Author:

Keywords:

visual methodology, photo-elicitation, Q-sort method, urban aesthetics, non-representational theory

Abstract:

This article is an attempt to contribute to the methodological literature on the mediating role of photographs used in research. It considers the multiple ways in which photographs may influence the research practices of an urban and cultural sociologist in the course of making and interacting with photographs. It also looks at how informants actually use the images and involve them in creating their narratives about their city. Drawing on 30 interviews, and self-ethnographic experiences of using the images depicting architecture, with the method of Q-sort in Wroclaw, Poland, I illustrate the power of photography as acting in more-than-representational mode. The article presents how aesthetic choices in the photographs were both contingent and not accidental: on the one hand these choices resulted from theoretical assumptions and research questions, they helped me to reveal the political meaning and imaginaries attached to the architecture in the city, but, on the other, they were also dependent on the practices unfolding in the city on the days when the photographs were taken. But more than that, the resulting photographs were mobilised by the informants differently: they were either strategically used in order to build a bigger argument on the role of architecture in the city or informants let themselves be ‘surprised’ by aesthetic choices they made offering pictures to ‘speak for themselves’ and to lead the narration