Using Digital Photography to Shed Light on “Bodies-at-Risk” in Physical Culture

• In Event: Visual Methods in Qualitative Research

Abstract

This visual ethnographic research conducted in the UK aimed to reveal the visual dimensions of embodiment expressed by young people of different ethnic backgrounds in the local contexts of their lives. Student-researchers used digital cameras to create visual diaries entitled Moving in My World to express their thoughts, feelings, and to “speak for themselves” about their own body experiences in physical activity. Digital photography in this research became a “source of dialogue through which others may begin to enter [students’] worlds” (Soto and Swadener 2005, 140), and see the heterogeneity of meanings young people of different ethnic backgrounds construct about their moving bodies. These findings problematise the notion of ethnic minority bodies-at-risk produced by the obesity epidemic discourse.

Author

• Laura Azzarito, Columbia University