Photography as Ethnographic Data: Representation, Reflexivity and Realism

The assumption that the photograph has a specific and direct connection with what is described as reality implies a culturally rooted belief in spite of all criticism. Thus, as in the past, photographs are still used as a means of evidence and data in different fields, and are also used as ethnographic data in sociology and anthropology. The criticisms brought to the photographic realism and the debates on the relation between reality and ethnography both question the relation between the photography as data and the practice of research on the one hand and the reality and the things represented on the other. Late modernist and postmodern criticism as an embodiment of these criticisms has led to the formation of a paradigm of reflexivity in social sciences. In the light of the criticisms of what is usually called postmodern ethnography, and especially Bruno Latour’s expansions on the concept of reflexivity, this study dwells on the issue of how photography can be used in ethnographic studies and critically examines different approaches that may be operational in this framework