Rephotography for Documenting Social Change1

Introduction

The employment of temporally ordered photographs to show change has been a common practice for many years. Sociologists have long been interested in studying change—in particular, social change—but have not until recently developed methods for harnessing photographs to study it. In this chapter, I describe several ways in which photographs may be used in documenting social change and in fostering the development of insights about the meaning and significance of that change.

Photographs as Sociological Evidence

Research on a complex phenomenon such as social change almost inevitably requires the use of indicators. We gauge social change by examining a variety of things, such as changes in population, employment, and other statistics; in attitudes, opinions, and social practices; and in the physical size, character, layout, and condition of the built landscape.

These material and non-material variables fit together in a form that we recognize as the social structure. The interconnections between the variables mean that changes in one facet of the structure typically lead to changes in others. Many elements of social structure are literally on display. They include physical and behavioral markers accessible to the eye, and therefore to the camera. My challenge as a visual sociologist has been to find the visual indicators of change. From this standpoint, a visual approach differs from other approaches only in that I am using visual indicators (in addition, usually, to other, more common ones) to help form a basis for analysis and interpretation (Rieger, 1996).

As I have suggested above, the usefulness of visual evidence depends on drawing information from the images that can form the basis of interpretations about what is happening socially. We have to examine every part of the image, not only the nominal subject of the photograph but also the details in the background and near the edges of the picture for clues pertinent to our analysis.

The use of Repeat Photography

Perhaps the most reliable way we can use photography to study social change is through the systematic visual measurement technique of ‘repeat photography’ or, simply, ‘rephotography.’ These terms refer to a process by which we create a temporally ordered, that is, longitudinal, photographic record of a particular place, social group, or other phenomenon. We then review the photographs for evidence of change. Here we confront the same issues of evaluation and interpretation that are encountered in reviewing other kinds of evidence, such as statistical data. A numerical change may reach the level of ‘statistical significance,’ but that does not necessarily determine its substantive significance. Likewise, photographs may reveal some change that may or may not be substantively significant. In interpreting either visual or quantitative data, we must ascertain their meaning and importance in terms of their consistency with other evidence and its bearing on the theory guiding our research.

Repeat Photography as a Methodology

As I have shown above, the logic of repeat photography is similar to more conventional approaches to the study of change. Measurements—in this case, photographs—are taken at successive points in time, which we designate Time 1 and Time 2. We compare the content of the photographs, looking for evidence of change in a manner similar to survey data in panel studies. The change, or lack of change, that the photographs reveal we then interpret in accordance with our theoretical expectations.

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