When we were growing up, life in the church was inspiring and always looked forward to Sunday school teachings. In order for us to understand the teachings of the bible and follow with interest, the teachers used photographs of the bible stories. When they talked about the Ark of Noah, they had to show us the picture of the Ark for us to understand what it meant. That created a lot of interest and curiosity, and we understood the story more from the striking images, and we can still remember what we learned till today. When we read that story now, we still connect with early teachings using the aid materials. This practice is still used to teach in our Sunday schools for young people to understand the bible. It is even surprising to note that images of animals that are believed to have existed some thousands of years are shown, and many have believed their existence. These are the existence of dinosaurs on the planet.<\/p>\n
Sarah Pink says that the visual images, practices and ways of knowing are figuring increasingly in the critical work of scholars from across the social sciences and humanities.[i]<\/a> It is true that the human mind visualises things as they describe them so that he understands the concept. One believes the visual aid through the teaching of the Sunday school which is the same approach Pink is describing here in his book. Many of us learned well through the process of visualisation and images which play essential roles in disciplines outside the social sciences and humanities, including medicine design and engineering.[ii]<\/a> It is a great moment for one to learn that these are visual ethnography which is intersecting well with these fields. \u00a0It is interesting to remember that when reading the book \u201cAnimal Farm\u201d by George Orwell in the school as a literature book, we understood it very well when it one visualised through images of Pigs and the rulers after overthrowing man from their territory and animals taking care of themselves on the farm. As learners, we used various creative methods through visualising how such a government managed by animals would be behave. It is in the same spirit Pink is saying she understands ethnography as a process of creating and representing knowledge.[iii]<\/a> Visual imagination and creating pictures of the animals was a vast knowledge learned from the animal farm book.<\/p>\n It is also coming out clear that during the time we did our high school exam we had a geography paper that was only pictured and asked to describe what one sees and how s\/he understand that picture. One connects this with the ethnographic approach that we are reading here from pink. Specific uses of visual images and technologies tend to develop as part of the social and technological relationships and activities that ethnographers engage in during fieldwork.[iv]<\/a> Thanks to this book which has now opened a new understanding and one can call that geography exam paper as an ethnographic question paper. The only difference was that the candidates were not the ethnographers describing their picture they have come up with, but it the examiner assumed that the candidate was the ethnographer describing what it was.<\/p>\n The part of Ethics and Ethnographic research appealed to us, such that decorum must stand out in using this visual method rather than some people abusing the process. Pink writes that ethical decisions, within the context of ethnographic practice, are ultimately made by individual ethnographers concerning the specificity of different situations.[v]<\/a> The ethnographic process has enlightened many in using this method in research and would help them consider the accountability for legal issues relating to the production and use of images in online and offline contexts as pink explains here. Especially using other people’s images without their consent. During the year 2017, a friend of mine saw his picture in the obituary page of the National Newspaper in Kenya, and there was no description but only his picture and the name. When I saw it, I called his wife and inquired from her, what happened that our friend’s picture appears on the obituary page of the newspaper. The wife was equally shocked because they were with her husband where she was when I called her. Such incidences are not healthy at all if ethical issues are not followed when using people\u2019s images without their consent.<\/p>\n [i]<\/a> (Pink 2013) pg33<\/p>\n [ii]<\/a> (Pink 2013)pg33<\/p>\n [iii]<\/a> (Pink 2013)pg34<\/p>\n