Etnografik Bir Veri Olarak Fotoğraf: Temsil, Düşünümsellik ve Gerçekçilik

Fotoğrafın gerçeklik olarak nitelendirilen olgu ile kendine özgü ve doğrudan bir bağ kurduğu varsayımı, tüm eleştirilere rağmen kültürel olarak kökleşmiş bir inancı ifade etmektedir. Dolayısıyla fotoğraf geçmişte olduğu gibi bugün de farklı alanlarda bir kanıt ve veri aracı olarak kullanıldığı gibi sosyoloji ve antropoloji alanında da etnografik veri olarak kullanılan bir medyumdur. Fotoğrafa özgü gerçekçiliğe getirilen eleştiriler ve etnografi kavramının gerçeklik ile ilişkisine yönelik tartışmalar hem bir veri olarak fotoğrafın hem de araştırma pratiğinin gerçeklikle ve temsil edilen şeylerle ilişkisini sorgulamaktadırlar. Bu eleştirilerin somutlaştırımı olarak geç modernist ve postmodern eleştiriler sosyal bilimlerde düşünümsel bir paradigmanın oluşmasına neden olmuşlardır. Bu çalışma genelde postmodern etnografi olarak adlandırılacak yaklaşımdan gelen eleştiriler, özelde de Bruno Latour’un düşünümsellik kavramına getirdiği açılımlar ışığında fotoğrafın etnografik çalışmalarda nasıl kullanılabileceği üzerinde düşünmekte ve bu çerçevede operasyonel olabilecek farklı yaklaşımları eleştirel olarak incelemektedir.

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.

Keywords:

Photogpraphy, Anthropology, Ethnography, Reflexivity Realism,

PDF

___

Back, L. (2009) “Portrayal and Betrayal: Bourdieu, Photography and Sociological Life”, The Sociological Review 59(3), 471-490.Ball, M. ve Greg, S. (2007) “Technologies of Realism? Ethnographic Uses of Photography and Film”, Handbook of Ethnography, L, Lofland, S. Delamont, A. Coffey, P. Atkinson, & J. Lofland, (Eds.) London: Sage Publications, 302-319.Barthes, R. (2000[1980]). Camera Lucida: Fotoğraf Üzerine Düşünceler, (R. Akçakaya, Çev.), İstanbul: Altıkırkbeş Yayınları.Bateson, G. ve Mead, M. (1942) Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis, New York: New York Academy of Sciences.Becker, H. (1999) “Photography and Sociology”, Studies in Visual Communication 1(1), 3-26.Benjamin, W. (1999) “Little History of Photography”, Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings I, M. Bullock ve M. W. Jennings (Eds.). Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 507-530.Bourdieu, P. (1990) Photography: A Middle-Brow Art, (S. Whiteside, Çev.), Stanford: Stanford University Press.Bryson, N. (1983) Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze, New Haven: Yale University Press.Bucher, B. (1981) Icon and Conquest, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Chaplin, E. (1994) Sociology and Visual Representation, London and New York: Routledge.Crary, J. (1988) “Modernizing Vision”, Vision and Visuality, H. Foster (Ed.). Seattle: Bay Press, 29-44. Crary, J. (1990) Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modenity in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Daguerre, L. (1980[1840]) “Daguerreotype”, Classic Essays on Photography. A. Trachtenberg (Ed.). New Haven: Leete’s Island Books, 37-38. Değirmenci, K. (2016) Fotoğrafın İmgeleri: Temsil, Gerçeklik ve Dijital Çağda Fotoğraf, İstanbul: Doğu Kitabevi.Denzin, N. (1997) “Performance Texts”, Representation and the Text: Re-Framing the Narrative, W. G. Tierney ve Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.). Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 179-217.Denzin, N. (1997) Interpretative Ethnography, London: Sage.Görk, R. V. (2016) “Bir Yöntem, Yöntembilim ve/veya Bir Sosyoloji Alanı Olarak Görsel Sosyoloji”, Yedi: Sanat, Tasarım ve Bilim Dergisi 15, 25-40.Hannavy, J. (2008) Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, New York: Routledge. Harper, D. (2012) Visual Sociology, London and New York: Routledge.Jameson, F. (1988) The Ideologies of Theory Essays 1971-1986, Cilt 2, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Jay, M. “Scopic Regimes of Modernity”, Vision and Visuality, H. Foster (Ed.). Seattle: Bay Press, 3-23. Jay, M. (1994) Downcast Eyes: The Degeneration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought, Berkeley: University of California Press. Lather, P. (1991) Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy within the Postmodern, New York: Routledge.Latour, B. (1988) “The Politics of Explanation”, Knowledge and Reflexivity: New Frontiers in the Sociology of Knowledge, S. Woolgar (Ed.). London: Sage, 155-176 1988.Lévy-Bruhl, L. (1965) The “Soul” of the Primitive, (L. A. Clare, Çev.). London: George Alen and Unwin.Marien, M. W. (2006) Photography: A Cultural History, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.Peirce, C. S. (1998) “What is a sign? (1894)”, The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, The Peirce Edition Project (Eds.). Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 4-10.Pinney, C. (2011) Photography and Anthropology, London: Reaktion Books.Fred R. (1990) In Our Own Image: The Coming Revolution in Photography, New York: Aperture.Rosler, M. (1989) “In Around and Afterthoughts (On Documentary Photography)”, The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography. R. Bolton (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 303-342. Sandler, M. W. (2002) Photography: An Illustrated History, New York: Oxford University Press.Scheurich, J. (1997) Research Method in the Postmodern, London: Falmer Press. Sekula, A. (1974) On the Invention of Photographic Meaning, San Diego: University of California Press. Solomon-Godeau, A. (1991) Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions and Practices, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Tagg, J. (1988) The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts.Talbot, W. H. F. (1980[1844]) “A Brief Historical Sketch of the Invention of the Art”, Classic Essays on Photography. A. Trachtenberg (Ed.). New Haven: Leete’s Island Books, 27-36.Woolgar, S. (1988) “Reflexivity is the Ethnographer of the Text”, Knowledge and Reflexivity: New Frontiers in the Sociology of Knowledge, S. Woolgar (Ed.). London: Sage, 14-34.