Abstract
The third edition of Gillian Rose's book Visual Methodologies is a very comprehensive introduction and textbook on how to conduct research with a range of different visual materials. The book opens with two introductory chapters in which she argues for a ‘critical visual methodology’, which I will return to. In the remainder of the book (chapters 4–9), a range of methods, or rather analytical approaches, by which to interpret already existing visual materials (‘found images’) is introduced: compositional interpretation, content analysis, semiology, psychoanalysis and discourse analysis (chapters 8 and 9). In addition to these analytical approaches to visual materials, chapter 10 focuses on how to analyse the reception of such materials in the form of audience studies. Chapter 11 moves beyond pre-existing visual images and introduces the reader to three different ways of producing visual materials as part of a research project (photo-documentation, photo-elicitation and photo-essays), while chapter 12 engages with the ethical dimension of visual research. Each chapter concludes with a summary and a list of suggested further reading and the book concludes with a list of books for further inspection ordered by type of visual material (fine art, photography, film, advertising, television, video, mass media and new media). Finally, the book is accompanied by a companion website where further examples can be found. Throughout, Rose takes the reader by the hand: Keywords are marked in the margins of the text, and inset text boxes contain exercises to enhance the reader’s understanding of a given approach. From this it is clear that the primary audience is the novice reader and/or student.
As mentioned, Rose’s ambition for visual methods is that they should enable a ‘critical visual methodology’. This means ‘an approach that thinks about the visual in terms of the cultural significance, social practices and power relations in which it [the visual] is embedded’ (p. xix). These three dimensions form the criteria against which each method described in the book is evaluated: how does it live up to each of them and thereby enable a critical analysis? Rose answers this question by the end of each chapter and in this way assists the reader in judging the pros and cons of each method.
The focus of the book is on various methods for analysing visual materials. However, in line with the cultural turn in the social sciences, Rose emphasizes how such materials do not exist in a vacuum but are always embedded in a social world, and that an interpretation of the meanings associated with visual materials must include this embedding. This clear positioning is one of the book’s strengths and explains why visual methodologies in Rose’s view by and large correspond to qualitative methodologies. One chapter introduces content analysis, i.e. quantification of a large set of visual materials, but it is quite clear that she does not consider this approach as fulfilling the ambitions of a critical visual methodology.
From my own particular perspective as a qualitative researcher with a keen interest in using visual materials as part of the research process, I wish that Rose had devoted more space to this, both in terms of a more elaborate discussion of different methodological approaches to producing visual materials in the research process and, not least, in terms of how such materials can be integrated in the final analysis, as the literature on this seems to be sparse.
The book’s major strength as well as weakness is the wide coverage. Given the ambition to include a range of different analytical approaches as well as chapters on audience studies, producing visual materials as part of the research and ethics, each chapter necessarily has to be selective. This means that the theoretical background for each analytical approach – which Rose fortunately includes – is very brief and can hardly serve as the foundation for initiating an analysis. Thus, the chapters should perhaps rather be viewed as giving the reader a taste of what can be achieved through, for example, a psychoanalytic or discourse analytic approach, due to the many examples described in each chapter. Rose has done an impressive job of reviewing a large number of studies within each analytical approach, and these definitely do inspire the reader to get started. Turning to more focused and elaborated presentations of the theoretical backgrounds, however, seems a necessary step when deciding on an approach. This is also the case if wishing to conduct empirical studies that produce visual materials, as the instructions provided in chapter 11 are very limited.
Last, but not least, yet another of the book’s strengths is the fact that it is not an edited volume but a monograph with a very high degree of coherence and cross-referencing between chapters. However, on occasion the cross-referencing is exaggerated; for example, in chapter 8 where some of Foucault’s concepts are compared to psychoanalytic concepts to enhance the reader’s understanding. In my view, this confuses more than it clarifies. Despite these few objections, this is altogether a very ambitious book. It will serve as a useful tool for readers seeking an overview of analytical approaches in the field of visual studies or an introduction to a specific analytical approach to visual materials. The book is rich on inspiration and can inspire many studies to come.