Visual and sensory ethnography

Visual methods and media have long since been advocated as part of ethnographic practice. For instance, Margaret Mead, in the introduction to Paul Hockings’ seminal text, The Principals of Visual Anthropology stated how research had, “. . . demonstrated that it is possible to combine good traditional analytical ethnography with photography, filming, and taping”. In the latter part of the twentieth century, working with visual images, methods, and media remained a relatively minority practice in anthropological ethnography. However, they are now used across the ethnographically oriented disciplines, go beyond ‘traditional’ ethnographic techniques and include attention to the sensorial and digital dimensions of the environments and activities through which we research. While ethnographic and qualitative research approaches have traditionally involved research techniques oriented toward the production of written texts, visual and sensory ethnography approaches, and the techniques they involve open up further possibilities for communicating ethnographic ways of knowing beyond writing.