Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: Creating our own image, whether it is in research or in art, is a constant conversation with the images already in our heads. In the case of refugees, these images are shaped by mediatised and politicised realities that obscure the capacity to see lived realities. While some attention has been given to how new forms of representation could resist reproducing the existing (visual) discourse in communicating research with refugees, few have considered how to resist reproducing political divisions in conducting research. This article discusses the process of creating a visual essay as part of an ethnographic research project with refugees placed in depopulating villages in central Italy. It demonstrates that as well as a mode of representation, the visual essay can be a method of exploration. In this way, an artistic and participatory process of ‘thinking through making’ has the potential to transform existing ways of seeing and knowing in the process of doing research.
Source: Anthrovision
Author: Shirley van der Maarel
Institution: University of Manchester
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4295777021