (0.30) at week 16; for usual care only, pain decreased from 5.19 (0.28) at baseline to 4.96 (0.29) at week 16. Within the MORE plus usual care group, mean (SD) depression scores were 22.52 (1.32) at baseline and 18.98 (1.38) at 16 weeks. In the usual care–only group, mean (SD) depression scores were 22.65 (1.25) at baseline and 20.03 (1.27) at 16 weeks. Although anxiety scores increased in the usual care–only group and decreased in the MORE group, this difference between groups did not reach significance (group × time unadjusted F 2,272 = 2.10; P = .12; Cohen d = .44; adjusted F 2,268 = 2.33; P = .09). Within the MORE plus usual care group, mean (SD) anxiety scores were 25.5 (1.60) at baseline and 23.45 (1.73) at 16 weeks. In the usual care–only group, mean (SD) anxiety scores were 23.27 (1.75) at baseline and 24.07 (1.73) at 16 weeks.

Conclusions and Relevance This randomized clinical trial demonstrated that telehealth MORE was a feasible adjunct to MT with significant effects on drug use, pain, depression, treatment retention, and adherence.

Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04491968

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