Introduction: Envisioning ethnography

-Exploring the meaning of the visual in research. Gerry Bloustein (2003). Social Analysis, 47(3), 1-7.

Visual images in the forms of photographs, video, film, and new media have become important to ethnographic endeavors and all of the social sciences (She cited from Banks, 2001).

In the use of the camera for recording oneself, Bloustein wrote:

For it the camera seems to objectify, it can also subjectify. The taking and revisiting of a photo or video of oneself become analogous to the way Lacan has described the dream state of "seeing ourselves seeing ourselves" (Lacan 1979: 74, quote in Sanders 1980:1). No wonder the camera and related visual images increasingly find themselves at the heart of ethnographic research. (p. 2)

Introducing Bloustein's and Baker's work with video projects to which girls were invited to record their daily lives to investigate young girls' developing sense of self from their own perspectives and their relations and negotiations with various institutions, Bloustein described:

"Initially, the cameras were conceived of as an innovative solution to the extreme difficulties of entering, or at least having regular and comfortable access to groups that, almost by definition, would be closed to an adult researcher, but quickly, it was realized that the cameras in both projects took on a far more complex role in the research process." (p. 6)