ABSTRACT
The use of visual media as a rigorous ethnographic data collection method has yet to be fully accepted by the anthropological research community (Prosser 1998; Ruby 1996). Ethnographic research textbooks mention photographs and video, but often treat them as secondary sources of information, to be used as teaching aids or as illustrations of research findings. A growing number of visual anthropologists, however, see value in moving photographs and other visual media from the sidelines to center stage, where photographs become data, rather than illustrate it. Visual methods, they argue, capitalize on our visual preferences, as we are drawn naturally to understand and make sense of concepts and ideas through drawings, videos, and photographs (Pink 2007; Ruby 1991).
