Representing Structural Disparities through Researchers' Photography As Visual Methodology: An Autoethnographic Perspective on Framing Rural Displacement

Background and Purpose: Studies have increasingly used visual methodologies such as photovoice and photo/art-solicited interviews to examine the otherwise hard-to-reach depth in collecting qualitative data. However, there is limited research exploring positionalities of researchers taking both roles as researchers and photographers. Frequently, such combined roles of researchers/photographers have been questioned for difficulties in examining representation.

Informed by the social construction theory but creatively using it to examine uncertainties in decision-making processes, I analyze such moments of uncertainties in this study and argue that combining powers of gaze and its explanation does not necessitate oppression in representation. Rather, by narrating my photographing/ethnographic experiences in a research project on structural disparity and poverty, I highlight such uncertain moments as a double-negation process through which the two types of data enable new understandings of power negotiation.

Methods: For visual data, the researcher selected 47 photos from over 1,000 taken from 2013 to 2015. For verbal data, three rounds of data collection were conducted during the same period, resulting in seventy in-depth, semi-structured interviews and 12 focus groups. This study selected 39 participants (13 female and 26 male) aged from 60 to 89. Participants were recruited through phone calls to a contact person and then snowballing. Interviews elicited participants' life experiences with emphasis on changes in rural labor and economic practices, family roles, cultural values, and health practices. The author promptly reviewed audio recordings for generating new questions and identifying new topics. Then, a community advisory board set up at the beginning of the study met to discuss the questions and issues. Both interview and focus group recordings were open coded after returning to the worksite. Finally, I compared two types of data at critical decision-making moments to identify how two kinds of data interact with each other and cross-inform the decision-making process.

Findings: The photographing decisions are anchored against the overall study directions. The power of representation often is not a simple binary of "yes" or "no," but a process of highlighting a counter-discourse against dominant discourses. Thus, this study contributes to the literature on visual methodology by providing a nuanced power negotiation process through which researchers can question dominant discourses by examining the choice-making process.

Conclusion and Implications: Findings suggest the moments of uncertainties are often the creative openings through connections with different discourses of power. Therefore, incorporating researchers' double roles opens new discursive space for manifesting power that can otherwise remain latent. Instead of the choices made by researchers, their choice-making process holds a renewed subject of study in visual methodology.