‘Taking Photos? I Don't Do That Anymore': Critiquing the Photo-Diary As Method in Ageing Research

Over the past 15 years there has been a burgeoning interest amongst researchers, policy makers, and funders in using methods that encourage deeper engagement with communities and offer participants greater involvement in the research process (Mitchell, Milne and de Lange 2012). This desire to use more emancipatory and decolonizing methods (Smith 1999) has led to ‘an explosion of participatory media projects’ (Luttrell and Chalfen 2010: 197). Little has been written, however, about how participants regard or (dis)engage with the visual as a method of choice. Over the past 17 months, a team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh and the Scottish Centre for Social Research have been exploring day to day kindness, help and support and the increasing role it plays as we age www.liveablelives.org.uk . The research, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, adapted Bartlett and Milne’s diary making method (Bartlett 2011). Following an initial mapping exercise and semi-structured interview, participants were asked to keep a diary for two weeks recording mundane acts of help, support and kindness, offered, received, wished for or rejected. Participants chose the mode of production from a selection of visual (photo or drawing), audial (sound diaries) or textual (written or txt). Based upon semi-structured interviews and 45 diaries, this paper presents a critique of the visual as a diary making method and an exploration of its limitations.

References

Bartlett R 2011 Using Diaries in Research with People with Dementia University of Manchester, Manchester

Luttrell W and Chalfen R 2010 Lifting up voices of participatory visual research Visual Studies 25(3) 197-200

Mitchell C Milne E-J and de Lange N 2012 Introduction in Milne E-J Mitchell C and de Lange N eds The Handbook of Participatory Video Altamira Press, Lanham MD 1-15

Smith LT 1999 Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples Zed Books, London