Losing face? Photo-anonymisation and visual research integrity

Abstract

This article seeks to trouble the conflation of photo-anonymisation with ethical research practice, as is often promoted by institutional ethics review. Contributing to discussions of ‘visual ethics’ and the application of photographic methods in visual research, it poses the question: what is the effect of the anonymisation of photographs on the integrity of visual research and generation of new knowledge? Discussion unfolds via the exploration of school-based research around young people and sexualities. Examples of photo-anonymisation are examined from a project concerning the sexual cultures of schooling, employing a combination of photo-diary and photo-elicitation methods. The way in which anonymisation techniques meant to protect participants from harm, such as photo-cropping, facial blurring and pixelation, may be counterproductive to this aim, is revealed. Applying such techniques can undermine the agency of participants to convey their ideas and experiences as they intended. It is also argued that anonymisation processes can make a mockery of the integrity of visual methods by casting their meaning and content into obscurity. Such practices can consequently impoverish the generation of new meanings and the advancement of a disciplinary area – which, in the current study, is research on sexualities and schooling. This discussion seeks to encourage visual researchers to reflect upon anonymisation, inciting them to consider the implications of this practice for the ethical treatment of participants and the generation of new meanings in their chosen area.

Notes

[1] School names are pseudonyms.

[2] The actual institutional ethics committee is not named here because I do not wish to draw attention to it specifically. The point is not to assign fault for this practice of anonymisation – this practice is part of a larger set of institutional ethical discourses that are not authored by ethics committees themselves. Rather, the aim is to question what is a widespread practice within ethical frameworks internationally.

[3] Even though one possible reading of these images is that they are objectifying, they continue to be included here. The context for their use in this article is not to objectify or to be read as simply objectifying young women. The point is to show how anonymisation can potentially have unintended effects for young women that conflict with both the intentions of the photographer and research aims. The photo-diarist chose to take this photograph as representing something important about sexuality at school (not as an objectifying act), and the subject of the image consented to being photographed by her friend; however, others understand what the photograph means.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a University of Auckland Vice-Chancellor’s Early Career Research Excellence Award.

Notes on contributors

Louisa Allen

Louisa Allen is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Auckland. She specialises in research in the areas of sexualities, young people and schooling, and innovative research methodologies including visual research methods that seek to engage hard-to-reach research populations. She examines these areas through the theoretical lenses of queer, post-constructionist, critical masculinities and critical youth studies frameworks. She is currently writing her sixth book in these areas of interest.