Family Photographs as a Topic for Conversation

Abstract

This paper outlines one aspect of a study that focused on generating and analysing discursive data in order to explore older women’s constructions of their relationships: the use of personal photographs as a stimulus for ‘purposeful’ conversation. Photographs have been implemented in many ways throughout the social sciences and the approach discussed here was particularly influenced by work that began in the 1970s and 1980s with studies using photo elicitation (Collier and Collier, 1986) and those using what has become termed ‘the home mode’ (Musello, 1979). The resulting interactional data were then transcribed and analysed using the ethnomethodological approaches of conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis. Asking women to talk about their personal photographs revealed a range of relational features. In particular they stimulated remembered, storied accounts of events and experiences relating to their relationships