VISUAL METHODOLOGIES An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials Second Edition Gillian Rose12 visual methodologies a review 1 introduction This chapter concludes the book by rehearsing its central themes. Each chapter has explored a particular method for working with a particular kind of visual imagery, and the first section of this chapter will compare the meth- ods a little more systematically than previous chapters have done. For each of these methods has its strengths and weaknesses not only in relation to the criteria for a critical visual methodology laid out in Chapter 1, but also in terms of what it is most effective in exploring empirically. These empirical foci do not concern the kinds of visual images on which each method can be deployed; although most chapters have concentrated on only one sort of visual image, every method discussed here can be applied to images other than the sort discussed in that method’s chapter. Rather, the specificity of the empiri- cal orientations of these methods concerns the sites and modalities of visual meaning-making, and this specificity leads to the other topic of this chapter: the possibility of mixing methods, in order to broaden the empirical scope of a study. Thus this chapter will: * briefly rehearse the arguments of Chapter 1 concerning the sites and modalities of the meanings of visual images, and place the methods so far discussed in relation to them; © discuss the merits of mixing methods. 2 sites, modalities and methods Chapter 1 commented that the large body of work exploring the meanings of found visual images suggests that there are three sites at which their meanings are made: the site of production, the site of the image or object itself and the site of its audiencing. That is, how an image is made, what it looks like and how it is seen are the three crucial ways in which a visual image has258 visual methodologies cultural and other effects. (I use the term ‘image’ in this discussion, but that should also imply the notion of a visual ‘object’, as discussed in Chapter 11, t00.) Chapter 1 also suggested that each of those three sites could be under- stood in terms of three modalities, which it termed the technological, the compositional and the social. The technological concerns the tools and equip- ment used to make, structure and display an image; the compositional con- cerns the visual construction, qualities and reception of an image; and the social concerns the social, economic, political and institutional practices and relations that produce, saturate and interpret an image. Clearly, these three sites and modalities are in practice often difficult to distinguish neatly one from another. Because of that, Figure 1.4 is an image that draws boundaries between things that are rarely so neatly divided one from another. Its lines are misleadingly solids and, if you have been reading steadily through this book, by this point you may feel that a list of questions like the one that follows is a more appropriate way of approaching the com- plexity and richness of meaning in a visual image than the demarcated fields offered in Figure 1.4. some questions about the production of an image: when was it made? where was it made? who made it? was it made for someone else? what technologies does its production depend on? what were the social identities of the maker, the owner and the subject of the image? what were the relations between the maker, the owner and the subject? does the genre of the image address these identities and relations of its production? ‘* does the form of the image reconstitute those identities and relations? oe some questions about the image: ‘* what is being shown? what are the components of the image? how are they arranged? what is its material form? is it one of a series? where is the viewer’s eye drawn to in the image, and why? what is the vantage point of the image? what relationships are established between the components of the image visually? what use is made of colour? ‘* how has its technology affected the text? ‘© what is, or are, the genre(s) of the image? Is it documentary, soap opera, or melodrama, for example? ‘* to what extent does this image draw on the characteristics of its genre?a review does this image comment critically on the characteristics of its genre? what do the different components of an image signify? what knowledges are being deployed? whose knowledges are excluded from this representation? does this image’s particular look at its subject disempower its subject? are the relations between the components of this image unstable? is this a contradictory image? some questions about audiencing: who were the original audience(s) for this image? where and how would the text have been displayed originally? how is it circulated? how is it stored? how is it re-displayed? who are the more recent audiences for this text? where is the spectator positioned in relation to the components of the image? what relation does this produce between the image and its viewers? is the image one of a series, and how do the preceding and subsequent images affect its meanings? * would the image have had a written text to guide its interpretation in its initial moment of display, for example a caption or a catalogue entry? * is the image represented elsewhere in a way that invites a particular relation to it, in publicity materials for example, or in reviews? * have the technologies of circulation and display affected the various audiences’ interpretation of this image? what are the conventions for viewing this technology? is more than one interpretation of the image possible? how actively does a particular audience engage with the image? is there any evidence that a particular audience produced a meaning for an image that differed from the meanings made at the site of its pro- duction or by the image itself? how do different audiences interpret this image? * how are these audiences different from each other, in terms of class, gender, ‘race’, sexuality and so on? + how do these axes of social identity structure different interpretations? Such a long list of questions addressed to a particular visual image may be a useful starting point for your study. It may prompt new ideas because the questions ask about something you have not thought about before; or your image may suggest other questions to you that become more interesting by their absence from this list. However, this list of questions is very eclectic. It does not suggest that any one series of questions is any more important than any other. And the usefulness of Figure 1.4 was precisely to suggest that the theoretical debates in which many of the methods discussed in this book are embedded are important because they do claim that certain sites or certain modalities are260 visual methodologies more fundamental for understanding the meaning of an image than others. That is, they suggest that some questions in that list are more important than others. So, as Chapter 1 also insisted, you need to engage with these more theoretical debates about how images mean, or how they do things, before deploying any of the methods discussed in this book. Since many of the methods discussed here are related to specific argu- ments about how images become significant, itis not surprising that many of them produce quite specific empirical foci when they are used, as well as implying their own conceptual understanding of imagery. Figure 1.4 suggests what these empirical foci are - although, as section 2 in Chapter 2 noted, in some cases these foci are more a matter of what has been done so far by those researchers interested in visual matters than what the method itself might allow. This is the case, for example, in relation to the neglect of audiencing by the second type of discourse analysis discussed in Chapter 8; there does not seem to be anything in the founding arguments of that kind of discourse analysis that precludes exploring the site of audiencing, but very few of its proponents have carried out that kind of research. Instead, those sort of dis- course analysts have focused on the institutional sites of image production, use and display, and on particular genres of images. On the other hand, semi- ology (particularly its earlier manifestations) and much psychoanalysis also neglect to explore the processes of audiencing, but this is because both claim that it is the image itself that produces its audiences’ positions. Since both these theories conceptualize the image as productive of spectatorship, both have developed complex and elaborate ways of interpreting what their pro- ponents argue are the effects of those images by looking only at the images in question. The notion that different audiences might react differently to the same image is not acknowledged conceptually, and the methodologies that flow from that conceptualization therefore also neglect the processes of audi- encing. Hence it would be very difficult, using either of those methods, to explore how actual audiences make sense of images. These sorts of considerations suggest that mixing one method with another is a useful strategy for widening the empirical focus of a research project. Whether this is in fact the case is considered in the next section. 2 mixing methods Each of the methods discussed in this book, then, has been applied, either necessarily or contingently, on only one of the sites at which the meanings of images are made (see Figure 1.4 again). This raises the question of mixing dif- ferent methods to explore more fully the range of meanings invested in an image at its different sites. This book has already mentioned some studies that choose to use more than one method in order precisely to explore the diverse meanings thatparticular images carry at their various sites of production, image and reception. Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins (1993), for example, used several nethods to access each of these three sites i their study of the photographs miethe National Geographic magazine. At the ste of the photographs’ pro- duction, they studied the archives of the magazine and interviewed editors, journalists and photographers. At the site of the photographs themselves, they ‘ised content analysis, as Chapter 4 ‘examined. And at the audiencing site, they used group interviews, showing different groups the same few key photographs and examining their veaetions. Similarly, in her study of an hibition in a museum, Henrietta Lidchi (1997) suggests using discourse smalysis Tl to interpret the institutional processes that produced the exhibi- tion’s effects, and semiology for interpreting the effects of the technologies of display. We have also nored that advocates cof photo-clicitation studies use cenrent analysis to interpret their informants! photographs and then use qual- tative methods on the transcripts of theit interviews. ‘Using more than one method in this mannet clearly has benefits. It allows a richly detailed picture of images’ significance to be developed, and in particular it can shed interesting light on the contradictory meanings an image pray articulate. The visualites articulated by producers, images and audiences may not coincide, and this may in itself be an important issue to address. Nareover, making images (as wel as studying them) as part of research into the workings of visual culture could be a very productive research strategy. However, simply discovering that different sites produce different meanings may also be a rather obvious finding. ‘And that kind of argument can easily wait into a claim that ‘everyone sees things in their own way’, a claim that ‘obscures the very real power relations in ‘which visual images ~ and all social Vite ~ participate. As Ang (1989: 107) argues in the context of audience studies, the crtical task is to assess what the significance of diverse audience inter~ pretations might be, not simply to mark their existence. Here, the emphasis rie obilty in the anthropological approach vo interpreting visual materials cTecussed in Chapter 10 is obviously useful Instead of just pointing to the aargtence of three different sites, that approach focuses precisely on the move- ments of specific visual objects between iifferent locations, which could Tnclude the sites of production and audiencings ‘and it examines the conse~ quences oftheir effects as they travel Te is perhaps therefore better equipped se espond to Ang’s (1989) concern than some more eclectic methodologies. My assessments of methods inthis book have depended on this argument about the power relations articulated through visual images. Hence the trtique of compositional interpretation, mentioned in section 4.5 of Chapter 3, “Thich in is earn to universalized notions of Art ‘and Genius ignores the social rodality of art entirely. Hence too the exitigues mentioned in section 4 of Chapter 9, that studies of creative audiences often neglect the powerful effects ofimages’ ways of seeing. And hence too the problems with Lutz and Collins's £1993) use of content analysis (discussed in section 3 of Chapter 4), where their areview 26262 visual methodologies advocacy of that method as the most ‘objective’ means of avoiding the ‘unconscious interpretation of images implies that researchers are more analyt- scaly powerful than other sores of audiences. These criticisms all depend for thet force on an abiding concern for the power relations that saturate all ways of secing: producers’, images’ and audiences’, including researchers like us. ‘This is important to bear in mind when mixing methods, then. Be method: logically eclectic or, even better, methodologically innovative; bur do so beat vog in mind the power relations that structure the connections between the different sites and modalities you want to bring together. Finally then, I would like to reiterate the implications ofthe critical visual methodology outlined in Chapter 1. Precisely because images matter, because they are powerful and seductive, itis necessary to consider them critically Whatever method you choose to use, make sure that your account acknowk edges the differentiated effects of both an image’s way of seeing and your own.