This chapter makes an argument that much “conventional” sociology is enriched and expanded using visual approach. The author notes that words are precise yet they refer to a “messy” world, thus there is a certain deception in the seeming clarity of social theory. The author reviews a case study of evolving agricultural systems in a rural neighborhood, noting the usefulness of aerial for learning things that are not revealed in on ground perception. The general point is made that knowledge is much a matter of perspective, in this case literal. The comparative visual method has been used to study housing interiors, neighborhoods, public squares, especially in Hong Kong and Bologna, Italy, and social change. Studies of social change are both explicit, as in Jon Rieger’s studies of identical scenes in northern Michigan, photographed over time, and the author’s ongoing study of a piazza in Italy, where thirty-five years of photographic work has produced a sense of an older, traditional culture contrasting to a new one made of tourism. The use of historical photos led the author to argue for “visual ideal types” where specific images appear to capture essential elements of sociological categories. Finally, the chapter explores visual study of sociological subjectivity.

This chapter is a beginner’s introduction to visual semiotics, using a comparative analysis of 1960s cigarette ads to introduce terms including signifier, signified; types of signs including iconic, indexical, symbolic (connotative and denotative) and syntagmatic. The author discusses higher levels of meaning in the visually symbolic universe, including codes and ideology. The core of the chapter are four case studies of public art, including leftover Italian fascist architecture and public art in Rome; the American Vietnam Veterans Memorial; a recent sculpture in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania depicting a meeting in 1770 between George Washington and the Seneca chief Guyasuta; and a sculpture in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada that memorializes the homeless who have died on the street. The analysis includes study of the intent of those making the public art; the alternative ways the meanings of these sculptures may be read; the sociological issue of how people garnered resources to create these public statements; and, finally, what it feels like to be in the presence of these artistic statements.

This chapter looks at teaching visual sociology, and teaching sociology visually from several vantage points. First is a review of course design, at the beginning of the movement and now; secondly, reflection on how the tools we use to record what we see (cameras, pens, cell phones), all see differently, but none “better” than others. Ethics are discussed in detail, reviewing the IVSA codes of ethics published on the IVSA website. Visual methods are unique in the social sciences because it is often impossible and, in fact, not desirable to hide the identities of those we study. The chapter looks at assignments in visual sociology courses, including studying the taken for granted, visual semiotics, social organization, learning visual comparison and studying the “self without the self.” Finally, the chapter approaches the use of feature films as texts in specialized sociology courses, and how one can teach filmmaking as a version of visual sociology.

The chapter focuses on two common forms of visual research collaboration, photo elicitation (PE) and photovoice (PV). The author has extensive experience with PE and draws on examples of his published work to discuss pros and cons of the method. In short excerpts from studies of a small mechanic’s shop and an early stage of the mechanization of dairy farming he shows how conversations emerge between researcher and the researched individual from close reading of photos either made by the researcher or found in archives. For an examination of PV the author interviews a Dutch PV researcher with years of experience working both in the developing world and in her home country. Reflecting on several studies, the author and expert discuss PV used in on-site program evaluation and as in-depth study of the immigrant experience in Holland. The chapter also briefly reviews new forms of visual and collaborative research, including participatory filmmaking, mapmaking, curating museum exhibitions and drawing. One of the author’s overall conclusions is that participatory visual methods are among the most innovative visual methods currently in use.

This chapter makes a case that documentary photography is a close cousin to visual sociology. Documentary photography explore topics and scenes of great interest to sociology and also allows us to study how a profession based on seeing produces visual knowledge. There are controversies in documentary photography based on verisimilitude versus the social construction of knowledge, and sociology works well within both sets of assumptions. This chapter approaches documentary photography historically, beginning with a case study of the work of English photographer P.H. Emerson in the late nineteenth century. It then segues to the work of Jacob Riis, looking at how he and others depicted the social issues connected to industrial capitalism. A survey of documentary in the 1930s follows, with particular attention given to the work of John Heartfield, Bill Brandt, the newsreel tradition, critical documentary in photomontage and the American Farm Security Administration (FSA). Documentary was an integral part of the critical self-awareness that began in the 1950s and blossomed in the 1960s and 1970s. The chapter pays particular attention to what the author refers to as the “gendered lens,” and examines this issue in the work of several contemporary photographers including Susan Meiselas and LaToya Ruby Frazier, as well as the work of female photographers in the Standard Oil of New Jersey (SONJ) project of the early 1950s.

The Introduction places the beginning of visual sociology in my career as emerging from a challenging seven-month trip to India as an undergraduate. Visual sociology emerged in the US during this time of social unrest and protest, as sociology itself was evolving to become more connected to social issues, more reflexive and more grounded as well as theoretically eclectic. The emergence of visual sociology was part of this disciplinary redefinition. The Introduction to the second edition draws on ten years of social and intellectual change, including the expansion of visual sociology beyond Europe and North America, the ongoing development of visual communication technology, also stimulated by the worldwide pandemic, international events such as war, disruption, climate change emergencies and social movements tied to contemporary events. The Introduction also describes what visual sociologists “do,” including making photos and films to study cultures and social issues, developing methods that enhance the collaborative potential of qualitative research, using images as conventional empirical data, studying the visually symbolic dimensions of social existence and teaching in part via the use of images.

After introducing the concepts of culture and ethnography, and musing how they can be treated visually, the chapter analyzes early visual ethnography, especially Balinese Character by Bateson and Mead, in terms of its success and failure. The chapter then examines the author’s visual ethnography of railroad tramps, which was his Ph.D. dissertation. In this reflexive account the personal impact as well as intellectual discovery are stressed. The publication from the research is compared and contrasted to two other visual ethnographies studies of homeless men, Duneier’s Sidewalk, and Bourgois and Schonberg’s Righteous Dopefiend. The chapter then dwells on the forty-year visual ethnography by Sara Wiles on the Arapaho, published in two volumes. Finally, the author overviews the newly developed digital journal Visual Ethnography, defining several approaches embedded in the original research, reviews and photo essays. It is suggested that the journal fills a void and shows the ready audience for what appears to be a still vigorous and eclectic research tradition.

In this final chapter, we summarize the preceding chapters and point towards future directions for visually based sociology. We argue for a space where technologically afforded understandings of social reality and the multiple ways this ‘reality’ is presented to us are considered critically and methodologically. In conclusion, we suggest that we need to further explore different ways of seeing in tandem with an ever-increasing image dependency in our hyper-visual society.