Making art and making sense: youth photoethnographers materialising the invisible through analytic art-making

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the potential of participant art-making as an ethnographic analytic method for materialising otherwise invisible experiences in the everyday lives of people. To describe this methodology, I share examples from a two year project conducted in a photography classroom in the northeastern United States. Teenage participants made photoethnographic self-studies about their engagement with texts and then used mixed-media art-making as an analytic method to study their photographs. As a result, in every art piece the youth photoethnographers were able to surface, through colour, line drawing, and annotation, that which would have remained invisible otherwise: affective intensity, sensory experience, and mercurial or ephemeral relations. Using participant art-making as an analytical method may be of great use to ethnographers who are seeking tools that will provide access to affective intensity and complicated or hidden relations experienced in/by their participants.

KEYWORDS:

• Arts-based methods
• participatory methods
• photoethnography
• making
• mixed media art
• literacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 I use the umbrella term here of posthuman theories to encompass Nonrepresentational Theory, Feminist New Materialisms and other such theories that share an object-oriented ontology.

2 All names are pseudonyms. However, the public nature of the participants’ art meant a condition of participation was consent to relinquish total anonymity which was agreed to by both the teenagers and their parents/guardians as well as given ethics approval.

3 The 6×6 show was a popular local art show and gallery fundraiser.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported, in part, by Michigan State University Graduate School through a Dissertation Completion Fellowship.