Documentary photographers and visual social researchers both rely on visual, real-world data but differ in how they address three key challenges: creating empirically credible images of culture and social life, framing empirical observations to highlight new knowledge, and challenging existing social theory. A close look at these shared challenges and contrasting conventions recommends exemplary documentary studies as an empirically viable alternative to traditional social research. Three recent projects illustrate the value of such alternatives to informing public discourse. They also embody strategies that could enhance the value of empirical, visual inquiry to education and other community-based fields of practice.
Agee, J. , & Evans, W. (1960). Let us now praise famous men. Boston: Houghton Mifflin . (Original work published 1939)
2.
Banks, M. (2001). Visual methods in social research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage .
3.
Becker, H. (1986a). Do photographs tell the truth? In Doing things together: Selected papers(pp. 273-292). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press .
4.
Becker, H. (1986b). Photography and sociology. In Doing things together: Selected papers(pp. 221-272). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press .
5.
Biella, P. (1988). Against reductionism and idealist self-reflexivity: The Ilparakuyo Maasai Film Project. In J. R. Rollwagen (Ed.), Anthropological filmmaking(pp. 47-72). NewYork: Harwood .
6.
Brower, K. (1998). Photography in the age of falsification . Atlantic Monthly, 281(5), 92-111 .
7.
Clifford, J. , & Marcus, G. (1986). Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California .
8.
Coles, R. (1997). Doing documentary work. New York: Oxford University Press .
9.
Collier, J., Jr. (1967). Visual anthropology: Photography as a research method. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston .
10.
de Miguel, J. (2002, July). Re-constructing social reality: Community, power and social control in the Spanish Village Photographic Project by W. Eugene Smith . Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Visual Sociology Association, Santorini, Greece.
11.
Emmison, M. ,& Smith, P. (2000). Researching the visual: Images, objects, contexts and interactions in social and cultural inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage .
12.
Goffman, E. (1963). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. Garden City, NJ: Anchor .
13.
Greenfield, L. (2002). Girl culture. San Francisco: Chronicle Books .
14.
Hambourg, M. M. , Rosenheim, J. L. , Eklund, D. , & Fineman, M. (2000). Walker Evans. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Princeton University Press .
15.
Harper, D. (1982). Good company. Chicago: University of Chicago .
16.
Harper, D. (1987). Working knowledge: Skill and community in a small shop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press .
17.
Harper, D. (1998). An argument for visual sociology. In J. Prosser (Ed.), Image-based research (pp. 24-41). London: Taylor and Francis .
18.
Harper, D. (2002). Changing works: Visions of a lost agriculture. Chicago: University of Chicago .
19.
Hoskins, J. (1998). Biographical objects. Boston: Routledge Kegan Paul .
20.
Johnson, S. (1993). Making a digital book: Art, computers, design and the production of “The Great Central Valley: California’s Heartland.”Pacifica, CA: Stephen Johnson Photography .
21.
Johnson, S. , Dawson, R. , & Haslam, G. (1993). The Great Central Valley: California’s heartland. Berkeley: University of California .
22.
Kroeber, T. (2002). Ishi in two worlds: A biography of the last wild Indian in North America. Berkeley: University of California .
23.
Lewis, O. (1965). Five families: Mexican case studies in the culture of poverty. New York: New American Library .
24.
Light, K. (2000). Witness in our time: Working lives of documentary photographers. Washington, DC: Smithsonian .
25.
Loengard, J. (1998). Life photographers: What they saw. Boston: Little, Brown/Bullfinch Press .
26.
Lyons, N. (Ed.). (1966). Photographers on photography. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall .
27.
Menzel, P. (1994). Material world: A global family portrait. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club .
28.
Morris, W. (1999). Time pieces: Photographs, writing and memory. New York: Aperture .
29.
Pink, S. (2001). Doing visual ethnography. London: Sage .
30.
Pinney, C. (1997). Camera Indica: The social life of Indian photographs. Chicago: University of Chicago .
31.
Prosser, J. (Ed.). (1998). Image-based research: A sourcebook for qualitative researchers. Bristol, PA: Falmer .
32.
Ragin, C. C. (1992). “Casing” and the process of social inquiry. In C. C. Ragin & H. S. Becker (Eds.), What is a case? Exploring the foundations of social inquiry(pp. 217-226). New York: Cambridge University Press .
33.
Richardson, L. (1991). Writing for diverse audiences. Newbury Park, CA: Sage .
34.
Rieger, J. (2003). Aretrospective study of social change: The pulp-logging industry in an upper peninsula Michigan county.Visual Studies, 18, 156-177 .
35.
Ruby, J. (1976). In a pic’s eye: Interpretive strategies for deriving significance and meaning from photographs . Afterimage, 3(9), 5-7 .
36.
Ruby, J. (1995). Secure the shadow: Death and photography in America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
37.
Ruby, J. (2000). Picturing culture: Explorations of film and anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago .
38.
Schwartz, D. (1999). Pictorial journalism: Photographs as facts. In B. Brennen & H. Hardt (Eds.), Picturing the past(pp. 158-181). Champaign: University of Illinois .
