GSU Professor Deirdre Oakley
In November 2010, GSU Sociology Professor Deirdre Oakley, with doctoral student Angie Luvara, launched Social Shutter, a weekly blog for photo essays “capturing community life through a camera lens.” Still going strong – with 113 photo essays and 30,500+ visits – Social Shutter was recently featured in a CommonCreativATL article, and Professor Oakley has been invited to speak at the upcoming State Education Editors (SEE) Conference.
Using visual imagery to explore the social – or “visual sociology” – gained momentum in the turbulent 1960s. Check out these recent studies using visual sociology to explore urban issues:
- Dirksmeier, P. (2012). The wish to live in areas with ‘people like us’: Metropolitan habitus, habitual urbanity and the visibility of urban-rural differences in South Bavaria, Germany. Visual Studies, 27(1), 76-89.
- Mizen, P., & Ofosu-Kusi, Y. (2010). Unofficial truths and everyday insights: Understanding voice in visual research with the children of Accra’s urban poor. Visual Studies, 25(3), 255-267.
- Zenkov, K., Harmon, J., & van Lier, P. (2008). Picture this: Seeing diverse youths’ ideas about schools’ purposes, supports, and impediments: Students from the “Through Eyes” Project. Multicultural Perspectives, 10(3), 162-166.
Also check out these books on visual research methods:
- Downing, M. J., & Tenney, L. J. (2008). Video vision: Changing the culture of social science research. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.
- Emmison, M., & Smith, P. (2000). Researching the visual: Images, objects, contexts and interactions in social and cultural inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Mitchell, C. (2011). Doing visual research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Pink, S. (2012). Advances in visual methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Spencer, S. (2011). Visual research methods: In the social sciences. New York: Routledge.
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Thanks for sharing the CommonCreativ ATL site. A labor of love by two GSU Journalism alumni!
I love the idea and the site. What I like most is the unexpected subject of the next post. It seems you have such a wide variety of topic, you never know what is around the corner. I really love how pictures can tell a story from the eye of the artist. Thanks.
I forgot to ask; what is the application process to become a contributor to Social Shutter? I would love to participate.
CommonCreativ is such a great project! Had no idea is was founded by two GSU alumni! @Exterior Shutters, if you would like to submit to Social Shutter. Just send an essay (500-1000 words as a word doc) and then the photographs separately as .jpgs. to me at doakley1@gsu.edu