Using Old Photographs in Interviews: Some Cautionary Notes About Silences in Fieldwork

Abstract

In September 1987, early in my research at the Kenya National Archives, I came across a collection of photographs taken by a British missionary during the 1920s and early 1930s. The collection contained nearly 250 photos of the terrain and people of Kenya's Taita Hills, where I would soon be going for my fieldwork. I pored over the photo collection for a long time, and had reproductions made of twenty-five shots. The names of those pictured had been recorded in the photo album's captions. Many of the names were new to me, though a few WaTaita of the day who had figured prominently in the archival records were also captured on film. When I moved on to Taita in early 1988,1 took the photographs with me. Since I would be interviewing men and women old enough either to remember or be contemporaries of the people in the pictures, I planned to show the photos during the interviews. At first I was simply curious about who some of the people pictured were, but my curiosity quickly evolved into a more ambitious plan. I decided to try using the photographs as visual prompts to get people to speak more expansively than they otherwise might about their lives and their experiences.In the event, I learned that using the photographs in interviews involved many more complexities than I had envisaged in my initial enthusiasm. I found that I had to alter the expectations and techniques I took to Taita, and feel out some of the limitations of working with the photographic medium. I had to recognize the power relations embedded in my presence as a researcher in Taita, in my position as bearer of images from peoples' pasts, and in the photos themselves. I found, too, that I needed to come to grips with a number of issues about the politics of image production, and the historical product of those politics: the bounded, selected images that are photographs. Finally, I had to address some of my own cultural assumptions about photography and how people respond to pictures, assumptions that my informants did not necessarily share.