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The visual essay and sociology 1

Article  in  Visual Studies · September 1991

DOI: 10.1080/14725869108583689

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 1992

Visual Sociology, 6 (2), pp. 23-38 © International Visual Sociology Association, 1991

The Visual Essay and Sociology 1

John Grady
"This immediate contact with man which the camera restores is

clearly destined to become one of the important elements in

sociological communication. In this connection, the film can

already be seen as a necessary counterweight to the disordered

and sometimes frenzied extension of current sociological jargon.

A smile or a frown on the screen restores the living presence of

man buried beneath the arid treatises which we are all guilty of

writing."

- Luc de Heusch "The Cinema as Social Science" (962)

Luc de Heusch's comment reminds me of an episode in the recent history of the

computer. During the early 1960s, when de Heusch penned these words, there was
a brief flurry of interest in automation. The tone was apocalyptic. In a few short years
the computer was going to change everything; just wait! It didn't, of course, and
throughout the late 1960s and 1970s this episode was interpreted as a case study of
how easily educated influentials can be influenced, if not panicked, by the future.
Then came the 1980s and ... well, the computer changed everything. True, the
technology is different from that on which earlier predictions were based and the
effects are in many ways at odds with what had been foreseen. But, in any event, the
automation revolution happened after all and much attention and energy is now
focused on managing the personal computer and its impact on our lives 2.
De Heusch must have had the portable 16mm camera and tape recorder in
mind whlID he made his prediction. As it turned out he too was wrong and the >.'

practice of personal filmmaking made little dent on either popular culture or

sociology. De Heusch, however, did not envision a different technology that
could be used for the same ends - the video camcorder. Nevertheless, while this
new technology removes the economic obstacle that has blocked the realization
of de Heusch's vision, it only reveals a more serious obstacle: sociology's image
of itself as a science and theory driven discipline and its correspondingly re­
stricted view of what constitutes acceptable analytic practice.
I share de Heusch's vision, and embrace his goals. I believe that sociologists can
make good sociological essays with either still or moving images about solid
sociological issues. I also believe that encouraging this practice can play an impor­
tant role in revitalizing a troubled discipline in an even more troubled system of
higher education. Nevertheless, such a project must address sociologists' fear of
being, in Edgar Morin's words, "lured from the right path by the sirens of the
aesthetic (962)." This fear is misplaced and the rigid distinction between art and
science is, as Cheatwood and Stasz (979) have eloquently argued, a "false polarity."
On the one hand sociologists have much to gain by learning how to access aesthetic

John Grady, Professor, Deparhnent of Sociology and Anthropology, Wheaton College,

Norton, MA, 02766. Professor Grady is a filmmaker and sociologist specializing in urban
studies.
24 John Grady
imagination and utilizing its craft traditions, while visual social scientists, on the
other hand, maintain their marginality within their respective disciplines by sanitiz­
ing the aesthetic impulse. Doing work that is both aesthetically compelling and
analytically sound and, simultaneously, insisting that it be accepted as sociology
will not only enrich the sociological tradition but also encourage our colleagues to
utilize the increasingly wide variety of visual scholarship in which we are currently
engaged.

The Marginality of Visual Sociology

Recently, I chanced to have a conversation with a colleague who I had not seen for
years. The last time we talked she had asked me if I would be able to be a peer
reviewer for her tenure case. I had agreed and then never heard any more about it
until our most recent conversation. I inquired whether she had received tenure and
she said that she had. I expressed surprise that I had never been contacted by her
committee. With some embarrassment she told me that I had been rejected because
I was "only a visual sociologist." I knew the members of her committee and also
knew that they respected and supported my work in documentary film so their
decision was neither a personal slight nor hostility to visual expression. I surmised
that they must have felt that it would be difficult to justify their preferences to their
colleagues in the profession. I am sure that most visual sociologists have stories like
this that, painfully, attest to the marginality of what we do and that this state of
affairs will undoubtedly continue at least until there are enough visual sociologists
to constitute a section of the American Sociological Association.
But visual sociologists also seem to have internalized their marginal status.
Editorials in the Visual Sociology Review, conference reports, as well as numerous
articles attest to a persistent concern with defining the field or, in Doug Harper's
words, developing "scholarly and institutional coherence (Harper, 1990: 1)." These
all seem to indicate anxiety induced by status insecurity. Harper appears to confirm
this judgment when, in the above quoted editorial assessing the state of the Visual
Sociology Review, he reports that while "our five year output is impressive," the
parent organization, the International Visual Sociology Association, remains "in a
tentative and experimental posture." Harper suggests that the problem is that visual
sociologists spend too much time talking about visual sociology rather than doing it.
Possibly it is the insecurity that accompanies marginality that has hindered
sociologists from doing visual work. Could they still be considered real sociolo­
gists should they produce photoessays or make movies? Many resolve this ques­
tion by working in ways that are more easily justifiable as standard sociological
practice: semiotic analysis of visual texts; use of photography and film as re­
search tool or unedited raw data; classroom exercises and so on. The most star­
tling effect, however, is just how little sociologists have experimented with the
photo-essay and, even rarer, the movie - unquestionably the most influential
media in modern society - to explore and analyze social life.
A quick glance at what sociologists say about the visual essay and surprise
evaporates. The literature is varied and contentious. But what is most striking about
it, when viewed as a whole, is its focus on the question of defining a sociologically
acceptable visual essay; to look for justification to the boundaries established by the
formal protocols that regulate mainstream research methodology and written
expression; and then, to worry the question like a dog with a bone.
 q 1992

The Visual Essay 25

Whether it be Rollwagen's insistence that:

"anthropological understandings, based on the disciplinary

framework of anthropology (and centrally shaped by
.anthropological theory) provides the best scientific framwork of
dealing with humankind as a whole and in all of its variety.
'Ethnographic' film and the writings on 'ethnographic' film must
become anthropologically sophisticated (Rollwagen, 1988: 309);"

or Ruby's concern that:

"It is essential that audiences understand the differences

between the images we make of what people do and what
people say they do, and what we interpret both to mean.
Audiences can have the pleasure of the illusion that they are
participating in something they are actually watching so long as
we make it very clear to them that they are seeing a
representation we have constructed because we were motivated
to present them with our view of the world (Ruby, 1982: 130);"

or Cheatwood's and Stasz' dissent:

"too often, however, we find among sociologists avoidance and

dismissal of more aesthetic or technically innovative styles
involving unusual camera angles, multiple image printing, print
manipulation, posed shots with large format cameras, and so on.
It is implied that these manipulations are proper to photography
as an art form, thus inappropriate to science and to sociology.
Further, such a choice presumes that one format and one
procedure used in a standardized manner are the means by
which to secure 'objective' data. To do anything else is to appear
subjective, and therefore incorrect. This simplistic belief
produces stilted, hackneyed shots with an implicit but unstated
ideological stance. There is a definite use for each form of
photographic technique and manipulation. The misuse of a
technique or the manipulation of data or procedure to produce
biased results for unstated reasons is as immoral and
unprofessional in visual sociology as in any other field.
Sociologists should avail themselves, however, of the whole
range of techniques for working with and presenting
photographs (Cheatwood and Stasz, 1979: 265);"

all of these authors witness to an overwhelming pressure to conform to a particu­

lar model of analytic reason that values abstraction, mechanism, and emotional
disengagement. In a sense, the model of sociology as a positive science or theory
driven discipline is here operating as a kind of professional super-ego, censoring
a freer play of the imagination. With internalized demands like these, its remark­
able that any visual sociology gets done at all!
Above all, the most important characteristic of the model of sociological practice
that sociologists who are filmmakers or photogra phers ha ve to negotiate is that it has
no place for the personal voice, or authorship. This is certainly clear in the legacy of
positivism where authority derives from the detachment and disinterest of "scien­
26 John Grady
tific inquiry." But it is also evident in more recent approaches to social analysis that
ostensibly emphasize the subjectivity of knowledge-production and underscore the
development of interpretive ability and technique. In practice, however, both
interpretative sociology and anthropology undermine the exercise of the personal
voice by relying on analytic frames that are both exogenous to the field of action
studied and the author's biography. In addition, these frames and their assumptions
are rarely examined. Whether they be polarities derived from social structure (race,
gender, or class) or politics (domination/ subordination) or linguistics (dialogue
position and style), they function to provide the author with an illusion of intellec­
tual compass and significance that his or her empirical work alone rarely sustains.
In the analytic process, interpretive sociology focuses not on the world it purports
to understand but rather uses that world to mirror exercises in moral and theoretical
virtuosity. Thus, the self-reflexivity of interpretative sociology is little more than
literary convention and is as distrustful of the personal voice in accounting for
experience as positivism ever was.
In contrast, this essay assumes that accessing the personal voice is indispens­
able in genuine social analysis and can be done with only the simplest of analytic
frames chosen for heuristic purposes and subject to on-going evaluation and
review. As an approach to doing sociological work, it is rooted in American
Pragmatism and the Chicago School of Sociology and finds its closest contempo­
rary evocations in the work of Anselm Strauss and other grounded theorists. In a
formative statement where they called for the conscious development of grounded
theory, Glaser and Strauss commented:

"we... are trying... to strengthen the mandate for generating

theory, to help provide a defense against doctrinaire approaches
to verification, and to reawaken and broaden the picture of what
sociologists can do with their time and efforts. It should also
help students to defend themselves against verifierswho would
teach them to deny the validity of their own scientific
intelligence. By making generalization a legitimate enterprise,
and suggesting methods for it, we hope to provide the
ingredients of a defense against internalized professional
mandates dictating that sociologists research and write in the
verification rhetoric, and against the protests of colleagues who
object to their freedom in research from the rigorous rules of
verification (so stifling to the creative energies required for
discovering theory) (Glazer and Strauss, 1967: 7)."

What is most attractive about the visual media is that they offer both a large
and attentive audience and authorship. Following Glaser and Strauss, we
shouldn't be put off by these realities and imagined threats to professional im­
age. They are, rather, possibilities and should be warmly embraced, explored and
used responsibly and creatively.
These reflections imply that while visual sociology, as it continues to grow, will
become less marginal - numbers alone will see to that - it will never become
completely accepted until it lives up to its full potential: utilizing a vital art form to
study human social relations. The visual essay has an important role to play in that
process not despite, but because, it is a medium for artistic expression.
 1992

The Visual Essay 27

Is The Visual Essay Sociology?
The visual essay can be defined most accurately as follows:

A statement about human affairs that purports to represent reality and is consciously and
creatively crafted from non-fictional materials that are, at least in part, directly connected to
the affairs thus represented. The primary medium of expression for the statement is some
variant of photographic imagery..l

From this standpoint, it is quite possible that the visual essay is an art form
that has managed to become inappropriately entangled with sociology, espe­
cially at the level of undergraduate instruction. There are a number of reasons
why this may have happened.
First, the fact that the visual essay uses non-fictional images that are directly
connected to what they represent means that this form of expression trades in the
same currency as sociology. Both ways of knowing purport to be about "reallife"
and, thus, appear similar.
Second, the visual essay is accessible. For teachers it can be a pleasant and
easy way to execute a learning plan or, maybe more accurately, to avoid develop­
ing one in the first place.
Third, the non-fictional film is one variant of arguably the most influential and
vital art form in contemporary society. The aesthetics of film have shaped our
sensibilities and our image of social life. Thus, teachers as well as students now think
filmically. It is possible, therefore, that the film medium's depiction of social action
is accepted as self-evidently actual. Not only is the world depicted visually more
exciting; it is also tacitly accepted as being more real than anything in print.
Fourth, the shared experience of watching a film or looking at still photos can
focus students' attention, although the experience often doesn't motivate them to
concentrate on their studies much beyond the class period, and may not be
doing, during the class itself, anything more than temporarily distracting them
from their other life concerns.
Fifth, producing visual essays provides the maker with authorship over a
compelling medium. This is a dream of power that promises a way of attracting
attention, of influencing some, and punishing others. These are all heady tempta­
tions in an era of perceived powerlessness, normlessness, and intense status anxi­
ety; and to those who seek moral solace in the embrace of ideology these tempta­
tions may well be irresistible.
From this perspective, it can be argued that the intrusion of the visual essay
into sociology - whether in the classroom or in analytic work - is a bad thing
and we should not be surprised to see an attenuation of the intellectual distance
and analytic skill so necessary for good sociological work. In short, the use of
film and still photography by sociologists can be expected to impede the devel­
opment of critical understanding.
I should add - again from the pespective outlined above - that visual materials
are not, therefore, everywhere foreign to sociological inquiry. To the contrary, they
can be analyzed as documents by a modified form of content analysis, their semiotic
structure can be deconstructed, and the background norms they evidence can be
identified by close analysis of frames and sequences. In addition, non-self-con­
28 John Grady
sciously filmed or photographed events of historic or socially typical significance
can be used in close association with other sources of data, so long as the purpose
of the analysis is determined by a theoretically explicit agenda. Nevertheless, the
seductiveness of the media is such that its use demands very tight control.
Everyone of the above points is quite true and together they constitute an
inventory of the ways in which the use of visual images can blunt instruction,
and produce dishonest essays. It is also true that the narrow use of film and
photography in this schema are also potentially quite valuable and should cer­
tainly be encouraged. But writ large, as an argument against the use of the visual
essay by sociologists - not to mention its creation by the same - this perspec­
tive relies for its force on the same uneasy suspicion of mass culture that has so
often paralyzed the academy. At best, this perspective defines quite eloquently
how the medium can be abused and establishes that using the medium for in­
struction never absolves the teacher of responsibility for curriculum and pedagogic
skill by providing a quick fix for addressing the distractions and immaturity of
youth. Similarly, it reminds us those who produce visual images can never be
excused the dishonest and irresponsible exercise of their craft.
But, if the visual essay cannot be dismissed out of hand as a legitimate mode of
sociological expression, still it may be that it poses so many problems for the
sociologist to use adequately, that in the end it is not worth the trouble that learning
the craft would demand. These problems can be identified as follows:
First, the visual essay is just too subjective. The editing process primarily
represents the maker's personal vision and only secondarily realities observed.
Second, the visual essay is not susceptible to adequate controls. There is an
inherent logic to visual narrative where the story line begins to lead the research
process rather than the way that sociologists are supposed to work with research
uncovering a story.
Third, the people, places and events depicted in a visual essay do not satisfy
any of the criteria for a representative sample. Characters and events that eventu­
ally appear in an essay are chosen for their contribution to the story line rather
than for what they typify.
Fourth, visual essays are too reliant on descriptive materials. The images cho­
sen are raw data and the final edit is no more than a montage of these images.
This necessity impedes the development of clear analytic focus.
Nevertheless, the problems that the visual essay poses for sociologists are not
just limited to these forms of expression. They are also problems that sociologists
have with the work of other sociologists. In fact, they are best seen as problems
that sociologists have with themselves. Viewed thus, these problems are usually
called "challenges;" and everyone of the above issues is part of on-going debates
about the practice of sociology that are carried on within the discipline.
All sociologists - even (and some might say, especially) those working with
quantitative materials at the highest level of abstraction - worries whether their
voices are in some way distorting testimony and evidence.
All sociologists, also, follow leads, have to transform the research process as it
develops and worries if they are not becoming too opportunistic in using or
interpreting available materials.
One of the great accomplishments of sociology as a discipline has been the
protocols it has developed for defining the parameters of what constitutes a
 I 1992

The Visual Essay 29

meaningful sample of a larger population. A well-trained sociologist working with
a well-defined and well-executed survey instrument can demonstrate that certain
levels of variation in group response indicate group differences that are not due to
chance. If this is our model of establishing whether that which we have documented
tells us something we didn't know about a larger group than just those sampled in
the study, then the visual essay's characterizations are simply unacceptable as
sociology.
But there is a long tradition in sociology that questions whether this kind of
aggregative model can ever, on its own, provide the information needed to de­
sign, test, administer, interpret and analyze a research study. The inevitable re­
sidual indeterminacy of quantitative research - the fact that there always re­
mains a minority response that contradicts the strongest correlations 4 - pro­
vides one of the major justifications for qualitative research, especially investiga­
tions utilizing open-ended interviewing and participant observation. Other justi­
fications for qualitative research stress the importance of types of behaviors and
settings that necessarily require qualitative techniques of data gathering.
An occupational hazard of this kind of research that the ethnographer or
interviewer must manage is the distortion that a privileged informant or articulate
and insightful subject may either deliberately or inadvertently provide. Similar
problems are posed by the observer's own biases, and the fact that the field of vision
of both the interview and the observation is of necessity partial. You can only
interview one person, and view one setting, from only one angle at anyone given
time. What this all boils down to in the end is that qualitative research is a necessary
part of sociological inquiry, it is not easy to do and the analytic problems of the visual
essayist are shared by most other qualitative researchers.
Finally, monographs and articles don't write themselves, and all sociologists
have to struggle with developing an analytic line that makes sense of their data.
It is commonly acknowledged in the informal lore of the profession that the
experience of this kind of data manipulation often feels terribly procrustean.
Facts are inconvenient and always threaten the analysis of those who seek to
explain them. In fact, much sociological debate is fueled by the ease with which
other people's data can be reinterpreted.
In sum, if these problems that sociologists have with the visual essay are
redefined as challenges inherent in research design, data collection, measurement
and analysis, then there is really, in principle, no reason why these cannot be faced
by filmmakers and photographers and addressed responsibly. Thus, the visual
essay is undeniably an art form but it can also be sociology. Of course, this doesn't
address the question of why sociologists should want to work with this medium.

What Does The Visual Essay Offer Sociology?

The emerging literature on visual sociology and anthropology has witnessed
some discussion of issues and topics that might be more appropriately treated by the
visual essay instead of more traditional written analysis. These include:

First, the ways in which ritual behavior and habitual activity are sequenced and
incorporated with highly intentional purposive behavior can more readily be
exhibited and analyzed (Rundstrom, 1988: 366);
30 John Grady
Second, how social distance is maintained and managed in natural settings
and routine action can be documented (Lewis, 1983: 15);

Third, the settings of behavior can be kept present in the analytic frame and
thereby used to document not only the symbolic significance that people find in
their immediate environments, but also the way in which technologies are used
in daily existence - something that sociology with its bias toward normative
explanations has tended to ignore (Collier and Collier, 1986: 45-76 ;

Fourth, the sociologist is not forced to separate the emotional mood and re­
sponses of people from their instrumental activity. This not only permits a more
rounded treatment of experience, but also makes it easier to document, at least in
part, the rhythms and climactic tensions of social relations as they evolve (Collier,
1979: 281).

Above all, when attempts are made to put the advantages of the visual essay
in a nutshell, commentators generally stress that as a means of inquiry and
expression the visual essay is more holistic, direct, personal and emotional. In
other words, the visual essay provides the analyst with a means of expression
that is especially sensitive to appreciating and treating the unique social conjunc­
tures that constitute the life of any particular person, situation or event.
Less understood, however, are the ways in which the aesthetics of the visual essay
encourages the search for wider contexts of meaning and more comparability. The
making of visual essays is both nurtured by and fosters rich and fluid metaphors as
ways of organizing unedited images. These metaphors work by engaging both the
audience's eyes and the ways they have codified their own experience. While this
fact explains the easy and continued success of the cliche in visual production, it is
also based on a process of pattern recognition that can spark the imagination to
compare and to contrast as few other stimuli can, and which, of course, can be used
for responsible and creative work. Also, the visual essay's currency in metaphor also
accounts for the ease with which it stimulates language and discourse and so make
increasingly public our understanding of social experience and pattern. Viewed
thus, the visual essay is a remarkably flexible medium for helping to reintegrate
sociology as a discipline. It provides us with a language that facilitates translation
between theory and description, between the small-scale and the large, in a way that
encourages both grace and accuracy.
Doug Harper's Working Knowledge (1987b) explores the outer world of a jack of all
trades. Willie, the central character of the small shop that Harper studied and
photographed, can repair most of the mechanical appliances used in the daily life of
a small rural town in upstate New York. Harper, a trained sociologist, has used his
photography to elicit, document and model graphs that capture a vanishing world
whose disappearance suggests to the author "an imbalance in the human/ machine
relationships that makes us important captives of our own creations (Ibid: 201)."
Harper mayor may not be exercising a romantic nostalgia and may have
underestimated that the conditions for Willie's kind of jerry-built creativity may be
as strong as ever in other, newer, industries. Still, he has documented, as has no other
 Q 1992
I

The Visual Essay 31

sociologist of work, the intellectual and personal satisfactions that come from craft
control over the work process. Although one wonders, also, if the threat to pride and
pleasure of this kind of work is industrial in origin (as Harper suggests) and is due
instead more to the entrance of women into the paid work-force. Willie's world, after
all, is made up primarily of men and takes place in a setting that affirms male
identity. In any event, Harper's camera has been an indispensable tool in telling a
story that evokes wider significance the more personally it is told.
Fred Wiseman is not a sociologist but his films evoke the ethnographic tradition
of the Chicago School of Sociology; where the story of modern institutions are most
often told through the case study. Nevertheless, there is an immediacy in Wiseman's
films rarely found in the ethnography. In part this is due to the filmmakers exclusive
use of direct cinema technique. There is no narration, and all the footage is unstaged
live action, creating the illusion that what we see is a direct reflection of the life of the
institution. Wiseman's voice, however, though silent, is ever-present in the edit and
the sociologist who screens his films may wonder why the institutions of the late
1980s - and their caretakers - depicted in Near Death, Deaf, Dumb, and Central Park,
are all treated so warmly, while institutions of the late 1960s and early 1970s,
depicted in Titicut Follies, High School, Welfare, and Hospital are shown as bleak and
repressive? Is it the place, social change, or just the softening of a filmmakers vision?
In any case, Wiseman's films document the remarkable variety of human action and
experience that our institutions routinely channel and he establishes their impor­
tance as stages for assessing how we organize our lives.
Other visual essayists who aren't sociologists will, in drawing out the wider
significance of a single tale, use techniques and conventions that sociologists who
work in a more conventional mode of expression could only use at their, and the
discipline's, peril. Errol Morris' film, The Thin Blue Line, relies on acted sequences
and a powerfully evocative score by Phillip Glass to draw out the human and
intellectual significance of a trail of evidence that, as trivial and tedious as recounting
it may be, has an outcome that is a matter of life or death for a convicted murderer
who, as the film progresses, appears to be innocent. The acted sequences are shot
anonymously (we see no faces), stylyized, and repeated as a slightly changing
refrain. They serve to underscore the moral significance of an accumulation of
simple facts.
In a different vein photographer Jo Spence has in Putting Myself in the Picture
(1988) documented her own personal and intellectual development through
assemblying a lifetime of images she has taken of others, herself, and herself taken
by others. These images become ways of exploring women's consciousness in late
twentieth century Britain and of how easily surprised ideologically based judg­
ments are by the life cycle. Spence has made much of her own body and has used her
ample flesh and enormous breasts as images to represent the objectification so
prevalent in capitalist society. Then, poignantly, she find that her body and her
breast have been appropriated by a different master and new rules, those of the
cancer cell. The camera never flinches and takes us through surgery and rehabilita­
tion. Spence's encounter and struggle with image, gender and identity is a master­
fully disturbing representation of how our expectations contribute to the impact that
the vulnerability of the body has on our lives.
32 John Grady

Can The Visual Essay Revitalize Sociology?

Howard Becker tells us that:
"Undergraduates... write short essays they would not write of
their own choice, in a few weeks, on subjects they know nothing
about and aren't interested in, for a reader who, as Shaughnessy
says, 'would not choose to read it is he were not being paid to be
an examiner.' They know that what they write in this one paper
will not affect their lives much (Becker, 1986: x)."
Becker goes on to tell us that in this regard the undergraduate experience di­
verges from that of the professional sociologist who takes writing much more
seriously and who, therefore, finds it all the more difficult. In a sense, Becker's
book is a kind of ethnography of the academy, and documents, as the above
indicates, that whatever else may be going on, its denizens certainly aren't learn­
ing to become comfortable expressing what they have come to understand. This
is a terrible indictment of higher education.
It is also clear that the way higher education is currently organized serves to
both create and maintain the kind of trained incapacity for which Becker's book
was designed as a remedy. There is general agreement that the primacy of the
research university has molded much of the rest of the system in its own image
and that the effect on undergraduate liberal arts education has been particularly
harmful. Students appear to be increasingly disengaged from the curriculum of
studies, except in the most private and instrumental of ways, and, even more
tellingly, do not value academically oriented intellectual concerns as an arena for
informed and responsible personal expression. As the research university ulti­
mately depends on college level instruction to replenish its ranks, many observes
from all parts of the political and ideological spectrum have come to believe that
the continued dominance of the university model over all of higher education is
undermining the basis of the entire system 5.
Instruction in the production of the visual essay, as part of the undergraduate
sociology curriculum, has a small but significant role to play in addressing some
of the current problems of liberal arts education. In great part this is due to the
fact that filmmaking and photography are crafts, and so have not had their
traditions of training damaged by university culture. The visual essay teaches
students to develop a personal voice by following an educational regimen that
clearly and consistently values and inculcates strict discipline and vision 6.
The essential characteristics of the craft, as a way of organizing an educational
experience, teach responsibility, maturity and the ability to communicate clearly.
Filmmaking and photography do this by their concern with the technology of the
medium; the social nature of the craft, and encouraging editorial responsibility.
More precisely, a student of film and photography learns that the final prod­
uct depends on tools that you both have to know how to use, and to care for. A
student also learns that the exercise of the imagination depends on careful prepa­
ration. You can't, for instance, shoot an extraordinary event if the camera isn't
loaded! The student also learns that production is a process that is both staged
and sequenced. You can't be doing basic research while shooting; and you can't
be developing a shooting schedule while you're editing.
 The Visual Essay 33
Producing a visual essay is a very social enterprise. In filmmaking the prod uction
process often involve a number of people playing different roles, but all visual
essayists find it valuable to have people to discuss their work with at every stage of
its development. Even more importantly, the visual essay is a very public medium.
Communicating to a real and varied audience is ever-present in the essayist's mind
and, of course, viewing a film tends to be a public event. Also, most of your
characters will be identifiable, and you will often have to tell them - or in a worst
case scenario, their lawyers - why you used their image as you did.
Finally, the essayist is responsible for the final edit. It all comes together in one
crafted product and the essayist has to be able to explain why some choices were
made and not others. This requires careful interpretation of the images that have
been shot which begins when they are logged in or assembled and is as close to
clinical analysis as social scientists ever get. What messages do they convey? How
are they best integrated with other materials and their messages? And so on. The
effect of this practice on students is best described by Steve Gold in minutes taken
at an International Visual Sociology Association Visual Studies Workshop:
"The best way to help students to develop their visual! analytic
skills was through hands-on experience. Drawing on their
teaching experiences, several IVSA members argued that as
students confront problems of analysis, editing, and presentation
that arise as they make their own documentaries and field
studies, they are forced to reach for abilities and analytic tools
that they have not developed in other classes (Gold, 1988: 7)."
By now it should be apparent how radically this kind of experience differs
from Becker's account of the undergraduate term paper, which, amazingly, is
often billed as a venue for personal expression and intellectual development.
The closest analogy to this kind of instruction in sociology would be the re­
search methods course which, unfortunately, tends to be little more than an
inventory of technique, rarely develops the researcher in training the way a
course on the visual essay does and, often, as Schatzman and Strauss tell us, does
little more than disseminate "standard fictions about research operations that
scarcely resemble what field researchers actually do (Schatzman and Strauss,
1973: vi)." Nevertheless, many research methods courses are very well taught.
Anecdotal evidence indicates that the successful ones are taught as a craft as is
evidenced by the organization and style of the two books quoted in this section:
Howard Becker's Writing For Social Scientists and Leonard Schatzman and Anselm
Strauss' Field Research. While what is done routinely and formally in producing a
visual essay is still only accomplished occassionally and informally in sociology,
there is no necessary reason why social analysis can't be taught explicitly as a
craft, and there certainly is no reason why the production of the visual essay
cannot be taught to undergraduates as a type of sociology research course.
Apart from maturity, the visual essay's most important contribution to sociology ­
and, I will argue, to the liberal arts curriculum generally - however, is probably its most
controversial characteristic. It is that which most directly challenges the mask of scientific
detachment and theoretic control that sociologists so often use to disguise their dreams
and deeds and which will, I am sure, be resisted most strongly in the discipline generally,
and, even, I am afraid, by visual sociologists themselves.
34 John Grady
Establishing the responsible personal voice in research - which the visual essay,
as an art form, admirably and effectively imparts to its apprentices - also commits
the student to the methodological primacy of narrative as a way of organizing
inquiry: to see that the purpose of analysis is, above all, to tell better and more
accurate stories about human affairs. It is at this point that sociologists must
acknowlege that, while they are committed to explaining the world convincingly,
naturalistically and following established rules of evidence - the rational kernel of
the term "science" - even non-visual sociology has an aesthetic dimension.
The aesthetic demands on the sociologist may differ depending on the medium
and the subject, and in much of our work as sociologists the art will be minimalist
and only evident in the clarity of the propositional structure of the story we develop
and in its elegance of expression. But as an art it will involve, in whatever medium
one may work, careful attention to the canons - and avoidance of the fallacies- of
technical, social/analytic and aesthetic practice (Cheatwood and Stasz, 1979).
Interestingly enough, while this argument is extreme in sociological circles, it is
based on common knowledge in the philosphy and sociology of science. Stated
briefly, it is now widely acknowledged that metaphor plays a necessary role in the
intuitive process that both underlies and is routinely accessed at each stage in both
the logical processes of deduction and induction (Jacob, 1982). Less obvious is the
fact that metaphor tends to be expressed in a narrative context.
Scientists routinely "talk" to their data, animate their variants, and wonder,
whether it be about sub-atomic particles or entire galaxies, "just what one or another
of the little bastards may be doing," or something to that effect. Acknowledging that
scientists think metaphorically and that this is still part of a tradition and community
of inquiry and practice that also values the tightest and most public of analytic
controls and, therefore of course, is not inconsistent with science is a message that
natural scientists have been trying to communicate to the educated laity for some
time (Ziman, 1968; 1976). It is, thus, simply astonishing to many natural scientists­
as they try to demystify science as a human activity and strip away the intellectual
pretensions that have gratuitously masked it for so long, and have so unhappily
alienated science from the wider public - that social scientists, who, after all, study
those who actually regulate and explain their lives in narrative metaphors, are still
entangled by commitment to a professional self-image that is as paralyzing and
fruitless as it is wrong.
Simon Schama provides some insight into why narrative might be so threatening
to social scientists. In the preface to Citizens, his history of the French Revolution, he
tells us tha t:

"I have chosen to present these arguments in the form of a

narrative. So Citizens returns, then, to the form of the
nineteenth-century chronicles, allowing different issues and
interests to shape the flow of the story as they arise, year after
year, month after month. I have also, perhaps perversely,
deliberately eschewed the conventional 'survey' format by
which various aspects of the society of the old regime are
canvassed before attempting political description. Placing those
imposing chapters on 'the economy,' 'the peasantry,' 'the
nobility' and the like at the front of books automatically, it seems

 1992

The Visual Essay 35

to me, privileges their explanatory force. I have not, I hope,

ignored any of these social groups, but have tried to introduce

them at the points in the narrative where they affect the course

of events. (Schama, 1989: xv-xvi)."

Schama suggests that what sociologists might find troubling about a narrative
approach is not so much that it views human action in terms of plot, character and
the dramatic unities of actor, event and place but, rather, that it starts with an
available story, uses its elements as a simple framework for organizing information
and evidence, and then returns to its conventions in a last telling of a new story that
is frankly presented as just that, a last telling of a "story." In other words, the
narrative approach simply does not provide the kind of closure and determinacy
that sociologists' image of science requires. Even more shocking, theory loses the
place of privilege it has come to assume in sociology since the work of Parsons.
Theory, in the narrative approach, is an important element in any analysis.
Along with imagination and a wide variety of simple frameworks for organizing
relevant data, theory has a role to play. But there is nothing about its nature that
requires that it must be the source and frame for every investigation. That role, of
course, is reserved for the creative intelligence of the analyst. Theory - which
essentially consists of coherent inventories of interesting ideas, an informed ap­
preciation of intellectual tradition and logic -is just one of the tools that inevita­
bly must be used in any analysis. No more; no less.
Contemporary sociology's commitment to the intellectual primacy of theory
has dug deep roots that will be difficult to replant in a more suitable part of the
profession's garden. This is unfortunate because theory, so hypostatized, acts ­
like such impulses invariably do - to create a mandirinate, to screen out the
challenge of experience and to poison the wells of any intellectual community
committed to genuine analytic work. Currently, the theorizing - as opposed to
analytic - impulse is the major obstacle to revitalizing the academy both in
sociology and the humanities. This weed, as the literary critic Robert Alter (1989)
has suggested, is mostly nourished by its hostility to - and yet parasitic fascina­
tion with - the creative impulse that gives life to artistic expression.
I have argued in this essay that sociology should be nourished by embracing
the aesthetic. But the history of sociology suggests that the discipline has tended
to consciously distance itself from artistic expression ever since its birth, moti­
vated by a desire for power and for status recognition that was only balanced by
an ambivalent fascination with people and with no other consequence, in the
long term, than consignment to having its genuine insights being innundated by
one wave of ephemeral intellectual fashion after another (Lepinis, 1988). The
overall effect has been that the field has rarely earned the respect that the work
that it does best deserves: "to grasp history and biography and the relations
between the two within society (Mills, 1959: 6)". It is not the most clear thinking
of disciplines that rejects what it does well to achieve what it need not do at all.
Visual sociology can make an important contribution to revitalizing the socio­
logical imagination within the discipline, and through that, the liberal arts in
general. But, in order for this to happen, visual sociologists must embrace the
visual essay and the aesthetic impulse that is the source of its energy.
36 John Grady
Jon Wagner tells us that:

'To make photographs of people, you have to see them, even if

from a distance. For most people and in most situations, it is
unlikely that you can do so without being seen yourself... Not
everyone is comfortable working this closely with research
subjects - particularly in uncontrolled and open research
settings - and the underutilization of photography in social
research may in part reflect a more general neglect and
avoidance of field research per se (Wagner, 1979: 290)."

His comments suggest that the "scientizing" of sociology and its current "theoriz­
ing" are not only an abrogation of responsibility for authorship, but also a deliberate
distancing of the self from the "other." If this is so, then, it all becomes clear why both
sociology and anthropology have each in somewhat different ways kept the visual
essay at arm's length. All objections drift away to reveal the hard rock against it all:
the rejection of the visual essay, is a flight from the people it brings too close and
even, more deeply, from the "others" embedded in our selves, that social contact and
creative expression always threatens to unleash. It is, in short, a flight from what
sociology as a learned discipline is supposed to confront and understand.
We should get back to doing sociology the way Roy Stryker suggested some
sixty years ago:

"The question is not what to picture nor what camera to use.

Every phase of our time and our surroundings has vital
significance and any camera in good repair is an adequate
instrument. The job is to know enough about the subject matter,
to find its significance in itself and in relations to its
surroundings, its time, and its function (quoted in Rothstein,
1986: 2-3)."
It's time to pick up our cameras!
Notes
1. By "visual essay" I mean to include in one term both the photo essay and documentary
film. It seems a servicable term and is used in this way by Leonard Henny in his editorial
for the International Journal of Visual Sociology (Arnold and Henny, 1983: 5). Although the
focus of my essay is on what Harper 0987a) terms "the visual ethnographic narrative," I
prefer the looser category of "essay."
2. This episode in the history of the computer is drawn from an essay by Paul Ceruzzi. The
essay is one chapter in Joseph Corn's Imagining Tomorrow (1986) which contains numerous
other accounts of various misjudgments of modern technology by sociologists and other
commentators.
3. This definition differs significantly from current fashion as represented, for example, by
Joel Snyder when he wonders:

"If, in preference to eliminating the term [documentary], it would be

possible to reform it by removing a commitment to 'the facts' from our

notion of documentary in an effort to deontologize - to remove the

mystery surrounding it while conserving its utility...

"The advantage of a adopting a deontologized notion of documentary is

further underscored by the complexity and richness it restores to the

world. Instead of thinking of these photographs as passive reflections of

preformed facts, it forces us to see how the process of finding or

 I
-r_
1992

The Visual Essay 37

depicting facts is itself formulaic, guided by habits of observation and

skills of representation, and dependent ultimately upon our culture and

our interests (Snyder, 1984: 78, 93)."

This is a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. That visual essays are made

by specific people at specific points in time about specific subjects, of this there should be

little doubt. But Snyder has, in his zeal to make his case, lost sight of the fact that what

interests us about these materials is what they reflect about the actualities of the situation.

Whether it be in the purpose of the one who has shot the image-or in what one can seen

in a naive image shot by another - the point is tha t, for better or for worse, the visual essay

uses these images to tell us about a real world that has an existence independent of the

observer.

4. If the majority of women in a sample, let us say, believe X and not Yand the majority of
men in the sample believe Y and not X, and the correlation is statistically significant at a
high level of probability, we may feel comfortable making some generalities about men
and women, but we are still left with a nagging question about the men who believe Xand
the women who believe Y. It is almost always the case that - no matter how well the
survey is designed, how theoretically adequate the questions, and how inclusive the
categories may be - there will remain an embarassingly large residual category of
respondents who don't fit any category and who cannot be accounted for as an artifact of
the instrument or some other anomoly. The obvious answer to why this occurs is that the
model being tested is either not as adequate as the investigator had hoped, or that the
correlations possibly mask a more complex reality that, properly interpreted, might even
call into question some of the model's basic assumptions.
5. The apprenticeship process by which a graduate student in sociology is trained and
finally accredited as a bona fide PhD is both chaotic and disabling. Students are expected
to assimilate a steadily growing body of theory that is uneven, unintegrated, and more of
a smorsgabord of the various interests and whims of an often bitterly divided faculty.
Then, there are methodology requirements that tend, especially in statistics courses, to be
little more than inventories of the latest techniques, with only cursory attention paid to
the research craft. In all of these courses, students learn that they are expected to test the
latest theories, use the most advanced methodologies and, in the end, produce in their
dissertation a piece of work at the cutting edge of the field. Finally, little attention is paid
to developing students' teaching abilities - and so they miss the invaluable learning that
good teaching can provide for the novice. The final product of this process of miseducation
is someone who is usually deeply insecure, unsure of their work and their voice, and more
concerned with justifying their projects than with carrying them out. This process does
not end with the granting of the Phd, but is merely ratcheted up a notch, as the new
sociologist steps onto the tenure track.
6. An excellent introduction to non-fiction filmmaking is Michael Rabinger's Directing the
Documentary (1987) , which can be used as a basic text in a class on sociological
filmmaking. There are also very illuminating works on the craft of filmmaking by fiction
filmmakers that are also very instructive. Especially useful in Edward Dmytryk's On
Filmmaking (1986).

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Joseph Corn, ed. Imagining Tomorrow. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 188-20l.
Cheatwood, Derrall and Clarice Stasz. 1979. "Visual Sociology," Jon Wagner, (ed). Images of
Information. Beverly Hills, California: Sage, pp. 261-270.
 J

38 John Crady
Collier, John. 1979. "Visual Anthropology," in Jon Wagner, (ed).Images ofInformation. Beverly
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____.1976. The Force of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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