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The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods

• Luc Pauwels - University of Antwerp, Belgium
• Dawn Mannay - Cardiff University
• Description

The second, thoroughly revised and expanded, edition of  The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Method s  presents a wide-ranging exploration and overview of the field today. As in its first edition, the Handbook does not aim to present a consistent view or voice, but rather to exemplify diversity and contradictions in perspectives and techniques.

The selection of chapters from the first edition have been fully updated to reflect current developments. New chapters to the second edition cover key topics including picture-sorting techniques, creative methods using artefacts, visual framing analysis, therapeutic uses of images, and various emerging digital technologies and online practices. At the core of all contributions are theoretical and methodological debates about the meanings and study of the visual, presented in vibrant accounts of research design, analytical techniques, fieldwork encounters and data presentation.

This handbook presents a unique survey of the discipline that will be essential reading for scholars and students across the social and behavioural sciences, arts and humanities, and far beyond these disciplinary boundaries.

The Handbook is organized into seven main sections:

PART 1: FRAMING THE FIELD OF VISUAL RESEARCH PART 2: VISUAL AND SPATIAL DATA PRODUCTION METHODS AND TECHNOLOGIES PART 3: PARTICIPATORY AND SUBJECT-CENTERED APPROACHES PART 4: ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORKS AND PERSPECTIVES  PART 5: MULTIMODAL AND MULTISENSORIAL RESEARCH PART 6: RESEARCHING ONLINE PRACTICES PART 7: COMMUNICATING THE VISUAL: FORMATS AND CONCERNS

See what’s new to this edition by selecting the Features tab on this page. Should you need additional information or have questions regarding the HEOA information provided for this title, including what is new to this edition, please email [email protected] . Please include your name, contact information, and the name of the title for which you would like more information. For information on the HEOA, please go to http://ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/hea08/index.html .

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There is nothing to match this handbook in terms of the breadth and quality of its coverage of visual research methods. From quantitative to qualitative to digital methods, from photography and film to Geographical Information Systems and figurines, a very wide range of visual research methods are succinctly discussed by their leading practitioners. If you use or teach any kind of visual research method, you need this book.

This revised collection offers essential resources for researchers interested in penetrating the common cliché that the present is increasingly ‘visual’. Drawing on a wide range of interdisciplinary approaches, the book traces the full spectrum of visual experience from the process of looking at everyday objects to new considerations of the role of drawing, photography, digital and media images in contemporary visual culture. Carefully curated from contributions by leading researchers in the field, it provides an invaluable primer in established and emergent visual research methods.

The Sage Handbook of Visual Research Methods provides an indispensable overview for researchers aware of how the ‘visual’ pervades contemporary social life. The book takes into account the study of the production context of ‘visuals’, the visual artefacts/phenomena and the context of use. It offers a wide plurality of theoretical approaches and it includes research accounts of scholars working in different disciplines (sociology, anthropology, psychology…). The new edition extends the opportunities to engage research participants as active agents (i.e. through digital storytelling, photovoice and drawing) and to practice a more multimodal and multisensorial research approach.  The handbook is an essential guide to teaching visual methods!

This timely collection offers an exciting and comprehensive overview of contemporary visual research studies, methodologies and practices. Written by leading and emerging scholars, this edition brings together an exceptional range of essays that reflect and explore significant continuities, developments and challenges within the robust, expansive, and interdisciplinary field of visual research methods. Through its structure and content, the collection invites visual dialogue across diverse and established schools of thought. The reader is challenged to think about how ‘the visual’ operates as a complex and pervading aspect of everyday life, that is not reducible to ‘images’ or products of visual media. This will be a vital resource for visually oriented researchers and scholars across the social sciences and humanities, and a valuable addition to any university or college library. 

"Overall the book is highly informative because it documents diverse aspects of visual research methods in considerable detail. It is a vital resource for scholars engaging in visually oriented research projects, even for those readers unfamiliar with the field."

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Visual Research Methods: Qualifying and Quantifying the Visual

The role of visual research methods in ethnographic research has been significant, particularly in place-making and representing visual culture and environments in ways that are not easily substituted by text. Digital media has extended into mundane, everyday existences and routines through most noticeably the modern smartphone, social media and digital artefacts that have created new forms of ethnographic enquiry. Ethnographers have engaged in this relatively new possibility of exploring how social media and new technologies transform the way we view social realities through the digital experience. The paper discusses the possible role of visual research methods in multimethod research and the theoretical underpinning of interpreting visual data. In the process of interpreting and analysing visual data, there is a need to acknowledge the possible ambiguity and polysemic quality of visual representation. It presents selectively the use of visual methods in an ethnographic exploration of early childhood settings through the use of internet-based visual data, researcher and participant-generated visual materials and media, together with visual-elicited (e.g. drawings, still images, video clips) information data through several examples. This approach in ‘visualizing’ the curriculum also unveils some aspects of the visual culture or the ‘hidden curriculum’ in the learning environment.

• 1 Introduction

Although visual methods have become increasing importance, it has traditionally taken a secondary place when compared to narrative approaches based on text and verbal discourse. The internet and electronic communications have made an attentiveness to the ‘visual’ essential in education and educational research. Qualitative researchers have made progress in developing visual methodologies to study visual culture and phenomena ( Metcalfe, 2016 ; Prosser, 2007 ). The issue of new technologies and developments producing shifts in the way we conceptualize and experience social and electronic realities that we experience (Sarah Pink, 2012). Ethnographers have the option to explore the ways in which these new technologies, software and images have become part of their social reality and that their focus may be on how these technologies are appropriated rather than how they transform the basis of the world that we live in ( Coleman, 2010 ; Miller, 2011 ). The role of visual methodologies and ethnography in looking at how the curriculum is enacted and articulated in everyday practice will be explored.

Visual ethnographic study explores the complex interactions and relationships between local practices of the study and global implications and influences of digital media, the materiality and the politics of representation. The representation through visuality of digital media includes the mundane, everyday routines, the manifestation of cultural life and modes of communication. Media in many instances have become central to the articulation and expression of valued beliefs, ceremonious practices and modes of being ( Coleman, 2010 ). It is therefore essential to press beyond the boundaries of narrow presumptions about the limitations of the digital experience.

Visual ethnography engages with methods through its process of research, analysis and representation. It is inescapably collaborative, to a certain extent is participatory, involves analysing visual cultures, and requires an understanding of how the data set materials from both researcher and participant relate to one another. The process of audio-visual recording of research participants while ‘walking with them’ produces a research encounter that captures the ‘place in a phenomenological sense ( Pink, 2014 ). These processes constitute multisensory experiences and a collaborative work of visual (audio) ethnographic representations of urban contexts in the case study. Visual ethnography through photography and video captures a sense of a place, its history and cultural contexts, maybe everyday life, routines, languages, social interactions and gestures of communication, with other material and sensorial realities of the environment and place.

The gathering of pre-existing societal imagery and found imagery although usually regarded as secondary data requires a minimum reflexive knowledge of the technical and expressive aspects of imagery and representational techniques so as to be able to read and utilize them in an appropriate way. Therefore, some form of visual competence is required and the audience often pays attention to the historical and cultural aspects and contexts of production and consumption ( Pauwels, 2007 ). Researcher-generated imagery requires a sufficient degree of technical expertise that allow them to produce images and other forms of visual representations and that they are aware of cultural conventions and perceptual principles of the academic or non-academic audience that they aim to address. Visual ethnography is also concerned with understanding how we know as well as the environments in which knowledge is generated and it involves engaging with the philosophy of knowledge, of practice and of the place and space (Sarah Pink, 2014 ). This form of methodological focus through the visual requires a commitment to visual theory and researcher positionality particularly with respect to the literal and figurative aspects of one’s perspective ( Metcalfe, 2016 ).

Visual culture becomes ingrained in the school culture that is typically unquestioned and unconscious, but it forms a ‘hidden curriculum’ because it is both visual yet unseen. The organizational culture is influential in the organization’s outcomes as the ‘ethos’ links it with the school culture and ultimately the organization’s effectiveness. The organizational culture through ethnographic methodological framework allows an analytic approach to understanding the processes and rationale behind ‘school life’ ( Prosser, 2007 ). The debate goes on regarding the significance of the visual culture of schools and centres and the argument that visual culture and image-based methodologies are as important as number and word-based methodologies in the constructions of school culture and its influence on education policy. Visual-centric approach highlights and gives priority to what is visually perceived rather than what is written, spoken or statistically measured. Observed events, routines, rituals, artefacts, materials, spaces and behaviours in everyday routines are the evidence and markings of the past, present and future hidden curriculum.

The following sections discuss the methodological, theoretical and conceptual frameworks through which visual data may be interpreted. A combination of methodological strategies, empirical approaches, perspectives and interpretive-analytic stances enhances the rigor, depth and complexity of the research inquiry ( Denzin, 2012 ; Flick, 2018 ).

2 Methodological Consideration Using Visual Methods

The nature of visual research methods has posed some challenges based on issues of concern regarding the validity and rigor of such approaches. This has led to some challenges in identifying studies that integrate these methods with mixed methods research that use both quantitative and qualitative strategies ( Shannon-Baker & Edwards, 2018 ). The intersection of visual methods with mixed methods research allow complements and expansion of qualitative and quantitative data and the approach is also in alignment with philosophical and theoretical assumptions ( Clark & Ivankova, 2016 ), Shannon-Baker & Edwards, (2018) points out that there are methodological differences between a mixed methods study that utilizes visual research methods and visual methods study that utilizes mixed methods approaches. Studies using visual methods are often paired with qualitative methods such as interviewing and written reflective logs and the use of multiple methods speak to diverse experiences and contribute to the philosophical belief in multiple truths ( O’Connell, 2013 ; Prosser, 2007 ; Rule & Harrell, 2010 ). The challenges in using visual methods in mixed methods research include the need to validate the methodological approach particularly in disciplines that are dominated by other methodologies, often training to use particular methods, communicating the research purpose, design and findings, and also articulating appropriate data analysis strategies ( Clark & Ivankova, 2016 ; Creswell & Plano Clark, 2017 ; Pauwels, 2007 ; Shannon-Baker & Edwards, 2018 ). Research studies like Rule & Harrell, (2010) utilized visual methods primarily, but analysed visual data using qualitative methods and the integration of visual data included transformation into quantitative data for further analysis and triangulation. For O’Connell (2013) , visual methods were embedded in the qualitative research design and visual data was contextualized using other qualitative data. Here, there was integration of visual data that also included transformation into quantitative data and the construction of the case studies. The other exemplar is by Shannon-Baker & Edwards, (2018) that uses visual methods as part of an arts-based critical visual research methodology. The commonalities identified in these studies using visual methods is that firstly, participant created visual data is used and also visual data is transformed to quantitative data so that both quantitative and qualitative strategies reinforce and legitimize visual methods.

• 2.1 Realist Positivism vs Social Constructivism

The visual approach has been conventionally grounded on a realist positivist approach that looks upon visual images and data as the objective reality and to be regarded as unbiased and unmediated representations of the social world ( Ortega-Alcázar, 2012 ). Modern contemporary views challenge these assumptions and positivist epistemologies so there is currently a debate on the presumed objectivity and the unambiguity of visual data. Social constructivism takes into perspective the subjective presence of the person behind the camera who plays a crucial role in framing the image captures, the polysemic nature of visual representation and the idea that audiences are not passive consumers but also constructors of meanings and interpretations of the visual. Visual materials through the use of digital photography and videography are acknowledged to be subject to multiple interpretations and perspectives so hold no fixed or single meaning. Images and visual representations have the power construct specific visions of social class, race, and gender and can provide particular perspectives of the social world, thus having an important influence on audiences or those who consume these images.

• 2.2 Analysis and Interpretation of Visual Materials

The acknowledgement of the possible ambiguity of meaning and acknowledgment of the polysemic quality of visual representations has opened the field for the analysis of these images in various contexts including marketing materials, models, and communication to certain groups of audiences. The main methods of analysis of visual materials and data are i) content analysis ii) semiotic analysis iii) discourse analysis ( Ortega-Alcázar, 2012 ). The approach of content analysis of visual data is often a clearly defined methodological process that seeks to produce valid and replicable findings. This approach may be based on counting the frequency in which a certain element or quality appears in a defined set of images. Content analysis would then serve to provide a descriptive account of the content of a given sample set of images rather than the interpretation of various possible meanings. This may help to identify trends through image data sets and certain software applications. nvivo Ncapture for instance can work with large data sets on Facebook posts to provide this form of analysis that has a quantitative aspect in it.

The second method to the analysis of visual data is the use of semiotic analysis. This approach is grounded on the theory of Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure who proposed that the sound of speech and signs have no intrinsic meaning, but meanings are ascribed through linguistic signs that are made of the signifier and the signified. The relationships between the signifier and the signified are arbitrary. Poststructuralists challenge the concept by Saussure that once the signifier and signified are integrated to forms a sign, the sign has a fixed meaning. Poststructuralist theory and semiotics argue that meanings are not fixed but are continually being open to interpretation as signifiers are detachable from the things that are being signified. Barthes developed Saussure’s theory to argue that there are two levels of signification, denotation and connotation. The first level is the literal (denotative) and at the second level, signs can have other attached meanings (connotative).

The third form of interpretation is that of discourse analysis and stems from a critique of the realist approach to language. It claims that meaning is constituted within language and therefore language is constitutive of the social realm. Discourses are constructed from a series of related statements (both visual and textual) on a particular topic or theme and make up an authoritative language for speaking about the topic and shape the way a particular topic or issue is understood and interpreted. It does not attempt to read or analyse images but seeks to understand what the images or text claim is the ‘truth’.

• 2.3 Grounded Theory and Visual Analysis

Ethnographic research is used to document events, objects and activities of interest. This has led to a collective analysis of participant-generated images rather than researcher generated digital documentation. The site or sites of data collection may be expanded by visual participatory methods or participant representation of activities and events in spaces and places that the researcher would normally not have access to ( Hicks, 2018 ). Such visual methods may allow participants across linguistic, social and geographical divides to visually represent what may not always be visible or accessible to the researcher or audience outside the setting ( Greyson et al., 2017 ). The use of visual methods expands grounded theoretical approaches by diversifying the data that the researcher has access to. While photographs and videography may not form a wholly objective representation of reality, participant generated images help to magnify and elaborate an understanding of the social enactment of activities, interactions and relationships through a detailed and multi-faceted perspective (Croghan et al., 2008). In allowing participants, a means to portray and represent what is of priority and importance to them rather than what is important to the researcher alone. Constructivist grounded theory transpires through the understanding that meaning is co-constructed between research participant and researcher rather than merely brought into existence through an objective and neutral observer ( Charmaz, 2015 ).

3 Description of the Research Scenario

The research settings included various centres in Singapore and these were of three main types: privately owned, corporately owned and community-based early childhood centres. Although the study was based on an exploratory-sequential mixed methods design, the methodology and some of the findings shared in the context of this paper will be mostly limited to those derived from visual research methods and would not discuss the quantitative findings. The initial method used with internet-based visual data aimed to obtain a visual account of how the curriculum was enacted in the different learning environments and centre types. The priorities and commonalities in the activities and curriculum programmes in these settings were also investigated through data generation and analysis using visual research methods that included: i) internet based visual data ii) participant generated data and iii) image or photo-elicited data.

• 3.1 Internet-based Visual Data

The first stage of data generation involved social media data or essentially posts by a selection of centres. These centres were a representative sample using social media or Facebook posts over a period of 12 months. The posts that were selected fulfilled certain criteria and were images captured i) involving the children as active participants in the learning environment ii) involving both children and teachers and/or facilitators engaged in activity iii) involving children, teachers and parents involved in an event or participating in activity. It was essential to note that the learning environment was not always within the ece centre setting itself but also constituted of the environments that the class was immersed while on field trips and excursions. The constantly transforming environment within the centre itself during various festivities and celebrations was also observed and captured in the posts over the period of time.

Each social media Facebook post consisted of a cluster of photographic images capture during a particular activity or event ( Figure 1 and 2 ). In total, the sample demonstrated here were 72 such posts by five different representative early childhood education centres. Each of these main posts was coded via ground theory analysis and the distribution of frequency for each thematic code is represented in Table 1 . As coding of the visual materials is often arbitrary and often subject to personal judgment, the images were also represented by text with short bulleted points based on the visual and caption or commentary that accompanied the image (See Figure 2 ). The visual image was there also represented in text and this was also coded into the various themes.

Thematic coding with NVIVO12 Pro

Citation: Beijing International Review of Education 2, 1 (2020) ; 10.1163/25902539-00201004

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NVIVO image-pic view of selected code

• 3.2 Researcher and Participant-generated Visual Material
• 3.3 Visual/Photo-elicited Data
• 4 Summary and Conclusions
• Acknowledgements

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• Published: 31 October 2017

The visual essay and the place of artistic research in the humanities

• Remco Roes 1 &
• Kris Pint 1  

Palgrave Communications volume  3 , Article number:  8 ( 2017 ) Cite this article

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• Archaeology
• Cultural and media studies

What could be the place of artistic research in current contemporary scholarship in the humanities? The following essay addresses this question while using as a case study a collaborative artistic project undertaken by two artists, Remco Roes (Belgium) and Alis Garlick (Australia). We argue that the recent integration of arts into academia requires a hybrid discourse, which has to be distinguished both from the artwork itself and from more conventional forms of academic research. This hybrid discourse explores the whole continuum of possible ways to address our existential relationship with the environment: ranging from aesthetic, multi-sensorial, associative, affective, spatial and visual modes of ‘knowledge’ to more discursive, analytical, contextualised ones. Here, we set out to defend the visual essay as a useful tool to explore the non-conceptual, yet meaningful bodily aspects of human culture, both in the still developing field of artistic research and in more established fields of research. It is a genre that enables us to articulate this knowledge, as a transformative process of meaning-making, supplementing other modes of inquiry in the humanities.

Introduction

In Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (2011), Tim Ingold defines anthropology as ‘a sustained and disciplined inquiry into the conditions and potentials of human life’ (Ingold, 2011 , p. 9). For Ingold, artistic practice plays a crucial part in this inquiry. He considers art not merely as a potential object of historical, sociological or ethnographic research, but also as a valuable form of anthropological inquiry itself, providing supplementary methods to understand what it is ‘to be human’.

In a similar vein, Mark Johnson’s The meaning of the body: aesthetics of human understanding (2007) offers a revaluation of art ‘as an essential mode of human engagement with and understanding of the world’ (Johnson, 2007 , p. 10). Johnson argues that art is a useful epistemological instrument because of its ability to intensify the ordinary experience of our environment. Images Footnote 1 are the expression of our on-going, complex relation with an inner and outer environment. In the process of making images of our environment, different bodily experiences, like affects, emotions, feelings and movements are mobilised in the creation of meaning. As Johnson argues, this happens in every process of meaning-making, which is always based on ‘deep-seated bodily sources of human meaning that go beyond the merely conceptual and propositional’ (Ibid., p. 11). The specificity of art simply resides in the fact that it actively engages with those non-conceptual, non-propositional forms of ‘making sense’ of our environment. Art is thus able to take into account (and to explore) many other different meaningful aspects of our human relationship with the environment and thus provide us with a supplementary form of knowledge. Hence Ingold’s remark in the introduction of Making: anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture (2013): ‘Could certain practices of art, for example, suggest new ways of doing anthropology? If there are similarities between the ways in which artists and anthropologists study the world, then could we not regard the artwork as a result of something like an anthropological study, rather than as an object of such study? […] could works of art not be regarded as forms of anthropology, albeit ‘written’ in non-verbal media?’ (Ingold, 2013 , p. 8, italics in original).

And yet we would hesitate to unreservedly answer yes to these rhetorical questions. For instance, it is true that one can consider the works of Francis Bacon as an anthropological study of violence and fear, or the works of John Cage as a study in indeterminacy and chance. But while they can indeed be seen as explorations of the ‘conditions and potentials of human life’, the artworks themselves do not make this knowledge explicit. What is lacking here is the logos of anthropology, logos in the sense of discourse, a line of reasoning. Therefore, while we agree with Ingold and Johnson, the problem remains how to explicate and communicate the knowledge that is contained within works of art, how to make it discursive ? How to articulate artistic practice as an alternative, yet valid form of scholarly research?

Here, we believe that a clear distinction between art and artistic research is necessary. The artistic imaginary is a reaction to the environment in which the artist finds himself: this reaction does not have to be conscious and deliberate. The artist has every right to shrug his shoulders when he is asked for the ‘meaning’ of his work, to provide a ‘discourse’. He can simply reply: ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I do not want to know’, as a refusal to engage with the step of articulating what his work might be exploring. Likewise, the beholder or the reader of a work of art does not need to learn from it to appreciate it. No doubt, he may have gained some understanding about ‘human existence’ after reading a novel or visiting an exhibition, but without the need to spell out this knowledge or to further explore it.

In contrast, artistic research as a specific, inquisitive mode of dealing with the environment requires an explicit articulation of what is at stake, the formulation of a specific problem that determines the focus of the research. ‘Problem’ is used here in the neutral, etymological sense of the word: something ‘thrown forward’, a ‘hindrance, obstacle’ (cf. probleima , Liddell-Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon). A body-in-an-environment finds something thrown before him or her, an issue that grabs the attention. A problem is something that urges us to explore a field of experiences, the ‘potentials of human life’ that are opened up by a work of art. It is often only retroactively, during a second, reflective phase of the artistic research, that a formulation of a problem becomes possible, by a selection of elements that strikes one as meaningful (again, in the sense Johnson defines meaningful, thus including bodily perceptions, movements, affects, feelings as meaningful elements of human understanding of reality). This process opens up, to borrow a term used by Aby Warburg, a ‘Denkraum’ (cf. Gombrich, 1986 , p. 224): it creates a critical distance from the environment, including the environment of the artwork itself: this ‘space for thought’ allows one to consciously explore a specific problem. Consciously here does not equal cerebral: the problem is explored not only in its intellectual, but also in its sensual and emotional, affective aspects. It is projected along different lines in this virtual Denkraum , lines that cross and influence each other: an existential line turns into a line of form and composition; a conceptual line merges into a narrative line, a technical line echoes an autobiographical line. There is no strict hierarchy in the different ‘emanations’ of a problem. These are just different lines contained within the work that interact with each other, and the problem can ‘move’ from one line to another, develop and transform itself along these lines, comparable perhaps to the way a melody develops itself when it is transposed to a different musical scale, a different musical instrument, or even to a different musical genre. But, however, abstract or technical one formulates a problem, following Johnson we argue that a problem is always a translation of a basic existential problem, emerging from a specific environment. We fully agree with Johnson when he argues that ‘philosophy becomes relevant to human life only by reconnecting with, and grounding itself in, bodily dimensions of human meaning and value. Philosophy needs a visceral connection to lived experience’ (Johnson, 2007 , p. 263). The same goes for artistic research. It too finds its relevance in the ‘visceral connection’ with a specific body, a specific situation.

Words are one way of disclosing this lived experience, but within the context of an artistic practice one can hardly ignore the potential for images to provide us with an equally valuable account. In fact, they may even prove most suited to establish the kind of space that comes close to this multi-threaded, embodied Denkraum . In order to illustrate this, we would like to present a case study, a short visual ‘essay’ (however, since the scope of four spreads offers only limited space, it is better to consider it as the image-equivalent of a short research note).

Case study: step by step reading of a visual essay

The images (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) form a short visual essay based on a collaborative artistic project 'Exercises of the man (v)' that Remco Roes and Alis Garlick realised for the Situation Symposium at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne in 2014. One of the conceptual premises of the project was the communication of two physical ‘sites’ through digital media. Roes—located in Belgium—would communicate with Garlick—in Australia—about an installation that was to be realised at the physical location of the exhibition in Melbourne. Their attempts to communicate (about) the site were conducted via e-mail messages, Skype-chats and video conversations. The focus of these conversations increasingly distanced itself from the empty exhibition space of the Design Hub and instead came to include coincidental spaces (and objects) that happened to be close at hand during the 3-month working period leading up to the exhibition. The focus of the project thus shifted from attempting to communicate a particular space towards attempting to communicate the more general experience of being in(side) a space. The project led to the production of a series of small in-situ installations, a large series of video’s and images, a book with a selection of these images as well as texts from the conversations, and the final exhibition in which artefacts that were found during the collaborative process were exhibited. A step by step reading of the visual argument contained within images of this project illustrates how a visual essay can function as a tool for disclosing/articulating/communicating the kind of embodied thinking that occurs within an artistic practice or practice-based research.

Figure 1 shows (albeit in reduced form) a field of photographs and video stills that summarises the project without emphasising any particular aspect. Each of the Figs. 2 – 5 isolate different parts of this same field in an attempt to construct/disclose a form of visual argument (that was already contained within the work). In the final part of this essay we will provide an illustration of how such visual sequences can be possibly ‘read’.

First image of the visual essay. Remco Roes and Alis Garlick, as copyright holders, permit the publication of this image under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Second image of the visual essay. Remco Roes and Alis Garlick, as copyright holders, permit the publication of this image under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Third image of the visual essay. Remco Roes and Alis Garlick, as copyright holders, permit the publication of this image under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Fourth image of the visual essay. Remco Roes and Alis Garlick, as copyright holders, permit the publication of this image under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Fifth image of the visual essay. Remco Roes and Alis Garlick, as copyright holders, permit the publication of this image under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Figure 1 is a remnant of the first step that was taken in the creation of the series of images: significant, meaningful elements in the work of art are brought together. At first, we quite simply start by looking at what is represented in the pictures, and how they are presented to us. This act of looking almost inevitably turns these images into a sequence, an argument. Conditioned by the dominant linearity of writing, including images (for instance in a comic book) one ‘reads’ the images from left to right, one goes from the first spread to the last. Just like one could say that a musical theme or a plot ‘develops’, the series of images seem to ‘develop’ the problem, gradually revealing its complexity. The dominance of this viewing code is not to be ignored, but is of course supplemented by the more ‘holistic’ nature of visual perception (cf. the notion of ‘Gestalt’ in the psychology of perception). So unlike a ‘classic’ argumentation, the discursive sequence is traversed by resonance, by non-linearity, by correspondences between elements both in a single image and between the images in their specific positioning within the essay. These correspondences reveal the synaesthetic nature of every process of meaning-making: ‘The meaning of something is its relations, actual and potential, to other qualities, things, events, and experiences. In pragmatist lingo, the meaning of something is a matter of how it connects to what has gone before and what it entails for present or future experiences and actions’ (Johnson, 2007 , p. 265). The images operate in a similar way, by bringing together different actions, affects, feelings and perceptions into a complex constellation of meaningful elements that parallel each other and create a field of resonance. These connections occur between different elements that ‘disturb’ the logical linearity of the discourse, for instance by the repetition of a specific element (the blue/yellow opposition, or the repetition of a specific diagonal angle).

Confronted with these images, we are now able to delineate more precisely the problem they express. In a generic sense we could formulate it as follows: how to communicate with someone who does not share my existential space, but is nonetheless visually and acoustically present? What are the implications of the kind of technology that makes such communication possible, for the first time in human history? How does it influence our perception and experience of space, of materiality, of presence?

Artistic research into this problem explores the different ways of meaning-making that this new existential space offers, revealing the different conditions and possibilities of this new spatiality. But it has to be stressed that this exploration of the problem happens on different lines, ranging from the kinaesthetic perception to the emotional and affective response to these spaces and images. It would, thus, be wrong to reduce these experiences to a conceptual framework. In their actions, Roes and Garlick do not ‘make a statement’: they quite simply experiment with what their bodies can do in such a hybrid space, ‘wandering’ in this field of meaningful experiences, this Denkraum , that is ‘opened up’: which meaningful clusters of sensations, affects, feelings, spatial and kinaesthetic qualities emerge in such a specific existential space?

In what follows, we want to focus on some of these meaningful clusters. As such, these comments are not part of the visual essay itself. One could compare them to ‘reading remarks’, a short elaboration on what strikes one as relevant. These comments also do not try to ‘crack the code’ of the visual material, as if they were merely a visual and/or spatial rebus to be solved once and for all (‘ x stands for y’ ). They rather attempt to engage in a dialogue with the images, a dialogue that of course does not claim to be definitive or exhaustive.

The constellation itself generates a sense of ‘lacking’: we see that there are two characters intensely collaborating and interacting with each other, while never sharing the same space. They are performing, or watching the other perform: drawing a line (imaginary or physically), pulling, wrapping, unpacking, watching, framing, balancing. The small arrangements, constructions or compositions that are made as a result of these activities are all very fragile, shaky and their purpose remains unclear. Interaction with the other occurs only virtually, based on the manipulation of small objects and fragments, located in different places. One of the few materials that eventually gets physically exported to the other side, is a kind of large plastic cover. Again, one should not ‘read’ the picture of Roes with this plastic wrapped around his head as an expression, a ‘symbol’ of individual isolation, of being wrapped up in something. It is simply the experience of a head that disappears (as a head appears and disappears on a computer screen when it gets disconnected), and the experience of a head that is covered up: does it feel like choking, or does it provide a sense of shelter, protection?

A different ‘line’ operates simultaneously in the same image: that of a man standing on a double grid: the grid of the wet street tiles and an alternative, oblique grid of colourful yellow elements, a grid which is clearly temporal, as only the grid of the tiles will remain. These images are contrasted with the (obviously staged) moment when the plastic arrives at ‘the other side’: the claustrophobia is now replaced with the openness of the horizon, the presence of an open seascape: it gives a synaesthetic sense of a fresh breeze that seems lacking in the other images.

In this case, the contrast between the different spaces is very clear, but in other images we also see an effort to unite these different spaces. The problem can now be reformulated, as it moves to another line: how to demarcate a shared space that is both actual and virtual (with a ribbon, the positioning of a computer screen?), how to communicate with each other, not only with words or body language, but also with small artefacts, ‘meaningless’ junk? What is the ‘common ground’ on which to walk, to exchange things—connecting, lining up with the other? And here, the layout of the images (into a spread) adds an extra dimension to the original work of art. The relation between the different bodies does now not only take place in different spaces, but also in different fields of representation: there is the space of the spread, the photographed space and in the photographs, the other space opened up by the computer screen, and the interaction between these levels. We see this in the Fig. 3 where Garlick’s legs are projected on the floor, framed by two plastic beakers: her black legging echoing with the shadows of a chair or a tripod. This visual ‘rhyme’ within the image reveals how a virtual presence interferes with what is present.

The problem, which can be expressed in this fundamental opposition between presence/absence, also resonates with other recurring oppositions that rhythmically structure these images. The images are filled with blue/yellow elements: blue lines of tape, a blue plexi form, yellow traces of paint, yellow objects that are used in the video’s, but the two tones are also conjured up by the white balance difference between daylight and artificial light. The blue/yellow opposition, in turn, connects with other meaningful oppositions, like—obviously—male/female, or the same oppositional set of clothes: black trousers/white shirt, grey scale images versus full colour, or the shadow and the bright sunlight, which finds itself in another opposition with the cold electric light of a computer screen (this of course also refers to the different time zones, another crucial aspect of digital communication: we do not only not share the same place, we also do not share the same time).

Yet the images also invite us to explore certain formal and compositional elements that keep recurring. The second image, for example, emphasises the importance placed in the project upon the connecting of lines, literally of lining up. Within this image the direction and angle of these lines is ‘explained’ by the presence of the two bodies, the makers with their roles of tape in hand. But upon re-reading the other spreads through this lens of ‘connecting lines’ we see that this compositional element starts to attain its own visual logic. Where the lines in image 2 are literally used as devices to connect two (visual) realities, they free themselves from this restricted context in the other images and show us the influence of circumstance and context in allowing for the successful establishing of such a connection.

In Fig. 3 , for instance, we see a collection of lines that have been isolated from the direct context of live communication. The way two parts of a line are manually aligned (in the split-screens in image 2) mirrors the way the images find their position on the page. However, we also see how the visual grammar of these lines of tape is expanded upon: barrier tape that demarcates a working area meets the curve of a small copper fragment on the floor of an installation, a crack in the wall follows the slanted angle of an assembled object, existing marks on the floor—as well as lines in the architecture—come into play. The photographs widen the scale and angle at which the line operates: the line becomes a conceptual form that is no longer merely material tape but also an immaterial graphical element that explores its own argument.

Figure 4 provides us with a pivotal point in this respect: the cables of the mouse, computer and charger introduce a certain fluidity and uncontrolled motion. Similarly, the erratic markings on the paper show that an author is only ever partially in control. The cracked line in the floor is the first line that is created by a negative space, by an absence. This resonates with the black-stained edges of the laser-cut objects, laid out on the desktop. This fourth image thus seems to transform the manifestation of the line yet again; from a simple connecting device into an instrument that is able to cut out shapes, a path that delineates a cut, as opposed to establishing a connection. The circle held up in image 4 is a perfect circular cut. This resonates with the laser-cut objects we see just above it on the desk, but also with the virtual cuts made in the Photoshop image on the right. We can clearly see how a circular cut remains present on the characteristic grey-white chessboard that is virtual emptiness. It is evident that these elements have more than just an aesthetic function in a visual argumentation. They are an integral part of the meaning-making process. They ‘transpose’ on a different level, i.e., the formal and compositional level, the central problem of absence and presence: it is the graphic form of the ‘cut’, as well as the act of cutting itself, that turns one into the other.

Concluding remarks

As we have already argued, within the frame of this comment piece, the scope of the visual essay we present here is inevitably limited. It should be considered as a small exercise in a specific genre of thinking and communicating with images that requires further development. Nonetheless, we hope to have demonstrated the potentialities of the visual essay as a form of meaning-making that allows the articulation of a form of embodied knowledge that supplements other modes of inquiry in the humanities. In this particular case, it allows for the integration of other meaningful, embodied and existential aspects of digital communication, unlikely to be ‘detected’ as such by an (auto)ethnographic, psychological or sociological framework.

The visual essay is an invitation to other researchers in the arts to create their own kind of visual essays in order to address their own work of art or that of others: they can consider their artistic research as a valuable contribution to the exploration of human existence that lies at the core of the humanities. But perhaps it can also inspire scholars in more ‘classical’ domains to introduce artistic research methods to their toolbox, as a way of taking into account the non-conceptual, yet meaningful bodily aspects of human life and human artefacts, this ‘visceral connection to lived experience’, as Johnson puts it.

Obviously, a visual essay runs the risk of being ‘shot by both sides’: artists may scorn the loss of artistic autonomy and ‘exploitation’ of the work of art in the service of scholarship, while academic scholars may be wary of the lack of conceptual and methodological clarity inherent in these artistic forms of embodied, synaesthetic meaning. The visual essay is indeed a bastard genre, the unlawful love (or perhaps more honestly: love/hate) child of academia and the arts. But precisely this hybrid, impure nature of the visual essay allows it to explore unknown ‘conditions and potentials of human life’, precisely because it combines imagination and knowledge. And while this combination may sound like an oxymoron within a scientific, positivistic paradigm, it may in fact indicate the revival, in a new context, of a very ancient alliance. Or as Giorgio Agamben formulates it in Infancy and history: on the destruction of experience (2007 [1978]): ‘Nothing can convey the extent of the change that has taken place in the meaning of experience so much as the resulting reversal of the status of the imagination. For Antiquity, the imagination, which is now expunged from knowledge as ‘unreal’, was the supreme medium of knowledge. As the intermediary between the senses and the intellect, enabling, in phantasy, the union between the sensible form and the potential intellect, it occupies in ancient and medieval culture exactly the same role that our culture assigns to experience. Far from being something unreal, the mundus imaginabilis has its full reality between the mundus sensibilis and the mundus intellegibilis , and is, indeed, the condition of their communication—that is to say, of knowledge’ (Agamben, 2007 , p. 27, italics in original).

And it is precisely this exploration of the mundus imaginabilis that should inspire us to understand artistic research as a valuable form of scholarship in the humanities.

We consider images as a broad category consisting of artefacts of the imagination, the creation of expressive ‘forms’. Images are thus not limited to visual images. For instance, the imagery used in a poem or novel, metaphors in philosophical treatises (‘image-thoughts’), actual sculptures or the imaginary space created by a performance or installation can also be considered as images, just like soundscapes, scenography, architecture.

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Creative Visual Methods in Research with Children and Young People

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• Diane Farmer 4 &
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Part of the book series: Geographies of Children and Young People ((GCYP,volume 2))

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What changes when doing research along with children and young people? How can a sense of inquiry among young people and a dialogue between young people and researchers be facilitated? This chapter draws from methods and findings of a multisited ethnography conducted in Ontario, Canada, by Farmer. Visual language portraits and digital photography served as reflexive tools and artifacts that enabled students to make explicit their realities and understandings of migration, transnational familial connections, travels, and everyday experiences centered around home and schooling. Language portraits supported a biographical inquiry for students. Personalized body maps were constructed and shared when students were tasked the following: “I draw on my silhouette languages and cultures that connect me.” Additionally, using digital photography, students were given the following prompt: “With this camera, I take pictures of places, people and things that connect me.” From these artistic methodologies, rich narratives emerged which motivated the development of thematic visual mapping techniques to convey the diverse array of networks people form.

The focus of this chapter is enabling methods. Through approaching research differently with children and young people, this chapter discusses the use of creative visual arts-based methods and key challenges in building knowledge differently.

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