Video Collage as a Reflexive Tool in Visual Research

• In Event: 34.083 - The Danger of a Single Image? Methodological Explorations of Visual Research in Education

Abstract

This paper draws on a longitudinal visual research project (Author, 2010, 2016) that put cameras in the hands of young people (at the ages of 10, 12, 16, and 18) growing up in working-class, immigrant communities of Worcester, Massachusetts. I adapted a form of “photovoice” and photo-elicitation research to introduce topics that might be overlooked or poorly understood from “outsiders”, including those that young people might not easily ‘open up’ about (Authors, 2010; Yates, 2010; among others). My approach departs from other forms of visual research, affording them multiple opportunities to make meaning of their own and each other’s images: in different contexts, with different audiences, and over time as they looked back on their childhood images.
This paper describes and reflects on my use of collage as a reflexive form of photo analysis and video collage as a means of re-representing a series of moms-in-kitchens photographs taken by the children at ages 10 and 12. Feminist sociologist DeVault’s (1991) account of women’s “feeding the family” and its gender and class dynamics provided the initial conceptual lens through which I interpreted in/through the children’s photographs and interviews.
In this presentation, I first trace my reflexive practice of collage-making and how it is influenced by multiple epistemological perspectives: a positivist social science approach of “content” or “inventory analysis” (Collier 1986); semiotics and the impact that photographic images have on viewers (Rose, 2012); and affect theory that considers the “frequencies of affect and impact” that images hold (Campt 2017). I was especially provoked by Campt’s (2017) notion of “listening to” photographs that goes beyond visual scrutiny, as “an ensemble of seeing, feeling, being affected, contacted, and moved beyond the distance of sight and observer” (p. 42). Collage-making was my way of “listening to” the moms-in-kitchen photographs as a means to unsettle what so many audiences (including myself at first) viewed as mundane snapshots of traditional gender roles.
As another way to listen to the images, I presented them in a stop-motion depiction. In a 4-minute video (to be screened), my hands assemble pieces of single images, in part to open up a rich space for dialogue about my researcher role and the gap between my social position and those of the mothers and children. The collage elements in motion evoke a version of domestic life that is not fixed, but pulled apart and pieced back together as was described to me by the children. The video collage is meant to blur the boundaries of the discovery process among art, science, research and pedagogy. It is a form of collaborative research, not in terms of participation as we typically think of collaboration (e.g. making collages with participants). Rather, the collaboration is in terms of solidarity – an effort to extend viewers attention, a way of seeing, listening, feeling, being affected by and responding to the children’s efforts to picture and honor their mother’s care and home-making.

Author

• Wendy L. Luttrell, Graduate Center City University of New York