Auto‐photographic study of everyday emotional geographies

Abstract

Recent developments in cultural geography have brought forth everyday life and emotions as critical categories for understanding place. Yet, the focus on everyday emotional geographies also presents methodological challenges. This paper argues that auto‐photography is a particularly well‐suited method to explore the intricate relations between everyday practices, emotions and the formation of places. Auto‐photography combines participant‐generated photographs and participants’ interpretative narrations of these photographs. Our argument is based on auto‐photographic research we conducted with 38 young women in Czechia in 2016. We asked participants to photograph everyday places that they associate with positive or negative emotions, or religious meanings, and to discuss their emotions in a following interview. We analysed participants’ photographs together with their narrations. This analysis reveals the emotions and meanings participants attached to photographed places. We argue that the method of auto‐photography helps understand the complexity of everyday emotional geographies that may not be possible through other geographical methods. The strength of auto‐photography is its combination of visual representations and narratives, which help identify how ordinary everyday places without any apparent significance, such as a door or a staircase, might be sites of strong emotional intensity. The insights gained by analysing photographs and narratives together and in relation to one another produce an understanding of emotional bordering practices, anxieties and desires of place‐making. Auto‐photography thus provides multiple layers of visual and textual data that help understand the complexity of emotional geographies in mundane everyday places.