2006-08-20T12:07:00.000-07:00

Hi!

If you’ve found your way to my research blog then the chances are that I’ve emailed you, or approached you via your own blog about my research on family photographs in the hope that you might like to take part in some way ~ so thanks for looking me up!

I’ve set this blog up as kind of a platform really ~ in order to make myself more visible to you if I have emailed you personally or if someone else has told you about my project. To be honest it is about trying to ease any reservations you might have about the possibility that I could be a bit of a nut-case!

The research I am doing is for my PhD at Keele University’s Institute for Life Course Studies - although I actually live and work in Gloucestershire.

What I am particularly interested in is “the how’s and why’s” of people displaying family photographs in various places such as the home, on the Internet, and at work.

At one level I am interested in the kinds of relationships that people have on display through their photographs, the ways in which people choose to display photos, and what these photographs mean to people.

At another level I am interested in how these displays can change over time as family relationships are made or broken or acquire new meanings - for any number of reasons.

If I’ve contacted you about your own blog though, what I am particularly interested in is why you blog. You see one of the main areas of my work is based on the idea that when we show our photographs in some way (be it on our mantle-piece, our mobile phones, in a photo album, or of course on the Internet) we are displaying our family (or part of it) - we are articulating some of our most significant relationships to others.

The thing is though, these “displays of family” that we make through our photographs are usually very private occurrences. They tend to happen in the places and during the occasions where we have some kind of control over exactly who sees them. If, for example, a stranger sees our photographs and hears the things that we might say about them, the chances are that we have made some kind of invitation - to enter our home, for instance, or to look through our albums.

But when people blog - and especially when they include photographs in their blogs, they are “displaying family” in a way that is very unusual compared to how we usually display our family photographs - because blogs are, of course, much more public. Having said that though, I have been getting the impression that they form part of a larger community of bloggers/friends that share similar interests, and often members of these communities are very supporting of each other - both emotionally and practically. If you can relate to this aspect of blogging I’d love to hear from you.

The main reason why I’d be interested in discussing your blog with you more is because I am interested in the ways you might be using your photographs on the Internet. Many people take photographs during moments of celebration (such as weddings, parties, reunions etc) or during leisure time (such as going on holiday or a family outing). Our favourite photos might end up on display somewhere, perhaps even emailed or posted to others, and others might end up in an album or on our hard drive.

But what I have been seeing with many blogs though is that photographs are sometimes (or often) used alongside the text that goes into the day to day lives, experiences, and thoughts of the blogger and their family. This is a much more intimate and often detailed account of family life in a much more public arena - and the photographs that people use often seem to illustrate things that the blogger is writing about.

So I find blogs about families that include photographs very interesting indeed because it is a big change in how people are displaying photographs and also representing their families and themselves.

I am always very grateful to people when they are able to contribute their thoughts and experiences to the project - without them the project wouldn’t be possible! So if you would like to take part in my research then I would be delighted to hear from you!

Please feel free to email me on my work email address which is m.davies@appsoc.keele.ac.uk

Thank you for taking the time to read all of this! I hope to hear from you soon!

Best wishes,

Mark Davies

Moving Images Research Project