Photographic Methods Course

Session leaders: Tom Martin (Lincoln) & Chandra Morrison (LSE)

Taught by a visual ethnographer and a photojournalist, this course offers an introduction to photography and fieldwork. The session begins by focusing on the researcher as photographer with a pragmatic discussion about how taking photos can function as a form of data collection and generation. This is followed by a group activity using photo-essays to think about photography as a mode of storytelling. We then consider approaches to participatory photography – where research participants pick up the camera to visualize and share their perspectives through a process of shared knowledge production – and present some of the common practical and theoretical challenges to planning and facilitating a participatory photography project as part of your research. 

This course runs over 3.5 hours in one afternoon, with a break in the middle. Blending lectures, practical exercises, and group discussion, students will leave the course with a broad understanding of the possibilities of photographic practice within fieldwork and an appreciation for how to pursue these techniques within a research project. 

Those who register must be able to attend the session in full and be willing to interact in group discussions (we recommend joining the session from a place and using a device that will enable you to participate fully). Please note, this session will not be recorded but we hope to run it again in future years. 

This session has been organised by the Institute’s Fieldwork in Languages, Cultures and Societies group, chaired by Prof. Claire Griffiths: https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/about-us/online-resources/fieldwork-languages-cultures-and-societies