Stacey Caillier sent this paper over the IVSA list. I think it may be very useful to us in dicussing our methodology for the exhibits. She said:
" I wrote a paper last
year about using photo-elicitation techniques with youth and while I
did not come across anything that explicitly claimed a feminist
methodology, there are many parallels in looking at this issue
through a feminist lens and a youth studies lens. Both are focused
on trying to ensure that the research subject/participant's voice
comes through strong and letting their own work (self-produced
photos, video, or other materials) direct the interview- in effect
designating the subject as the expert and inverting the power
dynamics in a traditional interview situation."
And she attached her bibliography. Very helpful. jeanne
Photo Elicitation and Implications for Working with Youth
by Stacey Caillier
In
many ways, children and youth are among our most silenced and devalued
populations. Conceptualized as incomplete adults for most of history, children
are portrayed in dominant accounts of child development as “marginalized beings
awaiting temporal passage, through the acquisition of cognitive skill, into the
social world of adults” (James and Prout, 1990). Children have long been the subjects (or
objects) of research and scientific study, but often their voices are
constructed by and for members of the adult world.Only recently, due in part to the development
of a new sociology of childhood, have children’s voices been allowed a more
direct role in the construction (or reconstruction) of childhoodConsequently, Cindy Dell Clark notes that as
“children have been increasingly conceptualized as active participants in their
own social worlds, researchers have sought methods able to reveal children’s
perspectives,” methods that focus on the meanings children themselves attach to
their lives (1999, p. 39).One of the
methodologies that has emerged is the use of visual images to stimulate
conversations between adults and youth in a way that challenges what Wagner calls
“the asymmetries of power” that can orient adult-child talk toward adult
concerns and away from those of young people (1999, p. 4).
This
project evolved through my dual desires to produce an ethnography of youth in a
performing arts schools and to use photographic images as an integral part of
both my data collection and my analysis.
One of the goals of ethnography is to provide the “emic” meanings of
cultural and social experiences such that the participants’ understandings of
their experiences are represented (Watson-Gegeo, 1988). This emic perspective is usually attained
through participant observation, in which the researcher takes an active role
in the lives of the people he or she is studying and thereby attains “insider”
status. Several researchers have
discussed how the role of photographer can facilitate the researcher’s
acceptance as an insider within the community or culture they are studying
(Schwartz, 1989; Shanklin, 1979; Collier, 1967). Various others (Harper, 1987; Turner, 1992;
Clark, 1999; Rich & Chalfen, 1999; etc) have gone a step further and have
utilized photographs in a process called photo elicitation as a way of arriving
at the emic perspective. Suchar defines
photo-elicitation as “a method of using photographs to guide interviews and ask
questions about social, cultural, and behavioral realities” (1997, p. 34). This method is aligned with what Banks
considers the “new ethnography” which recognizes the “agency of the
anthropological subject and their right as well as their ability to enter into
discourse about the construction of their lives (1998, p. 9). Correspondingly, Harper describes how the
value of the photo elicitation process resides in the redefinition of power
dynamics wherein “Roles are reversed as the subject becomes the teacher” (1987,
p. 12). In Harper’s work with Willie,
“the question of what to photograph became, in fact, the question of how to see
things at least roughly as Willie saw them” (p. 12).
However, photo
elicitation does not demand that the researcher alone be the photographer,
though this is often the case. Placing
the camera in the hands of the “insiders” may be the most direct way of getting
at what is important to them and how they attach meaning to their
experiences. In her studies of chronically
ill children, Clark had children and parents take
pictures that reflected the child’s illness and treatment in daily life. She found that giving the children and the
families autonomy in the photo-making process not only facilitated the
interview, but provided children with the power to describe their experiences
on their terms: “Their own photographs shape the topics included and their own
commentary on the photographs retains for the child the right to interpret
material in his or her own way” (1999, p. 41).
She asserts that the visual representations generated by the
participants “become part of the interview itself and allow respondents to
self-select relevant events from their own lives and illustrate these events
with photographs” (p. 40). My desire to
redefine the power dynamics inherent in researcher-subject relationships and to
discover what is really important to the youth in my study led me to follow in Clark’s
footsteps. This project began when I
placed a camera in the hands of a young woman attending the performing arts
school I am studying and asked her to take pictures of a typical day in her
life.
My
use of the images generated by this young woman differs in many ways from how
images have been and are treated in most research. Ruby asserts, “Picture taking is a way of
being an anthropologist, but rarely a means of doing anthropology” (1976, p.
4). He argues that photos are rarely
used as data for analysis or evidence for presentation. Instead they are regarded as illustrations of
the researcher’s experience and function much like the photos of a tourist
(1973, p. 13), serving primarily as proof that was one was there and then
tucked away into a shoebox once the novelty has worn off. Viewing photographs as relevant pieces of
data that require interpretation by the informant demands a different approach,
one in which the camera and the photos themselves function as tools of inquiry,
not simply verification. An inquiry
approach, in Hagaman’s words, entails using photographs to try to find out
something new and to test or modify a theory or idea (1993, p. 61). An ethnographic approach requires that
informants be involved in this process since the meaning embedded in any
photograph is necessarily context determined (Ruby, 1975). Thus, the process of making photographs, the
photographs themselves, and the photo interview contribute to the generation of
grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), whereby data collection and
analysis take place simultaneously through a matrix of interactions between the
informant, camera, photographs, researcher, and the various social and cultural
contexts. In addition, photographic data
plays a useful role in triangulation with data gathered through participant observation
and other sources (Wagner, 1979, p. 150).
Reflections on the Interview Process
In
preparing for this interview, I had given K, a high school junior, a disposable
27 exposure camera with which she agreed to take pictures of a “typical day in
her life.” I intentionally gave little direction
because I was curious as to how she would represent her life and what patterns
would emerge from the pictures. Five
days later she gave the camera back to me and we scheduled a time to talk about
the pictures. Learning from my past
photo elicitation interview, I carefully prepared an interview schedule (see
Appendix 1) from questions that emerged as I thought about my research
questions and as I looked over her photos once they had been developed. I tried to make my questions very open-ended
and intended the schedule to function as more of a guide than a rigid outline
of topics needing to be covered.
Before
going to the interview, I spread the pictures out on my desk to see if I could
determine any patterns or groupings in the photos and develop any hypothesis
that I could examine further in the interview.
I followed a process similar to Wagner’s “content analysis” in which a
set of photos is systematically surveyed with respect to predetermined variables
(1979, p. 154). For instance, I noted
the number of photos containing people (5/16), how many of those were of peers
(4/16), how many of teachers (1/16), and that all of the photos of people were
male and were taken at school. The photo
of the teacher was interesting because his back was turned, as if he did not
know she was taking his picture. I
noticed that she appeared in only one photo, but her hand was the only part of
her that was visible. I guessed that 7/16
photos seemed to be taken in or around her home and noted that the majority of
her pictures were of inanimate objects or animals (in this case, her
cats). From her pictures, I began to
form several hypotheses:
1. She felt more comfortable taking pictures of
objects vs. pictures of people
2. She felt more comfortable taking pictures of
friends vs. pictures of teachers
(All of her friends were facing the camera
while the teacher’s back was to the
camera.)
3. Most of her school friends are male and
involved in drama (The three boys
represented were all in the fall play
with her.)
4. She does not feel comfortable asking others
to take her picture or does not like
to be in pictures.
Some questions emerged as well:
1. Does K have many friends in and out of
school? Who are they? (There were
no
pictures of girls and only 3 boys represented, one of which she does not
consider
a friend.)
2. How does K view school and where does she
feel most comfortable?
3. What is K’s relationship with people in her
family? (There were no pictures of
her family, but several of her cats.)
4. What do the photos of inanimate objects
represent or mean to her? (Several of
these shots
seemed posed, like she had placed things in a certain way. This led me to believe that these things were
important to her and she wanted to represent them a certain fashion.)
As I analyzed the photos, I was
consciously aware that I was using my own implicit theories of what I thought
should or would be important to a teenage girl to interpret the photos and
formulate hypotheses. Like Bellman and
Jules-Rosett, I questioned whether my “knowing” was the same as her
understanding of what was taking place or represented in the photos, and I
acknowledged that there could be significant differences between our
interpretations (1972).
This
danger of constructing a text that does not represent the perspectives of those
whose lives are the subject of study is greatly minimized, however, by
dialoging with subjects and letting them interact with the photos. Two days later, I began the interview by
handing K the stack of photos and letting her arrange them as she wanted. After putting them in a rectangular matrix,
she pulled three photos into a group and talked about how several of her photos
were intended to “represent something else.”
Witnessing K’s interaction with the photos was not only illuminating,
but necessary, since several of K’s pictures disallowed or at least made very
problematic the type of “attribution” analysis Ruby discourages (1976). The
“represention” photos in particular required her explanation of the context and
its significance in order for me to learn what was important to her about these
photos. If I had relied entirely on
employing my own attributions to the interpretation of her photos, I would not
only have misrepresented her life, but silenced her voice. As Becker says, “pictures do not simply make
assertions, but rather that we interact with them in order to arrive at
conclusions” (1986, p. 279). Likewise,
Suchar argues that the photographs’ documentary potential is not inherent in
the photos themselves, but in the interactive process “whereby photographs are
used as a way of answering or expanding on questions about a particular
subject” (1997, p. 33). Through K’s
interaction with the photo of her back pack, I learned about her daily school
routine, how she felt about it, and how she sees her back pack as a symbol of
the involuntary burden of school that she has to shoulder daily. I learned that the picture of the phone next
to the computer with calling cards scattered on the keyboard represented how
she communicates with her friends, the importance she places on these
relationships, and her desire to conceal who she talks to and how much she
talks to them from her parents.
I
was able to learn all of this with very little prompting or probing. I found Collier’s assertion that ”photographs
make wordless probes, that lead the interview into the heart of your research”
to be true (Collier, 1967, p. 47).
Similarly, Butler noted that
pictures serve as “’projective stimuli’ which respondents use to reveal
thoughts, behaviors, and attitudes” with minimal prompting (Clark, 1999, p.
41). I did not have to struggle, as
Erickson and Shultz did, with ways of eliciting information that “avoided the
extremes of being too directive or too nondirective” (1981, p. 59). The photos and K’s interaction with them kept
the interview on track, eliciting stories that went deeper into her experiences
and the meanings she attached to them.
Although she focused on four photos for the majority of the interview, I
was able to learn a great deal about how she experiences her life. Clark argues that
photo elicitation, which she calls “autodriving,” resolves many of the dilemmas
inherent in adult researchers working with youth respondents because looking at
pictures with youth constitutes a shared, potentially egalitarian activity
whereby the respondent has the control and authority in interpreting their own
pictures (1999). While I am not
convinced that the power dynamic between researcher and researched was
completely obliterated, I do think photo elicitation challenges traditional
power structures and provides youth with a seldom offered opportunity to
explain and reflect on their lives in their own voices.
Issues of Representation
Throughout the
interview, issues that influenced her process of taking photos emerged and
illuminated aspects of her life as a student and as an individual that a more
traditional interview may have missed.
As K discussed her process and how she decided what to take pictures of,
I realized that the lives of youth are constrained in various ways that
influence how they are able to represent their lives through photos. There were several things that I would have
expected to be represented more often, but here Becker’s question of “access”
becomes important in interpreting how adequately these photos represented her
life as she lives it (1986, p. 286). For
children and youth, questions of access are intertwined with issues of adult
power and expectations of youth subordination which are often particularly
salient in schools. Orellana found that
“the freedom that kids had to take pictures of their “choice” was delimited by
the degree of spatial autonomy they had at the time they had the camera” (1999,
p. 77). Being able to go where ever they
want, however, is not the only factor affecting the photos youth are able to
take or “make.” Following a project in
which sociology students were expected to photograph various social situations,
Bellman and Jules-Rosett discovered that “students were able to discriminate
immediately between those situations in which taking pictures was almost
expected and those in which several students even maintained they had to force
themselves to take out their cameras” (1977, p. 22).
In light of this,
it is not surprising that K took few pictures of teachers or students in
classrooms or participating in classroom activities, even though she said she
carried the camera with her for days. It
is also not unexpected that she eventually resorted to photographing “things
instead of people.” She talked about
wanting to take pictures of people during passing time at school, including a
girl who “used to be” her best friend, but was afraid she would “freak people
out.” The pictures she did take at
school that involved people either seemed posed or taken without the person
knowing, as in the case of the teacher.
These issues of access and social dynamics that affect where, when, and
who it is appropriate to take pictures of become particularly intriguing when
we begin to consider the absence of family members in her photos. I would expect that family would offer the
easiest access, however, I know very little about her home life and the interview
was cut short before we could get into that topic sufficiently. While K expressed that she wished she would
have included photos of her sister and her mom, she did not mention her father,
though she often referred to her “parents” during the interview.
Through
K’s talk about how she decided what and who to photograph, I was able to gain
some insight into her relationships and the social dynamics that influenced how
she was able, or chose, to represent her life.
I was also able to get a glimpse into how our relationship and what I
have interpreted as her increasing need for affirmation from me may have
potentially affected the representations she chose. Issues of my own positionality became
increasingly important as K’s comments began to reflect her need and desire to
be an adult, to identify with adults on “the same level,” and to not be
associated with the “kids” at the school.
As Lal states, “The fact is that our subjects are often not just
responding to our agendas and to our questions, but they are also engaged in
actively shaping their presentations to suit their own agendas of how they wish
to be represented” (1996, p. 204).
Eisner’s group of students who produced a film inquiring into the
culture of their school used the film as an opportunity to reveal what they
took the culture to be (1997, p. 8).
Likewise, K used this opportunity to present a certain representation of
her life that was influenced by a variety of factors such as how she wished to
represent herself to me, where and when she felt comfortable taking pictures, who
she felt comfortable taking pictures of, and what she thought was interesting.
Apparently,
what she thought was interesting enough to take a picture of was also
determined by what she considered to be “photo-worthy.” K told me that she had expected to have no
trouble filling the role of film, but that once she began trying to take
pictures, she did not feel that much of her life was “photo-worthy.” When I asked her what she meant, she
hesitated and said, “You know, there was no subject, nothing happening.” K’s conceptions of what should be
photographed, and what should not, could be influenced by a variety of factors
including cultural views of what a “good” photograph is or her own desire to
create “art.” While Becker acknowledges
that the desire to make “art” photographs can lead photographers to suppress
details that interfere with their artistic conceptions, he argues that viewers
should not automatically dismiss such photographs as invalid (1986, p.
285). One way to elucidate K’s
photo-making process would be to have her take pictures she deems as
“photo-worthy” and those she deems as not and discuss the differences. As Grady states, “the distinction between
taking (or making) photographs and analyzing them is unfortunate because it
suggests that there isn’t much analytic work involved in taking pictures. In actual fact, however, the process involves
analytic direction and theorizing from start to finish” (1996, p.12). In making and analyzing her photos, K made
both conscious and unconscious decisions about what to include and what to
leave out. While K may not feel that all
parts of her day may be interesting or “photo-worthy,” they are still parts of
her day that may help illuminate how she experiences her daily life in all its
complexity and routine. Certainly, what
is often most meaningful or relevant to our lives is not always what is most
picturesque.
Challenges
There were
several obstacles I had to overcome in the process of this project and I have
learned many things that will help my future photo elicitation projects go
smoother. One drawback of this method is
that it involves the added cost of the cameras and the photo development, which
can become especially problematic on a graduate student budget and when cameras
are not returned by research subjects. I
had originally contacted a different young woman to work with me on this
project. Her response was very
enthusiastic, but week after week, she kept failing to return the camera to me
even though she said she had completed the role of film. Eventually, I was feeling pressed to meet my
deadline and I enlisted the help of K.
Luckily K returned the camera promptly and we set a date to meet for the
interview shortly after. However, I have
learned that I need to send out more cameras than I expect to get back if I
want to be successful with this method.
Although this entails extra expense, it seems necessary to the success
of the venture.
Another obstacle
that I encountered through the process of interviewing youth is the fact that
most children and young people have less autonomy over their time and how it is
spent than adults. I had expected to
talk with K for at least an hour, but thirty-five minutes into our interview,
her cell phone rang and she announced that her mother was waiting outside the
school to pick her up. I had assumed
that she would be staying at the school all afternoon since they had a
performance that night, but apparently her mother wanted her to come home for
dinner first. Since K was dependent on
her mother for transportation and seemed anxious to meet her mother who was
waiting by the curb, our interview was cut short and we got through less than
half of the interview schedule (though we were not following it in any order). Next time, I will be certain to clarify an
appropriate duration and time to meet so that fewer things are left
unexplored. Though K graciously offered
to meet with me the next day to continue the interview, we were not able to
make our schedules coincide and I feel that much of my knowledge of her process
and her life is partial at best.
Despite these
learning lessons and challenges, I agree with Clark, who concludes that the use
of informant-made photography in interviews is a valuable tool for opening up
youth’s worlds to researchers and for giving youth the opportunity to actively
interpret their own experience (1999, p. 49).
I plan on incorporating this method into my on-going ethnographic work
with youth because I feel it has the potential to give voice to those who have
long needed to be heard.
Works Cited
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cultural
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NJ.
***Clark, Cindy Dell (1999). The autodriven interview: A
photographic viewfinder into
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anthropology:
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York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
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forms of data representation.
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Appendix 1
Interview with Katie
Purpose:
To find out more about what her life is like and what is important to
her. Too see her life from her
perspective and get her opinions on things she encounters every day.
The Process
1) Describe your
process of taking photos of a “typical day” in your life.
~ How did
you feel about the process?
~ How did
you decide what to take pictures of (or what not to take pictures of)?
~ Were you
able to take pictures of the stuff you wanted to?
~ What were the difficulties you
faced in taking pictures?
The
Pictures Themselves
1) So, tell me what
is happening in these pictures and why you included them?
~ What is
happening in each?
~ How does
each make you feel?
2) Which photo or
photos are most meaningful to you? Why?
3) Which photo or
photos are least meaningful to you? Why?
4) SEQUENCE: Arrange the photos in order from least
important to you to most
important to
you.
~ Talk about why you arranged them
this way.
5) GROUPINGS: Arrange these photos into any groups you
notice.
~ What are the groups?
~ How did
you decide which group a photo belonged to?
~ (anything
that surprises me- ask about)
~ Is there
another way you could arrange the photos?
Do it. How is it different?
~ Are there
any photos that you have trouble putting into a group?
6) Do you feel like
these photos adequately represent a “typical day” in your life?
~
What photos seem to be missing or do you wish you would have/could
have
included?
~
Why are they not included?
7) Do you notice any
patterns in the pictures you took?
~ Did
anything surprise you?
PFAA
1) How long have you
been here?
2) Why did you decide
to come?
3) How do you feel
about your experience so far?
~ What is
your favorite part of the school day?
~ What is
your least favorite part of the school day?
~ Last week you made the comment
“It’s about time you learned that you don’t always get what you want to XXXX
charter school.” What did this mean?
4) If you could take
one photo of what PFAA means to you, what would that picture
look like? Describe it to me.
~ Who is in
it?
~ What is in it?
~ What is happening?
5) If you had not
come here, where would you have gone to high school?
~ How would
your life be different?
~ Describe
what you think a “typical day” at that high school would be like.