This paper studies the ways in which field researchers engage in videoing mobile activities in a collaborative fashion. Rooted in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, this study documents video data collecting practices of social activities, and reflects on their methodological and analytical relevancies. We demonstrate that camerapersons coordinate themselves and their cameras views, while

Published in Visual Studies (Vol. 37, No. 3, 2022)

Published in Visual Studies (Vol. 37, No. 3, 2022)

The Open Eye Gallery’s LOOK Climate Lab 2022 involved a series of research projects exploring ecology and climate change in partnership with Visual Studies Journal. These projects feature in this issue of the journal as visual essays and articles, and were also installed in the gallery space as part of the LOOK Climate Lab.

Published in Visual Studies (Vol. 37, No. 3, 2022)

Published in Visual Studies (Ahead of Print, 2022)

Published in Visual Studies (Vol. 37, No. 3, 2022)

Our work begins with the collection of waste on beaches with environmental activists. This waste, dumped into the sea, is returned and swallowed up again by the sea. Plastic bottles, cutlery, bags or condoms replace shells, crabs and other marine flora and fauna. We wanted to portray this new invasive plastic species that we find in our seas in a series of images made by means of the cyanotype photographic

The drone both embodies and documents the decay of Earth systems. As a networked computer technology, it is built from metals and minerals extracted from the Earth. As an elevated and mobile camera, it records vast infrastructures, industrial rivers, and mass extinction on the ground below. The drone is a creative tool that comes from and witnesses destruction. This article explores how the drone’s

As participants of the global capitalist system, we have rich and lifelong experiences of living with fossil fuels. However, these experiences are often implicit in our everyday lives, and rarely formulated explicitly. Coming off Fossil Fuels is a project that visualises and collects personal experiences of fossil fuel dependencies. Experiences can include memories, current attachments and future dreams

The climate crisis has inspired youth-led activism across the world and young people now lead global campaigns and political protest on climate justice. However, aside from news media coverage of youth activism and the attendant focus on young people’s hand-drawn protest placards, relatively little is known about young people’s views on the actions needed to respond to the climate crisis or how they

Published in Visual Studies (Ahead of Print, 2022)

Published in Visual Studies (Ahead of Print, 2022)

In the growing literature on the visual representations of refugees used by international organisations, only a few studies have examined the representations used specifically to portray the experiences of resettled refugees in the global North. This study’s objective is to address that gap by analysing the use of specific images by UNHCR Canada to illustrate the resettlement of Syrian refugees in

Between the end of March and June 2020, COVID-19 quickly spread in Mexico. As a response, the Mexican government announced its national prevention campaign, called ‘Susana Distancia,’ a set of measures, recommendations, conferences, educational resources, and a chatbot. At the centre of the campaign was Susana Distancia’s character, a young woman designed in a comic-book-style, echoing the Mexican

This visual essay is a documentation of a series of morbid short videos circulating in local Wuhan chat groups at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, attached with video screenshots and adjacent chatlogs. The data was collected during the author's home quarantine in Wuhan in early 2020. This visual essay aims at viscerally exhibiting the circulation of emotions ranging from anxiety to boredom to

In this visual essay, I engage with the use of public and parochial realms by male and female vendors in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Using data from a qualitative case study in Sattola slum and its surrounding public spaces in Dhaka, Bangladesh, this visual essay examines the ways in which male and female vendors use of space varies due to the gendered nature of space. The findings suggest that female vendors

This article draws on Warburg's Zwischenraum to explore the archiving practices of young expats living in short-term accommodations in Berlin. The image of the Zwischenraum is employed as a visual tool to juxtapose the gaps created by Berlin's characteristic missing houses with the blank spaces between pictures within photographic albums. Furthermore, the Zwischenraum is used as theoretical instrument

(2022). Thinking with Sarah Kaufman’s Devil’s Pool. Visual Studies. Ahead of Print.

This study addresses the social impact of the pandemic in terms of its effects on communication and emotion in spaces of everyday domestic activity. The aim is to visually and formally portray the personal, professional and citizen reality in the daily use of face masks. The analysis includes the adoption, advocacy or resistance to them, through various representative characters of different, referential

“Home Office: The Places Where We Worked” is a directive based photo project that asked participants to take photographs of their work places during the early months of the COVID pandemic of 2020.

After more than 50 years of civil war, the lack of a clear itinerary, unanticipated crises, and contingencies are seriously affecting the termination of the longest-lasting internal war in Latin America. The 2016 Peace Agreement signed between former guerrilla group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia–Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP) and the Colombian Government established the ex-combatants’

(2022). The burden of the present in Gareth Brookes, The Dancing Plague. Visual Studies. Ahead of Print.

(2022). Editorial. Visual Studies: Vol. 37, No. 1-2, pp. 1-3.

This introduction to the special section establishes facilitation as an important yet underreported component of visual sociological research. Although institutional and regulatory ethics have been ingrained in university research settings, scholars such as Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (2014) have asked us to consider the ways in which participants’ and communities’ refuse research influence our ethical

The present study examines silent panels in five Israeli graphic novels and comics that deal – directly or indirectly – with traumatic events, whether personal, national, or both. Much has been written about comics and trauma. Such studies have mainly been aimed at revealing the importance of comics in documenting, confronting, witnessing, remembering, and reporting trauma; or answering questions such

The measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 significantly impacted (criminal) justice sectors worldwide, including the justice system in the Netherlands. The administration of justice could no longer take place in physical court meetings. Many cases could not be processed. Behind the scenes, people worked hard to scale up the technological infrastructure needed and make court buildings COVID-proof

(2022). Re-staging American triumph as American carnage. Visual Studies. Ahead of Print.

(2022). Seeing Cities Change: Local Culture and Class. Visual Studies. Ahead of Print.

(2022). The Astronomer's Chair: A Visual and Cultural History. Visual Studies. Ahead of Print.

(2022). Walker Evans: No Politics by Stephanie Schwartz, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020, and Walker Evans: Starting from Scratch by Svetlana Alpers, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. Reviewed by Jerome Krase, Brooklyn College CUNY. Visual Studies. Ahead of Print.

I argue that contemporary filmmakers, including today’s most artistically acclaimed Lithuanian film director, Šarūnas Bartas, whose works examine an ethnographic subject, question the rigid distinction between art and ethnography and prompt us to rethink the definition of ethnographic film. However, since they are primarily interested in the result, these filmmakers inadvertently perpetuate a cinematographic

Personal digital data are often imagined and experienced as invisible and immaterial phenomena, albeit with increasingly powerful impacts on people’s lives. In this article we discuss findings from an ethnographic project involving 30 participants in Sydney, Australia, directed at identifying their practices and understandings concerning their home-based digital device use and the personal data generated

(2022). Coral empire: underwater oceans, colonial tropics, visual modernity. Visual Studies. Ahead of Print.

Starting on March 16, 2020, I began keeping a personal written and visual record of my experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The record is in the form of visual and written journal entries posted online through my personal, private Instagram and Facebook pages. The project started simply as a way for me to document the quickly changing facets of day-to-day life during the pandemic but slowly evolved

Ethical facilitation is of paramount importance if educators are to address the issues that plague Black students. This paper presents an autoethnographic account of my experiences facilitating two cellphilm workshops with self-identified Black university students attending two universities in New Brunswick, Canada. Nestled within African-Canadian Feminist discourse, I explore my positionality as a

This article looks at the aftermath of riots in a suburban area of Paris to make a larger argument about what produces riots, the role of police violence, the activation of social boundaries, and the implied set of demands during and after riots. It uses the methods of visual sociology to show how youth often target symbols of the state to respond to state violence in an asymmetrical confrontation

In this interview, Clément Baloup addresses the varied aspects of his two graphic narratives, Vietnamese Memories: Leaving Saigon and Vietnamese Memories: Little Saigon (originally written in French). He talks about his choice of the medium, translation of his works to English and Baloup’s role in it, illustration and colouring style, organisation of the two volumes, Vietnamese history and diaspora

As participatory methods place an emphasis on ‘collaborative research practices … to produce knowledge in collaboration,’ a transition to virtual platforms created challenges in effectively facilitating these collaborations. Because participatory approaches to digital methods are still growing, there is limited information on best practices for working remotely with ‘vulnerable’ individuals from refugee

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, many U.S. schools, childcare centres, and non-essential workplaces closed or moved to a virtual, remote format. As a result, many families were forced to combine childcare, schooling, and paid work responsibilities within the home. This shift had unequal consequences, with employed mothers often bearing the brunt of additional childcare and household labour. In this visual

(2022). Warao queen: challenging beauty in Venezuela – the Rachel Tanur Memorial Prize for Visual Sociology 2020. Visual Studies: Vol. 37, No. 1-2, pp. 4-6.

This visual essay is the result of an inquiry that analyses the selfie with students in the art teacher training programme in the Faculty of Education. These students are familiar with the selfie in a recreational context, in which the result and the aesthetics of the immediate prevail, overlooking elements of the photographic act. The visual experimentation triggered by the limitations of this strongly

This article explores the works of the late anthropologist Frank Cancian, specifically considering Another Place (1974), Orange County Housecleaners (2006), and Lacedonia – An Italian Town, 1957 (2016). Re-reading his works together reveals Another Place as a point of departure that concretised Cancian’s vision of documentary photography as a vocation. In particular, the article explores the implications

This article reflects on the impact of #MeToo on the artworld. It examines some of the debates the movement spurred, such as censorship and whether or not we can separate the ‘man’ from ‘his’ work, with examples from recent curating around the world. The article uses feminist art history and theories of authorship to show that narratives of artistic temperament and genius are outdated but contribute

‘Giving voice’ to marginalised individuals or communities is a commonly stated aim of studies employing visual research methods, particularly studies on the experiences of ill people. This points to the significance of voice as a political concept in social justice endeavours, calling for profound engagement with the ontological and epistemological assumptions around voice in visual methodologies.

(2021). Editorial. Visual Studies: Vol. 36, No. 4-5, pp. 285-289.

(2021). Does she still recognise you? Visual Studies: Vol. 36, No. 4-5, pp. 290-291.

(2021). The ‘how’ of anthropology: participant observation in New Guinea and Newfoundland. Visual Studies: Vol. 36, No. 4-5, pp. 292-299.

(2021). Caution, Police! Visual Studies: Vol. 36, No. 4-5, pp. 324-325.

(2021). Where are the students? Visual Studies: Vol. 36, No. 4-5, pp. 364-365.

(2021). Stencil in the centre of Athens. Visual Studies: Vol. 36, No. 4-5, pp. 404-405.

(2021). Future City, 2021. Visual Studies: Vol. 36, No. 4-5, pp. 474-475.

(2021). Hollywood, McDonald’s and Black Lives Matter: the decrepit face of the American dream. Visual Studies: Vol. 36, No. 4-5, pp. 554-554.

(2021). Response to questionnaire: visual studies now. Visual Studies: Vol. 36, No. 4-5, pp. 555-557.

In this paper, I show that immigration consulting agencies in the Doaba region of Punjab, India, mobilise the imaginary of the ‘West’ as a place to be successful and modern in order to sell their services. My focus is on the design of promotional materials created by the agencies that are well integrated into the visual landscape of this region. Thus I analyse this imaginary as presented in banners

This article shows that visual representations of financial markets not only make them visible, i.e. present and reveal certain important financial information such as the size and distribution of demand and supply, the quantity, type and intentions of sellers and buyers, trends and patterns in price movements, or the depth, liquidity and sentiment of the market, but also hide what they are supposed

(2021). Correction. Visual Studies: Vol. 36, Visual Studies Roundtable, pp. iii-iii.

The focus of this paper is to consider the visual impact of VW campervans, and the broader idea of ‘vanlife,’ in spaces where one finds visitors in campervans within their visual commons. It starts with an exploration of the digital visual life course of the Instagram hashtag #vanlife, and discusses the impact of how this digital visual practice manifests in physical visual space. It is argued that

(2022). Digital Tarkovsky. Visual Studies: Vol. 37, No. 1-2, pp. 160-161.

This article draws on John Locke’s theoretical conceptualisation of eavesdropping in examining the surgical, representational, and communicative practices of plastic surgeon and celebrity, Dr. Michael Salzhauer (aka Dr. Miami). I draw in part on literature in surveillance and visual studies to critically examine the visual and auditory features of Dr. Miami’s Snapchat stories, which, like reality television