Transcript Fin Cullen (Institute of Education, London) Alexandra Allan (Cardiff University) ‘Pictures of children are at once the most common, the most sacred,

Fin Cullen (Institute of Education, London)
Alexandra Allan (Cardiff University)
‘Pictures of children are at once the most common,
the most sacred, and the most controversial
images of our time. They guard the cherished ideal
of childhood innocence, yet they contain within
them the potential to undo that ideal. No subject
seems cuter or more sentimental, and we take
none more for granted, yet pictures of childhood
have proved dangerously difficult to understand
or control’
(Higgonet 1998:7)

Risky and ‘at risk’ youth (Griffin, 1993; Davies,
1999)

Concern of loss of ‘innocence’, and wider
moral panics around early sexualisation/ and
child abuse

Discourse of internet as ‘risky’ predatory
space

Great deal of contemporary debates centered round
practical, ethical and technical issues of representation

Need to raise questions about how it is that we represent
children in visual social research

Hope to explore some of the tensions in producing an
‘ethical’ participatory visual research project with under 18s

Want to think about some elements of crucial questions
around power disparity, notions of informed consent and
questions of representation
“Photographic images are crucial to this
struggle, for they underpin the ways in which
we learn to understand our worlds and our
places within them, enabling us to see
ourselves as others see us.”
(Bloustien, 2003:4)
Amateur
Fluid
Natural
Realist
Image maker
Production
Professional
Fixed
Posed
Imaginary
Audience
Consumption

Fin’s PhD research in S England with YP aged 13-19/ Multi-method,
visual approach exploring young women’s use of tobacco and
alcohol

Fin used photography as it was an existing part of local youth
cultures. Way through trying to access teen drinking cultures as an
older woman

“paedophile or police officer”

30 young women involved in interview process

Use of photo elicitation techniques as part of project. 20 cameras
distributed and 12 cameras returned
“We’ve got so many (pictures) at home on the pc
thanks to all the drunken pics we took. Most
were on X’s phone so you can imagine all the
pics of himself posing and standing drunk next
to goths or other drunk girls.”
(College Bulletin Board posting, Oct, 2004)

Buddy shots- smiling, happy faces in locations

The ‘unaware’ shot- subject caught unaware,
sleeping, unconscious to embarrass or for
amusement

Miscellaneous shots- included pictures of locationsgeneral shots of parks/ nightclubs or for example,
closed pictures of empty cans; magic mushrooms
etc
Fin:
So the photos you’ve taken from a party situation
what do you do with them?
Maria: I stick them on my wall.
Fin:
Can you describe your room, what’s on your wall?
Maria: erm… allsorts of things, I’ve got a section of Amsterdam
photos, which are of random people of very, very, very, very drug
inebriated people doing, or just leaning, or just talking or posing
in the group. I’ve got a section of like my family and I’ve got the
number 7 … where we used to live. …I’ve got different posters,
I’ve got tickets from gigs I went to see. I’ve got flyers , I’ve got a
card that was made for me by my work experience kids ‘cos I
worked in the nursery.

As ‘memory work’ to record and perform a ‘good
night’ out

As way of performing aspirational, gendered
drinking identities

As a way of negotiating the social hierarchies within
these young women’s friendship groups

As a way of mapping friendship group and affinity
Fin:
… When do you normally take photos?
Tiggy: I dunno, when something interesting is happening… like
when you want to make it the best thing. It’s not
something that’s permanent so you want to remember it
by having pictures.
Fin:
So it’s about trying to remember things?
Tiggy: You’re trying to capture the whole atmosphere which
ultimately is very difficult… You’re never gonna manage it
to be honest.
From Skins, Channel 4

Out of context images take on new lives
(Derrida ‘difference’)

Difficulties of ‘informed consent, anonymity
and working with under 18s

Unconscious boy pictures as ‘funny’ or ‘child
protection’ risk?

Need to unpack the choices in relation to selection and
framing of images when photographing and then displaying
photographs

The need to capture ‘happy times’- not rows; relationship
breakups

The wish to be portrayed in a flattering light

The use of pictures that depart from notions of ‘technically
good’ photography: over / under exposure/ with heads
chopped off/ fingers in frame etc
Maria: Christian likes to take his clothes off. He was doing a
‘sex pose’.
Fin:
Why’s that?
Maria: Because that’s the gay man pose. It’s the gay man pose.
He always does the gay man pose, because he thinks it
makes him look good. I think it makes his look good all
right. He’s got great lips! That’s his standard pose. He’s
just saying ‘hey look at me.’ I just can’ explain it….”

An ethnographic exploration of gender and
academic achievement in a private, primary
school with twenty-five girls aged ten and
eleven

Methods employed include: individual
interviews, focused group interviews,
observation and photographic diary work

The ‘visual’ nature of identities. Holliday (2005: 516): Visual methods can
be understood as a particularly ‘post-modern medium’ which can be used
to ‘capture the ways in which different subjects may be situated in
specific configurations of discourse whilst making those discourse open
for examination as they recur in different images’

Allowed the girls to choose how they would like to be pictured and
represented and to have some control in the research process

Can help us to glimpse insights into the research process – the ways in
which knowledge and understanding is created and negotiated by the
researcher and the participants

Week one - ‘Looking at pictures’
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Week two – ‘Looking at people’
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Week three – ‘Making pictures’
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Week four – ‘Who am I?’
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Week five – Photographic workshop day

Week six and seven – Photographic feedback sessions

An incident that occurred
during my last days of field
work and after the girls had
been asked to create a
display of their photographs

Concern and criticism was
mainly expressed in relation
to those photographs taken
by those girls who wished
to represent their powerful
and pleasurable identities
as ‘girly girls’

It seemed that with time and in a different
context these images had been re-read and reinvested with different meanings – once seen as
‘innocent’, ‘magical’ and ‘girly’, now seen as
‘overtly sexual’ and ‘tarty’

But it seemed that the girls and their teachers
were treating the photographs as real evidence
with a direct reference to the reality that they
represented. As a form of ‘past in the present’
(Kuhn 2003) and as evidence to be scrutinised for
the ‘truth’

How do pictures function as representations?

Problems of fluidity (over time, in different contexts
and with different audiences) and fixity (desire to fix
meanings as singular truths and stable identities)

We have a responsibility to think about the ways in
which visual images are treated and used by different
audiences (Pink 2007)

A need for more discussion within childhood studies
and social research methods literature??

Does it matter if we choose not to use
photographs in the publications and
presentations that result from our research?

Can we ever control for other’s interpretations of
images and should we worry about controlling
for them in our research?

How much of this is a ‘visual’ phenomenon?

How do these issues change with the
introduction of new technologies?