{"id":5730,"date":"2015-09-14T15:40:06","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T22:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=5730"},"modified":"2015-09-14T15:42:42","modified_gmt":"2015-09-14T22:42:42","slug":"is-a-picture-worth-a-thousand-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/is-a-picture-worth-a-thousand-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Is A Picture Worth a Thousand Words?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"IMG_7685\"<\/a>

My Dad and Me<\/p><\/div>\n

\"IMG_7695\"<\/a>

My Dad walking with one of the visiting nurses, my wife, and my Mother.<\/p><\/div>\n

The adage that a \u201cPicture is worth a thousand words\u201d is embraceable and even believable.\u00a0 But when you begin to explore \u201cethnography\u201d it is quite easy to question is what I am seeing the truth of the thousand words that I am getting ready to presuppose?\u00a0 Reading Doing Visual Ethnography<\/em><\/strong> by Sarah Pink challenges just the \u201cseeing\u201d of the picture.<\/p>\n

As I read Pink\u2019s work I navigated to find the crux, the central message, the catalytic moment, and the breakthrough.\u00a0 It was slow in coming but methodically outlined and quite convicting in various ways as I ingested her world of ethnography.\u00a0 She admits that this is her third writing of this material because of the cultural shift of capturing images.<\/p>\n

I think she said it best, about the process of ethnography, \u201c\u2026when we write, think and make images in this field, we do not ever arrive at an end.\u00a0 We instead end in a moment, a temporary configuration which is of course over by the time our work is published or otherwise disseminated.\u00a0 Doing Visual Ethnography<\/em><\/strong> is not a method \u2013 not something that is \u2018done\u2019 but something that is happening in the doing, and the doing is ongoing as technology, practice, and life move forward in new ways.\u201d (Pink, 213)<\/p>\n

Ethnography is not a finished work.\u00a0 It is a pause in time with all of the information that you have at that moment.\u00a0 This spoke to me as an individual, spiritual leader, and as a son.\u00a0\u00a0 I contemplated how many times I have taken the mental \u201cpicture\u201d and did not truly assess the story behind my \u201cpicture\u201d?\u00a0\u00a0 How many judgment calls were made without knowing more of the story than the paltry pieces that I had conjured or had heard second-hand?<\/p>\n

The pictures above are of my Dad.\u00a0\u00a0 He is in Stage Four Alzheimer\u2019s.\u00a0 What is \u201cseen\u201d is an older gentleman that is struggling with walking and seems to have a great support group to help him.\u00a0 Reading Doing Visual Ethnography <\/em><\/strong>has created a new sixth sense to what I see and what I allow my mind to capture.<\/p>\n

When you view the above pictures you may have an emotion that arises for an older family member or you may have compassion for the elderly.\u00a0 You could rejoice that he is still active and thankful for the family and medical assistance that has been made available.\u00a0 When I see the pictures emotions, smells, and sounds emerge.\u00a0 Emotions of loss and displacement from my Dad.\u00a0 Anger when he is combative and agitated and has to be restrained.\u00a0\u00a0 Smells\u2026well let\u2019s just leave at that, you can probably figure that part out.\u00a0 Sounds from my Dad are now grunts with maybe three to five intelligible words a day.<\/p>\n

Ethnographer?\u00a0 Probably more than I knew.\u00a0 We live our lives assessing our situations, surroundings and the people that all of these interact within.\u00a0 For the most part I would say most of us try our best to not jump to conclusions.<\/p>\n

Recently I was with my Dad (he lives in the Tampa Bay area of Florida) and we took him out to eat.\u00a0\u00a0 Now I was the party with the individual that was socially awkward.\u00a0 Here I was with the adult wearing a bib and making strange noises at times, yet enjoying his food immensely.\u00a0 I am not sure how the \u201cethnography\u201d worked with the people around me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Doing Visual Ethnography<\/em><\/strong> at first glance is more of an expanded base of knowledge on techniques and protocol.\u00a0 By the time I finished it was a work on \u201cseeing\u201d the picture with more than the eye.\u00a0 It prompted me to cautiously view people, situations, and pictures with a different set of lenses.\u00a0 I still believe a picture, by itself, does speak a thousand words.\u00a0 There is a story behind the picture that embraces a myriad of sounds, smells, and emotions that are worth millions of words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The adage that a \u201cPicture is worth a thousand words\u201d is embraceable and even believable.\u00a0 But when you begin to explore \u201cethnography\u201d it is quite easy to question is what I am seeing the truth of the thousand words that I am getting ready to presuppose?\u00a0 Reading Doing Visual Ethnography by Sarah Pink challenges just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[678,279,677],"class_list":["post-5730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alzheimers","tag-pink","tag-thousand-words","cohort-lgp6"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5730"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5735,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730\/revisions\/5735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}