Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
This chapter by Sandra Weber is excerpted from
HANDBOOK OF THE ARTS IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH:
PERSPECTIVES, METHODOLOGIES, EXAMPLES, AND ISSUES
Editors: J. Gary Knowles and Ardra L. Cole
London: Sage Press, 2008
CHAPTER 5. USING VISUAL IMAGES IN RESEARCH
Sandra Weber, Concordia University
I. Seeing Image Worlds
Seeing is believing.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
That s not how I see it.
I saw it with my own eyes.
I can t believe my eyes.
Do you see what I mean?
Oh! Now I see!
I can t bear to look.
Whether  natural or designed, the environment demands to be seen. Just look
around. We are born into a world of visual images projected onto our retinas, clamouring
for the attention of our perceptual processes. Even before we can think, we can seei.
Moreover, our sense of sight is so entwined with all our other senses, that even with our
eyes shut, we can see those inner images so often evoked by sounds, smells, words,
feelings or thoughts. When we plan, analyze, imagine, think, or critique, our thoughts are
associated with and largely constituted by images (Bruner, 1990). And when we sleep,
there are the images of dreams. For most people, this daily integration of the visual in
daily life is a taken-for-granted, unexamined part of living and not a subject of systematic
inquiry or an articulated part of scholarly methods. Seeing, being surrounded by the
visual, doesn t always or necessarily mean that we notice what we see. It is the paying
attention, the looking, and the taking note of what we see that makes images especially
important to art, scholarship, and research. Indeed the discourse of the academy is all
about persuading others to see what we see. But of course, as Berger (1972) asserts, the
relation between what we see and what we know is never settled (p. 7).
Image as concept: A history of multiple uses
The term  image has often been used as the basis for distinguishing things from
each other, to sort phenomena into categories. Strict definitions of image are thus used to
make distinctions between the  original and its image copy, or between the outer
physical world and the inner imagined or psychological world, or between the  natural
world and a manufactured or designed (imaged) one, or, more recently, between analog,
1
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
material space and digital, virtual space. But although these definitions have their uses in
some circumstances, the dichotomies on which they depend or which they evoke do not
usually hold up to close scrutiny or thoughtful argument. Baudrillard (1976), for
example, posits that hyperrealism (the meticulous duplication of the real through another
medium) is quietly erasing the boundary between real and imaginary. Contemporary uses
of the term  image are more likely to bridge or break down dichotomies, straddling both
sides of  real-not real questions, and offering ways to think about phenomena more
holistically. Of course, all this discussion of  image as a concept tends to ignore images
themselves.
Images and sense making: how images mean
In our everyday lives, we interpret, create, and use images as a matter of course,
often without much conscious attention and using whatever social codes and conventions
we ve picked up along the way. Whether they are visual or imagined, symbolic or literal,
one, two, or three dimensional, analog or digital, material or virtual, drawn with words or
with lines, captured by the lens, the brush, the pen or the poetic eye, images are
constantly subject to reconstructions and reinterpretations. As Sturken & Cartwright
(2001) point out,  The meanings of each image are multiple, created each time it is
viewed (p. 25).
What a specific image can mean or represent at any given time depends on a lot of
factors including who is doing the viewing and the context in which the image is viewed.
Major scholars, from late nineteenth and early twentieth century semioticians Charles
Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure to later theorists such as Jean Baudrillard, Roland
Barthes, and John Berger have addressed the slippery question of how images mean,
providing a variety of sophisticated and nuanced models to guide the use of images in
contemporary work. In considering the photographic image, for example, Barthes posits
that images have two levels of meaning: denotative and connotative. The denotative
meaning of an image refers to its literal, descriptive meaning, the apparent truth, evidence
or objective reality that the image documents or denotes. The same image or photograph
also connotes more culturally specific meanings. Connotative meanings refer to the
cultural and historical context of a specific image, as well as to the social conventions,
codes, and meanings that have been attached to or associated with that image in a
particular context. We learn these meanings through our personal experience (Sturken &
Cartwright, 2001, p.19).
The distinction between an object (referent) and an image of that object (or
signifier) is not always clear or even possible. As Baudrillard (1988) points out in his
discussions of simulacra (signs that do not clearly have a real-life counterpart), images
themselves act as objects and take on lives of their own, with no single object beyond the
signifier as primary referent (consider images of a dragon, ogre, faerie, or even Mickey
Mouse). An image can thus be  the thing itself - the object of inquiry. Even in a post-
postmodern era, there is a growing tendency to speak of images as part of both external
and internal  realities reflecting the relationship of  image to the dialectics of human
perception and sense-making, helping frame the concept more as a dynamic product of
our interaction with the world, than as an immutable and independent object in the world.
2
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
ll. Using Visual images in the Social Sciences and Humanities
The value of images to research
There are many kinds of images sources available to researchers and scholars. As
this handbook illustrates in detail, different kinds of images are central to arts-related
approaches to social science research and lead to different ways of knowing (Allen, 1995;
Denzin, 1995; Eisner, 1997; Greene, 1995; Paley, 1995). An image can be a multi-
layered theoretical statement, simultaneously positing even contradictory propositions for
us to consider, pointing to the fuzziness of logic and the complex or even paradoxical
nature of particular human experiences. It is this ability of images to convey multiple
messages, to pose questions, and to point to both abstract and concrete thoughts in so
economical a fashion that makes image-based media highly appropriate for the
communication of academic knowledge. A picture, Harnad (1991) reminds us, may not
only be worth a thousand words, but it can also be apprehended almost instantaneously at
a glance, whereas those thousand words require time to listen to or read.
In the last few decades of the 20th century, qualitative researchers in the social
sciences began to pay serious attention to the use of image to enhance their understanding
of the human condition (Prosser 1998b). These uses encompass a wide range of visual
forms, including films, video, photographs, drawings, cartoons, graffiti, maps, diagrams,
cyber graphics, signs, and symbols. The fields of visual sociology and visual
anthropology have done much of the pioneering work on image-based methodologies,
and consequently, their websites (e,g. http://visualsociology.org/ and
http://www.societyforvisualanthropology.org/ ) and journals (e.g. Visual Studies and
Visual Anthropology Review ) remain valuable resources for researchers from other
disciplines as well. For something more hip and artistic, I recommend the on-line e-zine
Stimulus (http://www.stimulusrespond.com/) as a possible harbinger of what some future
image-based scholarship might look like. Similarly interesting journals, too numerous to
mention, abound in the fields of education and communication. The sprawling field of
cultural studies with its vast array of journals has also been home to highly relevant
theoretical works on visual culture (e.g. Evans & Hall, 1999; Jenks, 1995; and Mirzoeff,
1998) that are very useful across a broad span of research contexts and methodologies.
The problem is that academics are too seldom aware of the publications and methods
outside their chosen field that could speak eloquently to their own disciplinary concerns.
Researchers seeking theoretical grounding for the use of the visual in their work
often draw on the seminal theories of philosophers such as John Berger (1982), quoted so
extensively in this chapter, Gaston Bachelard (1964), Jean Baudrillard (1988), Roland
Barthes (1981, 1983), Walter Benjamin (1969), Pierre Bourdieu (1990), Michel Foucault
(1983), Susanne Langer (1957), and Susan Sontag (1977). The work of scholars such as
Becker (1986), Chaplin, (1994), Denzin & Lincoln (2000), Harper (1998, 2002), Hubbard
(1994), Mirzoeff (1998), Paley (1995), Ruby (2000), and Steele (1998), as well as the
useful reviews and up-dates of visual methodologies by researchers such as Banks
(2001), Gauntlett (1997), Mitchell & Weber (in press), Pink (2001), Prosser (1998),
Weber & Mitchell (2004), and van Leeuwen & Jewitt (2001), exemplify the burgeoning
literature available to researchers seeking a firm base from which to venture forth. It is
this theoretical grounding, as much as the images, that makes these research approaches
3
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
so valuable and applicable to a variety of social sciences. The remainder of this chapter
will focus on arts-related visual images, leaving literary images and science graphics to
other authors to explore.
Why use arts-related visual images in research? Ten good reasons
There are many arguments that can be made for the use of visual images in
research, all of them interlinked. Here are ten:
1. Images can be used to capture the ineffable, the hard-to-put-into-words.
Some things just need to be shown, not merely stated. Artistic images can help us
access those elusive, hard-to-put-into words aspects of knowledge that might otherwise
remain hidden or are ignored. Eisner (1995) argues that the use of images provides an
  all-at-once-ness  that reveals what would be hard to grasp through language and
numbers alone (p. 1). The use of visual images is not a luxury or add-on to scholarship,
but in many situations, essential A word and number description of the number of tons of
toxic waste produced by a municipality and their short and long-term effects on the
environment simply does not have the same meaning as an image-based account would.
Concepts such as poverty, pollution, racism, war, genocide, bureaucracy, utopia, and
illness may require visual exemplars to give them breadth and depth, to point to an
understanding that is connected to the world.
2. Images can make us pay attention to things in new ways.
Art makes us look; it engages us. The reason we need and create art has to do with
its ability to discover what we didn t know we knew, or to see what we never noticed
before, even when it was right in front of our noses. Artistic uses of images can make the
ordinary seem extraordinary  breaking through common resistance, forcing us to
consider new ways of seeing or doing things. As Grumet (1988) observes,   the aesthetic
is distinguished from the flow of daily experience, the phone conversations, the walk to
the corner store, only by the intensity, completeness, and unity of its elements and by a
form that calls forth a level of perception that is, in itself, satisfying  (p. 88). There was
nothing extraordinary, for example, about the ubiquitous and familiar red and white
Campbell soup can until pop artist Andy Warhol made it the focus of his work, thrusting
it in the public eye on large canvas, interrogating common notions of art,
commodification and the popular. Giving a new symbolic visual twist to plain old things
works well because we do not have our guard up against the mundane, allowing it to
break through our everyday perceptions and get us to think outside of the theoretical box.
3. Images are likely to be memorable.
Some images are more memorable than academic texts, and therefore more likely
to influence the ways we think and act. Images elicit emotional as well as intellectual
responses and have overtones that stay with us and have a habit of popping up unbidden,
later on. Using images as representation thus increases the likelihood of making an
impact on the reader/ viewer/ community, something granting agencies keep pestering the
academy to do. The power of art helps get our research findings across to a much wider
audience who may pay more attention because they can see what we mean, both literally
4
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
and figuratively. Images tend not only to convey additional information but also to  burn
themselves into our brain, forming internal memories that may be hard to erase.
4. Images can be used to communicate more holistically, incorporating multiple layers,
and evoking stories or questions.
Images enable us to simultaneously keep the whole and the part in view, telling a
story and helping us synthesize knowledge in a highly efficient way. Those who put up
billboards or design magazine ads know that it is possible to convey a lot of things with
just one image. Looking at a telling and artful juxtaposition of figures and objects in a
photo can reveal as much information as several pages of written text, or convey a
different kind of information that keeps a context always present. In other words, through
the ways in which they are made and displayed, images can talk; they can have what Ong
(1988) calls an  orality, a narrative quality or the ability to provoke or reconstruct
conversations.
5. Images can enhance empathic understanding and generalizability.
Images literally help us to adopt someone else s gaze, see someone else s point of
view, and borrow their experience for a moment. This enables a comparison with our
own views and experience. Artful representation works well when it facilitates empathy
or enables the viewer to see through the researcher-artist s eye. Hearing or seeing or
feeling the details of a lived experience, its textures and shapes, helps make the
representation trustworthy or believable. As Eisner (1995) writes,  artistically crafted
work creates a paradox, revealing what is universal by examining in detail what is
particular (p. 3). The more visual detail that is provided about the context and
phenomenon being investigated, the better able the audience is to judge how it may or
may not apply to their own situation, models, or concerns, and the more trustworthy the
work appears, leaving the reader to decide or  see for themselves.
6. Through metaphor and symbol, artistic images can carry theory elegantly and
eloquently.
The possibilities for using the visual to make effective and economical theoretical
statements is, for the most part, dismally under-tapped and under-valued in the
humanities and social sciences. The advertising industry and political cartoonists seem to
be way ahead of the academy in this regard. Some images (the double helix of DNA
comes to mind) are simultaneously the most simple yet the most effective knowledge
statement possible. Others are less straightforward but nonetheless effective. I recall, for
example, a picture on a magazine cover of a woman torn down the middle, the left half
dressed in casual  mommy clothes, the left hand reaching down to clutch a child. The
right half was dressed for business, clutching a battered briefcase. Unidentified hands
came clutching at both sides of the woman, trying to pull her in different directions. To
me, at least, the image was making complex statements about the contemporary roles of
women in industrialized societies, summing up in an instant what so many women felt or
still feel.
7. Images encourage embodied knowledge.
5
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
Visual methods help researchers keep their own bodies and the bodies of those
they study in mind. In a variety of disciplines, scholars are beginning to acknowledge the
embodied nature of all knowledge. It is, after all, through their bodies that investigators
conduct research. People are not ideas, but flesh and blood beings learning through their
senses and responding to images through their embodied experiences. The visual disarms
or bypasses the purely intellectual, leading to a more authentic and complete glimpse of
what a particular experience be like or of what people think and feel. There is an
unintentional but automatic and visceral identification with some images; we cannot
escape contemplating or even, on some level, experiencing the situations depicted, even
if they were previously unfamiliar to us.
8. Images can be more accessible than most forms of academic discourse.
Scholars such as Barone (1995), Cole (2002), Greene (1995), and Williams and
Bendelow (1998), assert that artistic forms of representation provide a refreshing and
necessary challenge to prevailing modes of academic discourse. The use of widely-shared
cultural codes and popular images make many visual expressions far more accessible
than usual academic language. To the degree that the mandate of the academy is to
provoke discussion and thinking as well as communicate research to a broader audience
(even within the academy), the use of images becomes significant. Many people who
would never read scholarly texts are willing to engage with photography displayed on a
website or a documentary on television.
9. Images can facilitate reflexivity in research design.
Using images connects to the self yet provides a certain distance. An image
reveals at least as much about the person who took or chose or produced it as it does
about the people or objects who are figured in it. Under the right conditions, using images
can thus facilitate or encourage a certain transparency, introducing the potential for
reflexivity into the research design. In a futile hope of maintaining  objectivity,
researchers too often ignore the way their own viewpoints, personal experiences, and
ways of seeing affect their research. By its very nature, artistic expression taps into and
reveals aspects of the self and puts us in closer touch with how we really feel and look
and act. Paradoxically, such self-revelation also forces us to take a step back and look at
ourselves from the new perspective provided by the medium itself, increasing the
potential that we will better understand our own subjectivity, leading to humbler and
more nuanced knowledge claims.
10. Images provoke action for social justice.
No matter how personal or intimate they may seem at first glance, images, by the
very nature of their provenance and creation, are also social. In an era when the relevance
of research to questions of social justice is increasingly expected, few features can
provoke critical questions and encourage individual and collective action as well as
images. Take, for example, the powerful photograph taken by Nick Ut during  the
Vietnam war of an obviously terrified young Vietnamese girl running naked down a
street to flee a napalm fire bomb. It may have done more to galvanize the anti-war
movement in the West than all the scholarly papers on the horrors of war. To the extent
that various uses of images are authentic, nuanced, and contextualized, we can create
bodies of visual work that may be useful in the service of changes for justice in social
policies or cultural practices. This objective is central to a growing number of scholars in
a variety of disciplines.
6
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
To sum up, this ability of images to evoke visceral and emotional responses in
ways that are memorable, coupled with their capacity to help us empathize or see
another s point of view and to provoke new ways of looking at things critically, makes
them powerful tools for researchers to use in different ways during various phases of
research.
III. Visual Images and Research Processes
Images can be integral and essential components of different sorts of inquiries on
a wide range of topics, and research questions may call for a visual component in one or
more of the following ways:
Production of artistic images as data
Images can be newly produced by participants or researchers; for example, the
researcher may invite people to draw or paint or take photographs or make a short video
or create an art installation that relate to the research questions or the phenomena being
investigated. Or the researcher might be the one making new images. Once the visual
material is produced, the resulting collection might then be the basis of further
discussion, interviews, and/or analysis, although the very process of creating images is
often a major part of the research process itself.
Examples of the production of images for research includes asking people to draw
a teacher (Weber & Mitchell, 1995b, 1996) and, in another project, inviting girls to make
a short film about their experiences of technology (Weber, 2007). As a further variation
on the production of images, in Secret games: collaborative works with children,
photographer Wendy Ewald bridges the gap between researcher-as-photographer and
participant-as-photographer by inviting the children she was researching to suggest
subject matter, poses, and props, to give her direction for the artful photographs she took.
Wang s (1999) articulation of a visual methodology called  photovoice illustrates
how engaging and connected to social issues research can be when it is the participants
themselves producing the images. This method is used in the service of social critique
and involves group as well as individual interpretations of the photos produced by the
participants. Hubbard s anthropological research on a Navaho reserve, where it was the
residents who took the photographs, resulted in an artful book, Shooting back from the
reservation, that brings out the  emic point of view that is so often illusive in the usual
volumes of written fieldnotes. Methods that put the production in the hands of non
professionals can project a credibility and authenticity that more polished and
accomplished works of art cannot always achieve. It is the very lack of artifice in the not-
always-technically-perfect images that sometimes makes them more convincing, more
true to life.
Use of existing (found) artistic images as data or springboards for theorizing:
The primary source of images on which the research question focuses may be
found material or already existing images, whether from museum archives, books,
billboards, film archives, videotapes, magazines, and so forth, or images already created
by or belonging to participants in the research project, including photo albums, artwork,
or artefacts. Langford (2000), for example, did a fascinating analysis of a family photo
album she found in the archives of the McCord Museum that became a theoretical work
on the orality of photo albums. Personal photographs from their own lives became
springboards for the insightful work of scholars such as Chalfen (1987), Kuhn (1995),
and Walkerdine (1990). Analysing Hollywood  teacher movies to see how teachers
7
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
have been depicted in film over the years (Weber & Mitchell, 1995b), and speculating on
the reproduction of cultural images through the phenomenon of school class photographs
are two final examples of the use of the visual in different projects (Mitchell & Weber,
1998, 1999).
Use of visual and object-images to elicit or provoke other data:
Sometimes the data that is the focus of an inquiry is elicited or obtained through
the use of images or objects as memory prompts for writing or as points of departure for
semi-structured interviews.  Photo elicitation, for example, has become a frequently
used method of data collection in conducting ethnographic studies.ii As Harper (2002)
describes it, the procedure involves asking people to take pictures and then looking at and
discussing the photos with them during semi-structured interviews. Giving people an
image or object to talk about sparks multiple reactions, leading often to outpourings of all
kinds of information, feelings, thoughts, and situation details. The concreteness, the
materiality of photographs, artwork, and objects (see Winterson, 1995) seems to provide
a versatile and moveable scaffolding for the telling of life history, life events, life
material. Things that might be too embarrassing or too painful to ask someone or to
tackle head on, are often brought to the fore incidentally and gently when the focus is on,
for example, the shirt a departed loved one wore rather than on death and loss itself. In
Not just any dress: Narratives of memory, body, and identity (Weber & Mitchell, 2004),
as a final example, items of clothing and photographs of dress provided the impetus for
revealing narratives that give insight into many issues important to the social sciences,
including professional and national identities, birth, marriage, aging, conformity,
maternity, rebellion, body image, social codes, and death. Asking people to talk about
visual images already in their possession is thus a very promising research method.
Use of images for feedback and documentation of research process:
Researchers often visually document data collection by using a video or still
camera to capture at least some of what happens throughout the project. Not only does
this provide a visual running record, it provides another eye on the process as well as
valuable feedback, helping researchers assess, adjust, and fine-tune. Image-ing the
research process changes the research, making it more transparent, suggesting new
directions, and facilitating self-critique. A telling example from my work concerns the
reviewing of taped interviews with children. It was only when I saw those tapes, and
noticed the children s facial expressions, body language, and, most embarrassing, my
own rapid fire delivery, that I realized how little time or space I was allowing for them to
address the questions I was too intent on asking. As a result, I changed the questions and
my manner of interacting and got much more meaningful data, all the while providing
children with a more enjoyable and comfortable experience. Excerpts from those videos
provided convincing  evidence for subsequent conference presentations of my findings
(Mitchell & Weber, 1995; Weber, 2002a, and Mitchell & Weber, in progress).
Use of images as mode of interpretation and/or representation:
As the norms and expectations for communicating research results change, a
growing number of scholars are turning to image-based modes of representation, creating
art to express their findings and theories (see Bagley & Cancienne, 2002; Cole &
McIntyre, 2001; Jipson & Payley, 1997; and this handbook). Sociologist Cathy Greenblat
(2005) comments creatively on Alzheimer s disease though carefully sequenced close-up
photographs of small clear plastic  baggies that contain a collection of things one would
8
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
not ordinarily group together; for example, a straw, two pennies, an empty candy
wrapper, and a valuable diamond ring. Many such bags were found stashed in various
places in her mother s house shortly after she died of Alzheimers. Greenblat uses her
photographs of them to symbolically represent and examine the disease, giving us a peak
at the world through her mother s eyes. Jo Spence s seminal work (1995), as a further
example, featured the careful constructing of symbolic images (for example nude
photographs of herself as  meat for sale ) as both the method of inquiry and the mode of
interpretation and representation, reminding us that any attempts to completely separate
method from findings is artificial and somewhat arbitrary.
The importance of images to presenting research findings was never more
apparent to me than when I tried to write about a project on the high school prom. Words
alone just didn t do justice to the phenomenon. The studies involved so much visual
detail the dresses, the fabrics, the girls and boys all dressed up, the limos, the dances,
the photographs, the disillusioned or happy facial expressions, and the dozens of teen
movies all of which simply refused to be flattened onto a page of scholarly text. A
highly ritualized yet complex social phenomenon, the prom is known and portrayed
largely through the visual language of popular culture. The question was how to keep all
the layers of the phenomenon in view when communicating the results? And so I turned
to artistic visual modes to theorize and represent some of our findings, directing two
films, Dress Fitting (Weber & Mitchell, 2000) and Canadian Pie (Weber, 2003) as well
as a multi-media art installation, I am a woman now (Weber, 2004, 2005).
IV. Questions and Caveats Regarding the use of Images in Research
All of the preceding discussions do not mean, of course, that images per se are
 good or guarantee any sort of research outcome or automatically lead to deeper
understanding or theoretical insight. Not all images are equal or equally effective or
valid. Images, like words, can be used to twist and distort and mislead. Ethical issues
(what is a responsible use of images of other people, who owns or controls them, loss of
anonymity, and so on) can be very thorny and complicated. The effusive praise of image
needs to be tempered by critical considerations and further explanation. As is the case
with any other element of research, it is the quality and the judicious and knowledgeable
choices and uses of images (see Tagg, 1993), the way they fit into the overall research
design and dissemination that likely determines how useful a specific image can be in any
given situation.
Images are open to interrogation and interpretation, and there are so many
questions to consider. How do images mean? What or whose reality, if any, do images
represent? Whose gaze? What social, cultural, or political knowledge is required to be
able to interpret specific images? What makes some images trustworthy and others less
so? What constitutes a valid interpretation of images? Is there such a thing? What is the
role of social and cultural context to interpretation? Individual experience? How does the
visual genre used affect the research? In other words, how does the medium shape the
inquiry and the message? What kinds of stories can images tell? When does image-ing
become theorizing? What relationships are possible between visual images and words?
There are no satisfactory universal answers to these questions, but they do provide useful
criteria for critique and evaluation of image-based research.
Conclusion
9
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
Why use images? Images can spark research questions and inspire the design or
presentation of an investigation. Images can be used as elegant and economical
representation of theoretical positions, can retain more of the whole within less space, can
combine cultural and transcultural elements, can evoke but also sometimes transcend the
specific context in which they are created, and can use specific instances to comment on
or illustrate wider generalities. Images can simultaneously present multiple viewpoints or
generate multiple interpretations, and can call attention to the everyday by making it
strange or casting it in a new light. Given the centrality of image to culture and sense-
making, social scientists are increasingly interested in developing more sophisticated
understandings of image processes and are more routinely incorporating deliberate and
rigorous uses of images as part of their research methods. Accordingly, we can expect the
reporting of research findings in the social sciences and humanities to be more and more
image-based, exploiting the power of images and imagery to communicate both
theoretical and empirical meaning effectively.
i
So much of my own and other people s thinking about images is influenced by John
Berger s Ways of Seeing. First published in Britain by the BBC in 1972, it is based
on a lecture series given by Berger, now available from Penguin Books. It is one of
the seminal works on images. Even though the ostensible focus is on Art, its
language and application are interdisciplinary. I recommend it highly to all social
science researchers.
ii
See, for example, Prosser (1992) s discussion of the role of photography in
ethnography.
References
Allen, P. (1995). Art is a way of knowing. Boston: Shambala Press.
Bachelard, G. (1964). The poetics of space. (M. Jolas, trans.) Boston: Beacon Press.
Bagley, C., & Cancienne, M.B. (Eds.). (2002a). Dancing the data. New York:Peter Lang.
Bagley, C., & Cancienne, M. B. (2002b). Educational research and intertextual forms of
(re)presentation: The case for dancing the data. In C. Bagely & M. Cancienne
(Eds.), Dancing the data (pp. 3-19). New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Banks, M. (2001). Visual methods in social research. London: Sage Publications.
Barone, T. (1995). The purposes of arts-based educational research. International Journal
of Educational Research, 23(2), 169-180.
10
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
Barthes, R. (1983). A Barthes reader. S. Sontag (Ed.), New York: Hill and Wang.
Barthes, R. (1981). Camera lucida: Reflections on photography. New York: Noonday
Press.
Baudrillard, J. (1976). Symbolic exchange and death. Paris.
Baudrillard, J. (1988). Selected writings. M.Poster (Ed.), (pp.166-184). Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Becker, H. S. (1986). Doing things together: Selected papers. Evanston, Il.: Northwestern
U Press.
Becker, H. S. (1974). Photography and sociology. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual
Communication, 1(1), 3-26.
Benjamin, W. (1969). Illuminations. (H. Zohn, trans.) New York: Schoc ken Books.
Berger, J. (1972). Ways of seeing. London: Penguin.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). Photography: A Middle-brow art. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
Brenan, T., & Jay, M. (Eds.). (1996). Vision in context. New York & London: Routledge.
Bruner, Edward, M. (Ed.). (1984). Text, play, and story: The construction and
reconstruction of self and society. Washington: The American Ethnological
Society.
Burgin, V. (1995). In different spaces: Place and memory in visual culture. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Chalfen, R. (1987). Snapshot versions of life. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State
University Press.
11
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
Chaplin, E. (1994). Sociology and visual representation. London & New York:
Routledge.
Cole, A. (2002). The art of research: Arts-informed research. University of Toronto
Bulletin, 12 (16).
Cole, A.L., & McIntyre, M. (2001). "Dance me to an understanding of teaching". A
performative text. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Summer 2001(43-60).
Coles, R. (1997). Doing documentary work. New York: Oxford University Press.
Collier, J., & Collier, M. (Eds.). (1986). Visual anthropology: Photography as a research
method. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Denzin, N. K. (1995). The experiential text and the limits of visual understanding.
Educational Theory, 45(1), 7-19.
Denzin, N. K. (1994). The art and politics of interpretation. In N. K. Denzin, & Y. S.
Lincoln, (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 1-17). Thousand Oaks,
London, & New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds.) (2000), Handbook of qualitative research. Second
edition. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.
de Saussure, F. (1915, 1988). Course in general linguistics. (R.Harris, trans.) Chicago:
Open Court Publishing.
Eisner, E. W. (1997). The promise and perils of alternative forms of data representation.
Educational Researcher, 26(6), 4-11.
Eisner, E. (1995). What artistically crafted research can help us to understand about
schools. Educational Theory, 45(1).
12
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
Eisner, E. W., & Barone, T. (1997). Art-based educational research. In R. M. Jaeger
(Ed.), Complementary methods for research in education (pp. 73-79).
Washington, DC: AERA.
Evans, J., & Hall, S. (Eds.). (1999). Visual culture: The reader. Thousand Oaks, California,
& London: Sage.
Ewald, W. (2000). Secret games: Collaborative works with children, (1969-1999).
Berlin, & New York: Scalo.
Ewald, W., & Lightfoot, A. (2001). I wanna take me a picture: Teaching photograph and
writing to children. Boston: Beacon Press.
Foucault, M. (1983). This is not a pipe. (J. Harkness, trans. and ed.), (R. Magritte, ill. and
letters) Berkley, & London: University of California Press.
Gallas, K. (1994). The language of learning: How children talk, write, dance, draw, and
sing their understanding of the world. New York: Teachers College Press.
Gauntlett, D. (1997). Video Critical: Children, the environment and media power. Luton,
UK: John Libby Media.
Greenbalt, C. (2005). Visual dimensions of a critical illness. Paper presented at the
annual meeting of the International Visual Sociology Association, Dublin.
Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social
change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Harnad, S. (1991). Back to the oral tradition: Through skywriting at the speed of thought.
Retrieved June 17, 2005, from http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Papers/
Harnad/harnad/skyteaching.html
Harper, D. (1998). On the authority of the image: Visual methods at the crossroads. In
13
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
N. K. Denzin, & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Collecting and interpreting qualitative research.
Thousand Oaks, London, & New Delhi: Sage.
Harper, D. (2002). Talking about pictures: A case for photo elicitation. Visual Studies,
17(1), 13-26.
Hirsh, M. (1997). Family frames: Photography, narrative, & postmemory. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Holland P., & Spence, J. (Eds.). (1991). Family snaps: The meaning of domestic
photograph. London: Virago.
Hubbard, J. (1994). Shooting back from the reservation. New York: New Press.
Jenks, C. (Ed.). (1995). Visual culture. New York, & London: Rougledge.
Jipson, J. A., & Paley, N. (Eds.). (1997). Daredevil research. New York: Peter Lang.
Kuhn, A. (1995). A credit to her mother. In A. Kuhn, Family secrets: acts of memory and
imagination. London & New York: Verso, pp.40-58.
Langer, S. K. (1961). Philosophical sketches. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press.
Langer, S. K. (1957). Problems of art: Ten philosophical lectures. New York: Charles
Scribner s Son.
Langer, S. K. (1953). Feeling and form: A theory of art developed from philosophy in a
new key. New York: Charles Scribner s Sons.
Lemke, J.L. (1998). Multiplying meaning: Visual and verbal semiotics in scientific text.
In J.R. Martin, & R.Veel (Eds.), Reading science (pp. 87-113). London:
Routledge.
Lincoln, Y., & Denzin, N. K. (1994). Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
14
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
Mirzoeff, N. (Ed.). (1998). The visual culture reader. New York: Routledge.
Mitchell, C. & Weber, S.J. (1998). Picture this! Class line-ups, vernacular portraits and
lasting impressions of school. In J. Prosser (Ed.), Image-based research: a
sourcebook for qualitative researchers (pp. 197-213). London: Falmer Press.
Mitchell, C. A & Weber, S. J. ( 1999a). Picture this: Using school photographs to study
ourselves. C. A. Mitchell & S. J. Weber, Reinventing ourselves as teachers:
beyond nostalgia (pp. 74-123). London & Philadelphia: Falmer Press.
Mitchell, C. & Weber, S. (1999b). Reinventing ourselves as teachers: Beyond nostalgia.
London: Falmer Press.
Mitchell, C. & Weber, S. (forthcoming) Doing Visual Research. Sage Press.
Paley, N. (1995). Finding art s place: Experiments in contemporary education and
culture. New York: Routledge.
Pierce, F.M. (1997). Signs and meaning. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Prosser, J. (Ed.). (1998a). Image-based research: A sourcebook for qualitative research.
London: Falmer Press.
Prosser, J. (1998b). The status of image-based research. In J. Prosser (Ed.), Image-based
research: A sourcebook for qualitative research (pp. 97-112). London: Falmer
Press.
Prosser, J. (1992). Personal reflections on the use of photography in an ethnographic case
study. British Educational Research Journal, 18(4), 397-411.
Rabiger, M. (1997). Directing the documentary. Boston & London: Focal Press.
15
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
Riggins, S. H. (1994). Fieldwork in the living room: An autoethnographic essay. In The
socialness of things: Essays on the socio-semiotics of objects, Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Rogoff, I. (1998). Studying visual culture. In N. Mirzoeff (Ed.), The visual culture reader
(pp. 24-26). New York: Routledge.
Rose, G. (2001). Visual methodologies. London: Sage.
Ruby, J. (1996). Visual anthropology. In D. Levinson, & M. Ember (Eds.), Encyclopedia
of Cultural Anthropology. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Schratz, M., & Walker, R. (1995). Research as social change: New opportunities for
qualitative research. London & New York: Routledge.
Schwartz, D. (1989). Visual ethnography: Using photography in qualitative research.
Qualitative Sociology, 12(2), 119-153.
Sontag, S. (1977). On photography. New York: Doubleday.
Spence, J. (1995). Cultural snipping, the art of transgression. New York: Routledge.
Spence. J., & Solomon, J. (Eds.). (1995). What can a woman do with a camera? London:
Scarlet Press.
Steele, B. (1998). Draw me a story: An illustrated explanation of drawing-as-language.
Manitoba: Peguis Publishers.
Stephens, M. (1998). The rise of the image and the fall of the word. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Sturken, M., & Cartwright, L. (2001). Practices of looking: An introduction to visual
culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
16
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
Tagg, J. (1993). The burden of representation: Essays on photographies and histories.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Van Leewent, T., & Jewitt, C. (2001). Handbook of visual analysis. London: Sage.
Walker, J. A., & Chaplin, S. (1997). Visual culture: An introduction. Manchester, & New
York: Manchester University Press.
Walkerdine, V. (1990). Schoolgirl Fictions. London: Verso.
Wang, C. (1999). Photovoice: A participatory action research strategy applied to
women's health. Journal of Women's Health, 8(2), 85-192.
Weber, S. J., & Mitchell, C. A. (1995a). More than words: Drawing out the gendered
nature of teacher identity and work. In S. J. Weber & C. A. Mitchell,  That s
funny, you don t look like a teacher : Interrogating images and identity in
popular culture (pp. 33-53.). London: Falmer Press.
Weber, S. J., & Mitchell, C.A. (1995b). That s funny, you don t look like a teacher:
Images, identity, and popular culture. London: Falmer Press.
Weber, S. J., & Mitchell, C.A. (1996). Drawing ourselves into teaching: Studying the
images that shape and distort teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education,
12(3), 303-13.
Weber, S. J. (Director), S. Weber, C. Mitchell, & C. Tardiff (Researchers) & Image and
Identity Research Collective (Producers). (2002a). What can a researcher do with
a video camera? [Digital video]. Montreal: Concordia University.
Weber, S. J. (2002b). Using video in research: Methodological issues. Symposium,
American Educational Research Association 2002 Annual Conference. New
Orleans, Louisiana.
17
Chapter 5. Using Images in Research Sandra Weber
Weber, S. J., & Mitchell, C. A. (2004). Using visual and artistic modes of representation
for self-study. In J. Loughran, M. Hamilton, V. LaBoskey, & T. Russell (Eds.),
International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices.
Kluwer Press.
Weber, S. & Weber, J. (2007). A case study of technology in the everyday lives of
tweens. In S. Weber and S. Dixon, Growing up on-line. New York: Palgrave.
Winterson, J. (1995). Art objects: Essays on ecstasy and effrontery. London: Random
House.
18