Reading visual images

# 5 Conclusion

Photographs can be used as documentary data in the social sciences. Although they may seem to have a special relation to the events they depict, the social processes of image construction must be considered when we look at photographs as documents. Photographs are depictions of what took place, but are produced through a series of operations that must be understood in terms of their social organisation.

Only by understanding these operations, their social, economic, political and psychological organisation, can we properly evaluate the depiction. In order to read photographs for social science purposes, we need to carry out content and context analyses on them.

OpenLearn - Reading visual images
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