: a case for photo elicitation, Harper, Douglas. (2002). Visual Studies, 17.1. 13-26
Harper defines photo elicitation, which was first named by photographer and researcher John Collier in 1957, through a history of its development in anthropology and sociology studies. He explains that benefits from using photos or images in general for interviewing are partly due to the particular quality of photos: capturing the impossible, thus evoking our emotion, and compensating verbal communication.
His methods includes taking photos in a particular way to elicit story-telling from his informants(!). Other forms of image elicitation he explains include reflexive cinema, such as in Chronicle of a Summer directed by Rouch, and 'photofeedback', which was coined by Sampson-Cordle in her dissertation (2002). She let her study subjects (teachers, community members and students) photograph their worlds with inexpensive automatic cameras.
He considers photo elicitation "a postmodern dialogue based on the authority of the
subject rather than the researcher". The aspect of shifting authority of photo elicitation, he asserts, addresses some postmodern ethnography.
Sampson-Cordle, Alice Vera. 2001. “Exploring the relationship between a small rural school in
Northeast Georgia and its community: an imagebased study using participant-produced photographs” (dissertation).
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About Me
- Kay Yang
- Compose yourself, then compose. Every frame is a moment of now. Take nothing for granted. By all means, try all means. When it doubt, cut. Attain the inevitable. Allness is ripe--from a wall of a film editing room.