Interpreting Visual Ethnography

Texts, Photos and the Construction of Sociological Meanings

Erkan Ali

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781472473400
• eBook ISBN: 9781317108429
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Focusing on the use of text in relation to a specific category of image - the photographic image - this book argues for a new appreciation of the relationship between texts and photographs in an age that seems to be dominated by visual images. With reference to a range of traditional and new media forms, and addressing such issues as gender, ethnicity, class, identity politics and biography, the author introduces a new perspective for the use and understanding of the symbiotic relationships that can exist between photographs and texts in the production of sociological, cultural and historical narratives: lamination. Drawing on the work of Barthes and Benjamin, the book explores the material forms of publications that involve the combination of photographs and texts, such as newspapers and journalism, documentary archives, visual ethnographies and on-line social networks, showing how text and image are contexts for one another and so negotiate meaning between themselves. A challenge to the recent 'visual turn' in sociology and cultural studies, which argues - without privileging text or image - for the significance of text in relation to visual images and the production of combined meanings, Interpreting Visual Ethnography will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology and media studies with interests in theory, visual methods and text and meaning.

1 Lamination

In the opening chapter of his book Ways of Seeing (1972), John Berger demonstrates the potential effect that words can have in relation to images. With reference to a small monochrome reproduction of the ‘Wheatfield with Crows’, a painting by Vincent van Gogh, Berger writes, “This is a landscape of a cornfield with birds flying out of it” (1972: 27). At first glance, this is a very ordinary and brief introduction to a well-known image that has been reproduced countless times. However, Berger then does something very interesting; he sets-up a kind of game or thought experiment by instructing his reader to pause and contemplate the picture briefly before moving on: “Look at it for a moment. Then turn the page”. At the turn of the page, the reader is confronted with a startling revelation about the picture. Running underneath a duplicate reproduction of the painting, a caption printed in the style of a hand-written inscription reads: “This is the last picture that Van Gogh painted before killing himself” (Berger, 1972: 28).

Berger then begins to speculate as to the effects of his caption on the picture. He writes, “It is hard to define exactly how the words have changed the image but undoubtedly they have. The image now illustrates the sentence” (Berger, 1972: 28). Although the precise significance of the sentence is a mystery to him, Berger is correct; and what he describes is precisely the act and effect of what I am calling lamination. Even if we cannot immediately pinpoint the significance of it, we are instantly aware that a meaning, a new meaning, has been created between word and image. The addition of a particular layer of text in the form of a brief but powerful caption (an exemplary lamination), strategically embedded within a more extensive exchange between words and images (a substantial lamination), has created a situation in which image and text interact with each other more powerfully than they did before. We too can speculate as to the significance of Berger’s caption. Perhaps, in our subsequent viewings of Van Gogh’s painting, the caption makes his brush strokes seem even more erratic and ill-defined, or renders even starker the contrast between the black crows – a bird synonymous with sadness and death – and the lighter shades representing the wheat in the field. In other words, it can make us wonder at the state of the great artist’s mind in the moments leading up to his suicide. In turn, perhaps the painting becomes an expression of that mood.

The hand-written style of the caption underneath the second picture, which is obviously different from the font style of the main body of text, is not insignificant because it indicates externality from the main narrative, rather like a note jotted later as the manifestation of a thought. Presumably, the addition of the caption in that style is intended for precisely this kind of effect. However, this does not prevent Berger from then speculating as to the effect of the meanings of the words themselves, a consideration which adds another dimension to the image-text construction. To help Berger with this quandary, I would make the following suggestion: Although not a commentary on a photograph, Berger’s caption, tellingly, has an ontological significance because it is concerned with life, death and tragedy; that is, it is invested with something like the sentiment of that has been, which, we may recall, Barthes (1981) attributes exclusively to the photograph. But it is only with the introduction of text, and not photographs, that this effect is created in Berger’s example. Words, then, it seems, can also have something like punctum, or they can at least add this quality to a painting.¹

The Berger example stands as a powerful demonstration that any kind of image – in this case a famous painting – can of course be laminated with words or other pictures (in fact, with reference to a whole series of other images, he offers just such an analysis in what remains of the rest of his book). However, in this book we are concerned not with the lamination of paintings but of photographs in a variety of ways. And the main aim of this chapter is to show that, rather than simply referring to photography as “textual” and leaving it at that, it is more helpful if we come to a new appreciation of the kinds of effects that texts and photographs can have on each other. One way to arrive at that new appreciation is through the concept of lamination. Roland Barthes, in reference to the gesture or effect of inscription, seems to capture this sentiment of binding or encapsulation perfectly when he notes that “writing is precisely that act which unites in the same labour that which could not be apprehended together in the mere flat space of representation” (Barthes, 1982: 14).

Lamination is a typical example of what the American cultural and media theorist WJT Mitchell would call an “imagetext” defined as “synthetic works or concepts that combine image and text” (1994: 89).² However, as I pointed out in the previous chapter, many theorists, Mitchell included, overlook the potential problems created by the textual connotations associated historically and theoretically with photography. Recognition of these problems produces the need to first acknowledge the differences between types of images and the contexts of their production and reproduction, and this comes before we even get into debates concerning their potential roles in the social sciences.

Indeed, Mitchell raises a convenient set of socially- and sociologically-relevant issues when he writes,

Even something as mundane and familiar as the relative proportion of image and text on the front page of the daily newspaper is a direct indicator of the social class of its readership. The real question to ask when confronted with these kinds of image-texts relations is not “what is the difference (or similarity) between words and images?” but what difference do the differences (or similarities) make?” That is, why does it matter how images are juxtaposed, blended or separated.

(1994: 91)

But all of these questions do matter, and they form the basis of this chapter. In the Introduction, I proposed that there are differences between images and texts. I have identified these differences and begun to discuss their importance. Moreover, I have begun to address the significance of the stylistic features and spatial arrangements of texts and images in the construction of meanings. All of these are important considerations and, in what follows, I will conduct a more in-depth analysis of precisely these kinds of issues with reference to photographs and texts from various contexts and genres. The following are to be understood as examples or instances of lamination in context, and, as I aim to show, factors not only of content but also style, sequencing and spatial arrangement, all affect the material construction and ultimately the meaning of the laminate as an artefact or testament.

Instances of lamination

Exemplary lamination

Recall that the crucial component in exemplary lamination involves efficiency in associations between words and pictures, both in terms of compatibility and in use of space: in successful instances, we should be left in doubt as to the correspondence between the text and the photograph. The most efficient and obvious kind of exemplary lamination is the caption, often found in the form of the advertising slogan for example. The English word “caption” is derived from the Latin “capitio”, which means “seizure” or “to arrest” or “to capture” (Hoad, 1986: 62). One aspect of lamination is to emphasise the power and externality of this act of seizure, this claim that text can have on the image. Text therefore envelops the photograph, and the caption – a terse narrative – does so by the most efficient means. The photograph and its caption can also be integrated into a broader textual narrative, the ultimate aim being to establish a more powerful association between the two. The custom in academic writing of directing the reader to “see figure …” or “see plate …” is the most common way of establishing an unmistakable connection between the text, the photograph or image and its caption within a larger piece of writing. Systems of numbering allow the reader to relate what is shown in a picture to the precise point at which it is mentioned or explained in the main body of text. As we saw in the Introduction, for its part the caption clarifies the exact relevance and purpose of the photograph in the text by fixing or “anchoring” the intended meaning, as Barthes would have it (Barthes: 1977c). In this way, the photograph becomes a visual testimony, an elaboration, or a visual demonstration of what the caption describes, rather than an open-ended visual image. Taken in the summer of 2016, the photograph in Figure 1.1 shows an Awa Odori dance on a street in Tokyo, Japan. With roots in the Buddhist tradition, Awa Odori takes place in the month of August and is the largest dance festival in Japan. The festival is a celebration of deceased ancestors who, it is believed, visit their descendent relatives during this time. Wearing traditional clothing, performers sing, chant and play musical instruments – such as flutes, drums and bells – as they parade through the streets. The combination of image with an accurate, straightforward and concise text makes Figure 1.1 an example of exemplary lamination.

Figure 1.1 An Awa Odori Festival dance in Kōenji, Tokyo

(Photograph by author)

Substantial lamination

It is not necessary (let alone possible) to provide a specific example of substantial lamination here but it is an extremely common technique, both in academic and other in other kinds of publications. Nevertheless, a description or two will serve to clarify its general characteristics. In cases of substantial lamination there is a sustained interaction between an extended textual account (with or without additional captioning) and a photograph or series of photographs. We find extended dialogues between texts and images in photographic essays. Often these are the result of collaboration between a writer and a photographer, a classic technique in the production of academic and archival works. One of the best-known partnerships in such enterprises in the twentieth century was that between the British writer John Berger and Swiss photographer Jean Mohr, who worked together on a series of documentary-style books addressing various social situations and problems (see for example Berger & Mohr: 1975; 1989; 1995). However, perhaps the most famous example of collaboration in an academic context would be Balinese Character (1942) by photographer Gregory Bateson and writer Margaret Mead.

Alternatively, substantial lamination can be the result of an author using his or her own photos or co-opting a series of photographs taken by somebody else and applying his or her own interpretation or narrative to them. Russell Freedman’s Kids at Work (1994) on the photographs of Lewis Hine exemplifies this. Freedman arranges Hine’s photographs in accordance with a series of chapters detailing Hine’s beginnings as a photographer and his eventual projects on the lives and employment of young workers in early twentieth century America, which means that the book builds neatly into a biography of Hine, an archival study of North American history and a commentary on the social significance of photography all at the same time.

These, then, are the two main styles of lamination; the former represents the simpler end of the scale (numbering, referencing and captioning), while the latter represents larger and more complex integrations of texts and photographs. But within and around these is a range of other examples, and I shall now discuss each of these in turn.

Self-lamination

Sometimes one individual can be responsible for producing both the written and the visual components in a piece of research or investigation. I refer to such works as examples of self-lamination; and self-lamination can be either exemplary or substantial or a combination of both. The sociologist Douglas Harper is a respected visual ethnographer who has become well-known for his engaging accounts of lives and cultures that are illustrated with his own photographs from the field. Harper refers to this style as “the visual ethnographic narrative”, and it is just one of four distinct (though not mutually exclusive) methods he identifies for using photographs in ethnography.³ The visual ethnographic narrative is particularly relevant to self-lamination because of the necessary close-engagement that the lone researcher has not only to his or her subjects but also the textual and visual data which is produced as a result.

One of the most interesting points to note about visual ethnographic narratives is that they involve character development (see Harper, 2006b: 86). Like a film director, the visual ethnographer who uses this technique has the task of not only selecting the most appropriate shots at the telling moments (to ensure that there are enough materials “in the can”, so to speak), but also, later, of organising them, placing them into such an order that they correspond to those significant moments that the researcher identified (or believed s/he identified) during his/her contact time with the subjects out in the field. (Of course, some of the most interesting moments captured in images will often be discovered not at the time of the research, but retrospectively). In any case, organising such data can be a difficult and daunting task. But when it is done expertly it is a most effective and engaging means of conveying sociological findings; and it can result in a convincing and powerful laminate.

Harper has produced a number of studies using this approach. One such example is Good Company (2006a), his study of “tramp life” in 1970s North America. In fact, Harper’s work emphasises not only the development of his subjects but the researcher, too, as he embarks on a personal journey with his informants; and journey is the operative word, both figuratively and literally, in Good Company, as Harper provides an account of his close association with hobos during his travels along the railroads of America’s Pacific Northwest. Upholding a tradition in place since at least the 1930s, the drifters that Harper befriended travelled mainly during the harvest season in search of work, picking apples in Wenatchee, Walla Walla and the orchards of the Okanogan River valley in Washington State. Good Company is an appropriate title because, despite the seductive description of Harper’s adventurous fieldwork activities, riding the freight trains is fraught with all kinds of dangers, not only from the trains but also from other tramps in the forms of theft and violence (2006a: 30), law enforcement (2006a: 87) and freight guards known as “bulls”, some of whom shoot first and ask questions later (2006a: 12–13). The tramps therefore tend to travel in small groups, but most often in twos, a tactic referred to as “buddying-up” (2006a: 66).⁴

Harper’s “buddy” is Carl, a tough and experienced but principled white tramp. Carl had clearly bought-into the classic definition of the tramp as a fiercely independent and mysterious but honourable figure. As Harper points out, Carl, just like many others belonging to this subgroup, “knew” the “history” associated with the tramp, and he identified with it (2006a: 186). In fact, Carl seemed to regard himself as the last of a dying breed, on account of a number of changes he was observing in tramp culture: namely, a diminishing sense of its traditions among a newer and more ruthless generation who failed to appreciate its history (2006a: 30), as well as harsher measures from authorities determined to rid the railroads of the tramps for good.

Carl quickly becomes Harper’s mentor, informing him about the routines involved in tramp life, as well as advising him about who, what and where to avoid. As Harper becomes familiar with the definitions for the different kinds of tramps and other kinds of characters, as well as the other terms involved in tramp culture, we learn too – we also therefore take the journey with Harper. Moreover, Harper’s photographs act like a kind of inventory, pointing to moments, objects, people, rituals and customs. The photographs have the effect of taking us inside the world of the tramp in a way that Harper’s words alone cannot. In one example, Carl can be seen sitting by the railroad, watching it intently, and waiting for the right train to come by. The right train is important because it will transport the men to the places where they can find paid work. Just like a city-dweller, then, but in an unofficial sense, the tramp of the railroads uses mechanised transportation rationally. Emphasising this rational – but also ritualistic – behaviour, Harper’s original caption ben...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Lamination
• 2 Text vs. photo? Agee, Evans and lamination
• 3 Photo-memory-palimpsest: lamination and family photographs
• 4 Beating the street: race and visual ethnography in the American city
• 5 Don’t look now! Photojournalism, “Uncomfortable Pictures” and lamination
• 6 Digital materialities: lamination and new media
• 7 Conclusion
• References
• Index