DOING VISUAL ETHNOGRAPHY

Pink, Sarah. 2001. Doing Visual Ethnography. London: Sage.

KUTIPAN LANGSUNG

INTRODUCTION
Photography, ... are becoming increasingly incorporated into the work of etnographers: as cultural texts; as representations of ethnographic knowledge; and as sites of cultural production, social interaction and individual experience that themselves from ethnographic fieldwork locales.

..., the benefits of an ethnographic approach are being realized in visual art and media studies with development such as 'media ethnography' (see Crawford and Hafsteinnson 1996), and the use of ethnographic research methods and anthropological theory to inform photographic practice and representation (e.g. Olivia da Silva, barbara Hind).
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An Approach to Theory, Method and the Visual in Ethnography

The methods should serve the aims of the research, not the research serve the aim of the method' (McGuigan 1997:2). Moreover, as Josephides points out, 'out ethnographic strategies are also shaped by the subjects' situations, their global as well as local perceptions, and their demands and expectation to us'. Therefore, 'There can be no blueprint for how to do field works. It really depends on the local people, and for this reason we have to construct our theories of how to do field work in the field' (Josephides 1997:32, original italics).
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Images may not necessarily be the main research method or topic, butthrough their relation to other sensory, material and discursive elements of the research images and visual knowledge will become of interest. As Stoller reminds us, 'it is representationally as well as analytically important to consider how perception in non-western societies develves not simply from vision ... but also from smell, touch, taste and hearing' (1997:xv-xvi).

Academic epistemologies and conventional academic modes of representation should not be used to obscure and abstract the epistemologies and experienced realites of local people. Rather, these may complement one another as different types of ethnographic knowledge that may be experienced and represented in a range of different textual, visual and other sensory ways.
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Disiplinary concerns and ethnographic research

Anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, photographic studies and media studies are the key disciplines. With their shared interests in material culture, practices of representation, the interpretation of cultural texts and comprehending social relations and individual experience, each discipline offers its own understanding of the visual in culture and society.
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