Researching visually using visual ethnographic methodology

Abstract

According to Sarah Pink (2001) defines the visual ethnographic as the use of visual images and technologies such as video, film, photography, art, drawing and sculpture in qualitative social research to both produce and represent knowledge. It includes using the visual as a documenting tool to produce visual records, in interviews, to elicit comments from informants, in participant observation to research ways of seeing and understanding, analysing visual and material culture and using visual media to represent the findings of such research. Visual ethnography deals with the visual and perceptual study of culture, material culture and forms of human behaviour in different communities and environments. Visually we can communicate knowledge and experience and ideas in ways that we never express in written words or spoken words, in social research, the visual is gaining significance as a research method.