Story telling enhancement with photo elicitation

There are many tools to use to improve the quality of a photo story. From research to shooting and editing, the final product gets shaped and re-shaped constantly. At the end we ask ourselves if we have done a good job, if we were respectful of the subject, if we portrayed them correctly, if the final edit tells the correct story. It is hard to get an answer on your own to these questions.

We as photographers do not usually take the images back to our subjects. This is in a nutshell what photo elicitation is all about: taking the images back to the subjects to discuss their meaning, to get the subject’s perspective on the images. It is one of those tools that one usually hears about in academic environments. It is, after all, a qualitative research method. Photo elicitation has its roots in the fields of visual anthropology and sociology and is based on the simple idea of inserting a photograph into a research interview. Photographic interviews tend to generate a greater interest on the part of respondents and many times they led to communal dialogues. In the last decades, photo elicitation has been used more and more by scholars but also photographers and photojournalists.

Photo elicitation studies have been concentrated in four areas: social organization/social class, community, identity and culture. Ximena Bunster used the technique in 1978 to look at the attitudes toward gender issues of proletarian mothers in Peru; Douglas Harper employed it with a single subject, in a rural farming community, over a long period of time, to look more and more deeply into his subject’s life and social environment (Harper, 2000). University of Missouri master’s student in Journalism, Richard Truax, while photographing an Italian-American neighborhood in St. Louis called the Hill, became interested in using photo elicitation to create more authentic images. He used the information gained from the interviews as a guide in the process of documenting that specific neighborhood.

Over this summer I had the opportunity to use this tool to improve the outcome of my project A Romanian American experience in Chicago. After spending months documenting the Romanian community in Chicago, I came to a point where I wanted to verify if my approach was correct. I chose fourteen images based on what I considered to be a good depiction of the community and the best reflection of the concept the American Dream. I performed six interviews based on these images with people that where either subjects of the images or important members of the community. To my surprise some of the images I considered very important for the essay did not elicit the reactions I expected.

For instance, I intended this image to be a representation of prosperity and good life, a literal representation of the American Dream. Only two out of six subjects had anything to say about this image. Those who had any reaction to the image did not make any reference to prosperity but rather to the idea of spending a good time or allowing men to cook for a change. Based on this weak reaction to the image, I decided not to include it in my final edit.

The persons I interviewed have agreed that the images represent correctly the Romanian community but have rather different perspectives about the concept of the American Dream. This process allowed me to get a deeper connection with the community and rethink the type of images that I wanted to use in my essay. The information acquired with the interviews extended my understanding of the community and brought to my attention things that I was not aware of.

I was expecting this image to start the conversation about the types of work the Romanians do in Chicago. In addition to that I found out that the bulk of Romanian community in Chicago is relatively new; most of its members have come in the United States over the last fifteen years, and seem to have a similar path when it comes to integration on the American system. Most of the newcomers are young people, around the age of thirty. They start with blue-collar jobs and only a few of them try to continue their higher education. The U.S. system assimilates them and many times they get to a point were they cannot return home anymore,  at the same time they are rather unhappy with their current situation. These are very important pieces of information that encouraged me to emphasize during the editing process the images and stories depicting young people that work in similar environments.

I included this image because I knew that church plays an important role in the life of the Romanians. The subjects depicted the church as a center point of the community that has not just a worship role but also represents a place for networking, communal activities, traditional festivities and religious celebrations. Based on this reaction I looked more closely at images photographed at religious services and included in the project a story about Pavel Gheorghe.

Photo elicitation re-shaped my concept of the American Dream based on the reactions of the interviewees. They consider this concept to be something idyllic as opposed to the images I selected which depict the process of achieving this ideal. The hope for better future is the essence of the American Dream from the subjects’ point of view while my images illustrate mostly moments of preparation, moments of work towards that final goal.

Because talking about a community can be such a broad topic, the process of photo elicitation helped me find the defining characteristics of this Romanian community. Hard work, the church as a center point, children as promise for a better future are just a few themes that were identified as valid visual descriptions by the subjects. Using the same fourteen images and the same set of questions allowed me to compare the responses in order to find which images prompted similar reactions. This way I was able to identify the images that represent best a certain topic. Each subject had his own reaction to images. Some of them spent a lot of time on each one while others flipped through images quick. Additional questions were asked to keep a good flow of the dialog and get a better insight on certain issues.

The results of the photo elicitation are not expected to be in direct connection with details in the images but more likely to work as means of releasing memories, feelings, insights or thoughts. An important attribute of photographs is that they give birth to stories, which are important sources of information about the dynamics of the community or human relations (Foss, 2004).

As a photojournalist, I needed this tool to verify if my perspective on the project was correct. The amount of information collected during the interviews exceeded my expectations. Some of the ideas I started the project with were confirmed while specific details like the path of integration of the newcomers were identified during the analysis process.

Photojournalists can use the process of photo elicitation in several ways. It can help them to get a better understanding of their subjects and to collect valuable information on certain topics. Photo elicitation can prompt reactions that otherwise would remain unknown for the photographer. This is very important when we approach topics that we have limited information about. The fine details that are revealed during the interviews can focus our work and we can understand better what is our story all about.

Form me this was a very good tool to verify the accuracy of my images, of my approach to this topic from the subjects’ point of view. The information acquired through photo elicitation guided me in the process of taking pictures. This can be used by anyone who finds that his or her story has reached a dead end. These moments are very common when we spend a lot of time with the same subject, when we feel that every frame that we shoot resembles everything we have done before.

Editing was also influenced a lot by photo elicitation. I discovered that some images did not fit the idea I wanted to express and I removed them from my final edit. Many times we select images based on our perception of a subject, we select our favorites, without knowing that they do not elicit the same reaction for other viewers. With photo elicitation this mistake can be avoided.

During this process I learned how important it is to take images back to your subjects. Photo elicitation proved to me that I was respectful of the subject; that I had to a better work to portray them correctly, and change the final edit to tell the correct story. Altogether, photo elicitation can be a very powerful tool, if used correctly in our constant pursuit for better images and stories.

Bibliography

Foss, S. K. (2004). Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice (3rd ed.). Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. .

Harper, D. (2000). Visual Sociologist: Expanding Social Vison. The American Sociologist , 54-70.