Visual Diary: How Photos Represent the Context of Field Research

Abstract

The article addresses the possibility of using visual data in field research. The article is based on the visual data obtained in the frame of the author's research projects of 2017—2019, aimed at studying everyday life of industrial workers in Yekaterinburg and the transformation of industrial territories in Moscow. The article is the additional visual material to the authors methodological manual “How to Collect Data in the Field [Qualitative] Research”. The authors have shown both the analytical significance of visual materials and their didactic potential. The article demonstrates how the research practice of photographing is organically integrated into the classical stages of fieldwork — access to the field, data collection, analysis and presentation of the results. At the same time, photographs are the relevant source of data about everyday life of citizens — material culture, spatial practices, emotions, identities. The authors make an attempt to visualize the process of field research, show the process of conducting projects through the photographs and demonstrate the genre of empirical materials as a visual diary.