Books consulted

Pink, S, Doing Visual Ethnography (Sage, 2007)

Schneider A and Wright, C (eds), Contemporary Art and Anthropology (Berg, 2006)

Ethnography

the “descriptive study of a particular human society or the process of making such a study. Contemporary ethnography is based almost entirely on fieldwork and requires the complete immersion of the anthropologist in the culture and everyday life of the people who are the subject of his study.” (Brittanica).

‘the recording and analysis of a culture or society, usually based on participant-observation and resulting in a written account of a people, place or institution’ (Simpson, B. & S. Coleman 2017. Ethnography. Glossary of Terms. Royal Anthropological Institute (available on-line: http://www.discoveranthropology.org.uk) 

Visual ethnography

Visual ethnography is a multi-disciplinary field and can absorb a wide range of theoretical approaches. Encompasing ethnograpy, anthropology, cultural studies and sociology it can take any single or combined approach. The two main strands within it are the same strands dividing its separate disciplines: positivism, emphasising the discovery of facts using objective scientific or quasi-scientific methods of investigation; or the interpretative, emphasising the various, subjective experiences and meanings of the specific particpants under observation within a given cultural or social context.

Taking visual images as method of data gathering has always been controversial. Can a camera provide objective material if any human intervention is absent? Or is any image wholly impressionistic, dependent on the particular moment chosen to be captured? It all depended on the method chosen but there is broad general agreement that the visual can be a useful and insightful way to gain knowledge of a culture or cultural practice, provided the methodology is sufficiently systematic, transparent and rigorous.

It is also uncontroversial that the use of visual material, whether produced for the purposes of visual sociology, documentary photography, photo journalism or anything else depends more on the context in which it is viewed than whether it belongs to any particular (and socially constructed) category. The same image may mean very different things to different viewers, as Sarah Pink makes very clear. She notes:

… there are no fixed criteria that determines which photographs are ethnographic. Any photograph may have ethnographic interest, significance or meanings at a particular time for a particular reason. The meanings of photographs are arbitrary and subjective; they depend on who is looking.[1]

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[1] Pink, S, Doing Visual Ethnography p 67 (Sage, 2007).

Documentary photography

According to the Tate, documentary photography is “a style of photography that presents a straightforward and accurate representation of people, places, objects and events, and is often used in reportage.” (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/documentary-photography ).

Martin Parr

While visual ethnography is not primarily concerned with issues of propoganda, satire or the ethics of a creative practice, it is clear that documentary photography, as a genre, is not always quite so straightforward as the Tate’s definition would have it. The photographer may have a particular agenda and may have perspectives that are at odds with those of his subjects. A clear example of this is Martin Parr, whose work has aroused controversy for those reasons – see in particular Last Resort depicting days out at New Brighton, Liverpool. The people are shot in garish colour (Parr used flash in daylight) and in unflattering poses and situations as well as unflattering light, often surrounded by piles of rubbish (he was later accused of having staged them).

In the BBC television documentary series Signs of the Times made in 1992 in collaboration with filmmaker Nick Barker, people speak about their interior decor choices. It is considered an early version of the reality television that is such a mainstay in today’s landscape. In order to gain access to people’s homes a call out was placed in the national and regional press asking for volunteers for a programme documenting people’s homes and tastes. As with Last Resort, the films leave an unpleasant taste as they essentially lampoon and implicitly sneer at the subjects. For an excellent review of Parr’s autobiography in 2025, see Rosemary Hill in the London Review of Books (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n20/rosemary-hill/saturdays-at-the-sewage-works) where she quotes Parr, in relation to the film’s subjects, admitting that “I guessed we pushed them into that situation”. As Hill notes, ” as images become historic they reflect the creator as much as the subject. Signs of the Times leaves a nasty taste.”

Mass Observation Unit

It ran from 1937 until the mid-1960s and was set up to document everyday life in Britain. As well as involving around 500 volunteers in keeping diaries of their observations and experiences it also a questionnaires to ask them specific questions about them, including conversations and behaviours they observed in a variety of settings (church, on the street, at work, sporting events etc). It was set up by Tom Harrisson (an anthropologist), Charles Madge (poet) and Humphrey Jennings (filmmaker). The team also included painters, novelists and photographers. Its contribution was particularly strong during the war but the project received no public funding except when it was commissioned for specific purposes by the government, mostly propaganda for the Ministry of Information. It also raised funds through publishing a number of books.

Topics explored in depth included, for example, attitudes to and practices around the celebration of Christmas: see https://martinjohnes.com/2022/12/09/christmas-and-mass-observation-studying-traditions-emotions-and-people/ for an analysis of this work in a paper given at the 80th anniversary conference at the University of Sussex.

It ended up being a private firm and merging with the advertising agency J Walter Thomson in the 1990s. It still operates in reduced form today, inviting contributions from volunteers each year, using them as a source of qualitiative, longitudinal data: see https://massobs.org.uk/the-archive-collections/. The pre-privatisation archive is also held at the University of Sussex: https://massobs.org.uk/

The Farm Security Administration Historical Section (1937 – 1946)

The Historical Section was the photography section of the publicity department of the FSA and was set up in 1937 (originally as part of the Resettlement Administration (the earlier incarnation of the FSA and in 1942 when the US joined the war, became part of the Office of War Information). Its task was to not only record photographically but to promote and defend Roosevelt’s New Deal initiative in providing assistance to poor farmers, sharecroppers, tenant farmers and migrant workers suffering as the result of both the Depression and the disastrous environmental effects of over-ploughing, especially in the mid-West (the ‘Dust Bowl’ states). Assistance under the FSA included re-settlement, government loans and the building of camps for the dispossessed and  was controversial, with government intervention being regarded by some as ‘socialist’ and the realities of poverty largely disregarded or dismissed by urban elites. To overcome and counteract opposition to these measures, the Historical Section was tasked with documenting the lives of those affected, with a view to evoking sympathy and support for the RA and later the FAS programmes.

The Section was headed by Roy Stryker, an economist, who employed a revolving team of around 10 photographers, most of whom went on to become exemplars of documentary photography after WW2. These included Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Jack Delano, Marion Post Wolcott, Russell Lee, and Walker Evans.

The project was possibly one of the first to reveal the dichotomies between documentation, on the one hand, and public information v propaganda on the other. While it may be that the two can never be entirely disentangled and propaganda need not be considered a dirty word if used in service to one’s preferred goal, it is clear that the work of the HS was indeed propaganda. Stryker reportedly issued pages of instruction to the photographers in the field detailing not only the sorts of props he wanted to see (eg pressed clothes, baseball pitches) but also “pictures of men, women, and children who appear as if they really believed in the U.S.”.[1]

Of the approximately 270,000 images captured by the FSA photographers, around 100,000 were ‘killed’ by Roy Stryker for not presenting a strong enough image, either in terms of the organisations objectives or, more simply,  visually. This he did by punching holes in the negative.  For example:

They could not then be released for publication in the press but, as Eisen states:

[T]he strange contradiction at the heart of the killed negatives … is that in an important sense they weren’t killed: the hole-punched photos remain in the Library of Congress, preserved by Stryker himself, and the Pittsburgh Photography Library images deemed unfit for the archives have instead come to comprise their own separate archive in the same building, a sort of Salon des Refusés [2]

Despite black families in the South actually being cleared by the government to make way for the re-settlement of ‘Okies’ from the Dust Bowl,[3] Stryker wrote to Lange I 1936 advising her to “take both black and white, but place the emphasis on the white tenants, since we know that these will receive much wider use”. [4]

Exhibitions and newspapers more readily selected white images than non-white.  Meighen-Katz considers that the photographers of the Historical Section attempted to reframe the agency’s target clients as ‘‘salt of the earth’’ American stock, descended from the pioneers. The FSA’s focus on types such as the Madonna and the Stoic elevated a certain class of “deserving poor” above those who were beyond the bounds both of being photographed and receiving material aid. [5] 

For example, in Lange’s photo captioned ‘Migrant Mother’[6], an older child, ‘whose age might suggest an early advent into sexual behaviour by her mother, and piles of dirty laundry, are both framed out across the series, lest they draw censure from the intended audience and could detract from her aim of ‘convincing her audience that those aided by the FSA were not degenerates who had created their own misfortune’.[7]

This photo is the most famous of a series of ten taken by Lange but was carefully cropped to focus on the woman’s face for greater impact.

At the time she took the images, Lange said that she did not know the woman’s name but only knew her age and circumstances. Forty years later, the woman’s name was revealed. She later denied that she had given permission to Lange to take her photograph and that Lange had never asked for her name. In addition, she had apparently promised the subject that she would send her a copy but never did.

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[1] Roy Emerson Stryker and Nancy Wood, In This Proud Land: America 1935–1943 as Seen in the FSA Photographs (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1973), 7; 187–88. 

[2] Eisen, E ‘The Kept and the Killed’, The Public Domain Review, January 26, 2022. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-kept-and-the-killed/

[3] Jane Adams and D. Gorton, “This Land Ain’t My Land: The Eviction of Sharecroppers by the Farm Security Administration”, Agricultural History (2009): 323–51. 

[4] Cited in Nicholas Natanson, The Black Image in the New Deal: The Politics of FSA: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 4.

[5] Meighen Katz, “A Paradigm of Resilience: The Pros and Cons of Using the FSA Photographic Collection in Public History Interpretations of the Great Depression”, The Public Historian 36.4 (2014): 8–25.

[6] There are a series but the best known one is in close up. For the whole series and some of the controversy around them see https://mymodernmet.com/dorothea-lange-migrant-mother/

[7] Supra at 14.

Criticising photographs

This presents a very useful checklist of tools for reading a picture.

Project planning

I propose to take photographs of participants at the annual Bull Sales held in Stirling Market each February. The next show/sale is on 1 – 2 February, rather earlier in the year than I would have liked. A show of the cattle to be sold on the Monday is held on the Sunday but I propose only to take photos at the Sunday show as I feel that the sale is of a different order to the show and merits a separate project.

The sales include pedigree cattle only, with a number of breeds represented. Each breed has its own show and auction. As a former Beef Shorthorn breeder with a major herd named Dunsyre Beef Shorthorns, I am very well acquainted with the people involved in that breed and will focus on the Shorthorn show but also the Aberdeen Angus show which takes place on the same day. Because of this personal connection as a former participant, I feel that many of the ethical issues will be resolved. This means I can observe the proceedings with an insider’s understanding as well as feel comfortable with taking ‘fly on the wall’ type images of the participants, and they with me. Nonetheless, I will inform subjects of what I am doing, as appropriate.

I am very clear that in no sense am I intending to carry out any kind of anthropological or ethnographic research. Rather, I intend to take documentary images with an ethnographic slant, insofar as the subjects will be people engaged in a specific cultural activity in a specific socio-cultural context, with a view to simply recording it and, hopefully, making some interesting images.

No theoretical framework will be employed in interpreting them and no hypotheses, far less conclusions, will be put forward. I am very clear that this course is part of a Creative Practice programme and that my sole interest is in image making, albeit the images I will take will hopefully tell a story. What any viewer makes of the images is up to them. since the primary focus of my project is merely to try to capture something of the the flavour of an event that brings together people within a specfic cultural context and in possession of specialised knowledge.

As Pink states, there is no clear dividing line between documentary photography and visual ethnography and how an image  is viewed and interpreted is entirely context dependent. I am aiming simply to present a documetary record. I have not received any training in either ethnographic methodologies or its theoretical foundations and am not equipped to do so in any systematic way. Neither is the project intended as an artwork in the sense that some of the works of, for example, Anselm Kiefer can be said to be.[1]

In another sense, however, there is a distinct conceptual approach to my project; that of using myself as a guide to what is significant about the activities and interactions I will be highlighting in the images I choose to present. In other words, I see myself as representing what I am projecting and can give a not-quite first person account (because I am there as an observer and not a participant on the particular day) account of a group undertaking. This is to make explicit that, invitably, as an insider, my approach to the subject will be largely pre-formed and potential interpretations of my subject anticipated before I arrive. It is to acknowlege the subjectivity of my objective approach.

Just as Pink’s images were valued by her informants in her project on female bullfighters (in particular a photograph entitled ‘The Bullfighter’s Braid’[2]  for their personal and documentary qualities, so might my photographs be valued by those I photograph at the show. Indeed, I intend to make them available to them when time permits. I am acutely conscious of the ethical issues involved in capturing images of any individual without consent but will be able to engage with some of those I photograph and inform them I am doing a project.

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[1] That is, in relation to how his historical, political and sociological concerns are reflected particularly in his artistic methods and materials. Some of Kiefer’s work entails very physical processes redolent of eg armament manufacture (such as The Burning of the Rural District of Buchen (1974): see Schneider A and Wright, C (eds), Contemporary Art and Anthropology (Berg, 2006) p 5 on the interface between art and anthropology. There is also a fascinating interview with Kiefer on his creative process on the BBC programme ‘This Cultural Life’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002f9fb

Gerhard Richter, The Burning of the Rural District of Buchen (1974). Bound original photograph, ferric oxide and linseed oil on woodchip paper.

[2] in Pink S, Women and Bullfighting: Gender, Sex and the Consumption of Tradition (Berg, 1997).

Timescales and media

Because of the timing of the show in relation to the timetable of the course, this means that I will be taking photographs relatively ‘blind’ from the point of view of any teaching that may place and without sufficient time to plan exactly what I intend to capture. It will be necessary to take a large number of images and make the selection later, once I have been able to think about what it is I want to present.

I will take the photographs on my own Fujifilm XT-100 camera and maybe my Samsung phone as well. I am not a particularly skilled photographer but, in any case, the nature of the event and the environment means that photographs will have to be taken rapidly and in varying light conditions. I decided not to try to be clever but to take them all on the manual setting and hope for the best. Neither do I know anything about Photoshop but will, but only if absolutely necessary, do what I can with more limited editing resources such as Adobe Lightroom.

The good thing about taking the photographs early on is that I will have a few weeks after the event to really think about the experience and to consider very carefully how I select the final images, in light of what I will decide as the general strands of activity and interaction I want to highlight and with what visual emphasis.

Background to the project subject

Cattle breeders normally live and work in relative isolation from each other: like all such events (amateur sports, agricultural shows in general etc), the Bull Sales are both a social gathering and a competition. The two activities are closely related. To level the playing field, all animals entered for the sale must also be entered for the show and vice versa (with some limited exceptions ie where an animal is not within the age range of any class or where a draft of animals is being sold at the same time). While some breeders (notably, hobby farmers) are interested primarily in the prestige among their peers if their animal wins a prize, the majority enter the show for commercial reasons. Prizewinning animals wear their rosettes in the ring and the winning of prizes may be mentioned in the catalogue of subsequent sales. The judge’s opinion may or may not be reflected in the sale price .

While sale day is more critical in practical terms to most breeders than the show, I have chosen to focus on the day of the show only. It is the more congenial of the two days and the day when exhibitors can enjoy the day out and take pride in preparing and showing off their beautifully turned out animals before the stress of the subsequent sale, where reputatations as well as profits will be at stake.

The following images demonstrate my former participation in cattle sales with our former herd, Dunsyre Beef Shorthorns..

Some background work

I took this image on 3 February 2020 at Stirling Market. It shows men clustered in a semi-circle around barriers, many pointing their fingers towards the centre. What are they looking at and pointing to? The man in profile in the foreground ha strong features and is wearing a baseball cap. The man in the background far right is wearing a wooly hat. It suggests the environment is cold, as does the other clue that they are all wearing thick jackets. One dark haired man in the background is not only pointing to the centre but also looking intently as something or someone to his right, as if giving a signal. My eyes were drawn immediately to him. The colours are dark and subdued and probably a little too saturated. There is little contrast in tone, apart from the grey hair of the man in the centre foreground. All the men are looking in the same direction at something happening off the edge of the right hand side of the image. I would be able to take a guess that there was some kind of spectacle going on but would probably have to have been to a similar event to know that this was in fact taken during the course of a cattle auction.

A similar story is told in this image (also mine) except that the poster seen in the top right of the frame makes the context clear. This time, the subjects are sitting on tiered benches as if in a theatre, rather being close to the action. The uniformly black outfits – except for the woman with the red scarf on the left and the woman in the light brown jacket on the right – make for a sombre atmosphere, as if they were at a funeral or simply trying to blend into the background. Most of them are male and middle aged to elderly, as is obvious from the number of bald or grey heads. The fact that very few are wearing headgear, unlike in the previous photo, suggests that it is warm and they have settled in for the duration, in contrast to the the men in the previous photo (this position is usually taken up by those individuals moving back and forth between the cattle pens behind the ring and the ring itself). Could the demographic mean they are mostly retired farmers and simply having a day out, rather than being potential bidders? Does it reflect the aging farmer population? Or does it reflect the greater purchasing power of older breeders who may be in a better position to pay pedigree cattle prices? Most of the subjects sit impassively, giving nothing away, as is normal during an auction, but my eye was drawn to the a man sitting just off centre near the back of the frame, puffing out his cheeks. Is he surprised or disappointed at the bids being made? Or perhaps the hammer price?

Agricultural shows and documentary photography

I have been looking for photographers doing similar work. Many focus on publicity photographs for breeders but some are using the subjects of agricultural shows for more general documentary purposes.

https://www.davidwright.photography/agricultural-shows

Shire horse, Kilnsey show, Yorkshire, 2021

https://www.pelcombportraits.co.uk/Blog/Pembrokeshire-County-Show

These photographs show the kinds of activities and interactions that I will be looking at it in my project and in a very similar context ie documenting a particular demographic at agricultural shows. There is also an element of portraiture and this may also form part of my portoflio of images.

Attendance at the Bull Sales show 1 February 2026

I had a really great time at the show, catching up with people, taking in the spectacle and so much enjoying not being a competitor. I could turn my full attention to what I saw as a more objective observer, although I knew what the participants would be experiencing. How to capture it? The only way was to take so many photographs of so many typical scenarios that something would jump out at me at the end that I would just have to include. I felt sure the story would tell itself.

There were quite a few photographers, mostly from the farming press and one well known one involved in the BBC Landward programme. This meant people hardly noticed me taking photos or, if they did, were so busy doing what they were doing they didn’t remark on it. Some, particularly the younger girls who may be more up to speed with social media etc, actually wanted to pose for me, as did an older woman who seemed without much explanation to want to make sure I got some good photos of her little ‘camp’ where she had very systematically organised the tea and coffee and sandwiches for her team and their show outfits hanging up as well as the bull feed. Several of the people stewarding or photographing or behind the bar also wanted to pose though I didn’t in the end include these (see below).

By the end of the show, I had become so snap happy and the participants so used to seeing me with the camera that I actually entered the ring myself for close ups of the Beef Shorthorn winners and the prizegiving. I had met the judge in the car park when we arrived because my husband knew him from before. I told him what I was doing and at the end of the show when he was holding the silver cup he brandished it in my direction for me to take a photo. I knew the Championship winner and got a great picture of her ‘backstage’ with her rosettes with the guys who had been the handlers. In the end, I didn’t include either of these particular images in the final piece.

I was amazed to find when I came home and downloaded the photos the next day that I had taken over 900, mostly with my camera and some with my phone, including videos. The editing process was going to be a lengthy one.

Selecting and editing

I spent several days selecting the images I wanted to form part of the final piece. It was really only in the close scrutiny of them that I was able to make sense to myself of what it was I was trying to do, why I was selecting any particular images and what the images I selected said to me. An important first principle was that, unlike a participant, the primary focus of the images I selected would be of the people handling the bulls, with the animals being almost incidental..

The first cull meant rejecting any that were really just poorer duplicates of others. Then I began to look for patterns and became aware that there were some images I felt very positive about, without quite knowing why. This reduced the 900+ images to around 500. I then decided that I would not include many of or even any of the audience, staff or stewards, or the building, lorries, canteen etc on the basis that these could really be a separate subject. This left me with over 200 images. I then selected those I liked for their visual quality and those I thought were especially representative of both people and the event and those which were also typical of other similar events. Most of these were chosen for the immediacy they portrayed. This brought the number down to around 50.

It was at this point that I decided I would tell a straight, chronogical narrative of the day. To have selected images on the basis of any particular theme – for example, the place and role of women at the show – would have been to go into factual and theoretical territory I am not able to do justice to in relation to the scope and scale of the project. Exploration of such a theme at anything other than the most superficial level would be impossible. Nor could I place it within any ethnographical paradigm as I am not qualified to do so. I caveat this with the awareness that I have selected for presentation only a small percentage of the total images I took – only 32  out of over 900 plus 2 of the 5 videos taken – and that both the taking and editing of the images entailed intentionality on my part in making critical judgements, both in advance and in the subsequent editing, that were not simply plucked out of thin air. Some of my own interpretations are set out in my Statement.

I deliberately did not include a framing shot of the venue because: (a) I wanted to leave something to the viewer’s imagination; (b) I wanted the focus to be purely on the activities and interactions of the individuals there, without the the viewer being distracted by trying to ‘place’ them – what might be conveyed by images is both specific to place and not specific to place; and (c) the structure and size of the venue is fairly obvious from a number of the images anyway. I started structuring the presentation and got the number of images down to 21. However, I realised parts of the story I thought crucial were missing and the final number crept up to 29 images.

In some cases, an image was chosen specifically to go alongside a particular piece of text.

None of the images were edited, except for one or two where I reduced the exposure. At one point I thought I might try a square format and cropped a number of images to zoom in on particular aspects of the shot. However, I decided against this. It failed to give sufficient context and there were too many interesting things in the backgrounds that were being omitted. I reverted to the original 3:2 format. After that, there was virtually no cropping at all – although the images were taken very rapidly I was also very conscious of composition while I saw things I wanted to capture.

The text

I gave a lot of thought to the text accompanying the images in the presentation. It is purely descriptive and to some extent explanatory. It is in a deliberately terse style, giving no obvious insights or interpretations of any kind. Information that could have been expected to be included is left out. The text for each image is instead intended as a prompt, inviting the viewer to look more closely, to encourage them to ask themselves questions and to elicit their own interpretations of the images.