The keeping of a research diary, particularly in research that depends on observation in social and cultural settings, can in itself sensitise the researcher to the visual. Adequate descriptions of the settings in which such research takes places will necessitate some reflection on the organisation of space, and the general look of the place. It seems a logical extension then that in some cases this element of the project will be sufficiently important to warrant a visual record to go alongside the written account. As Young points out in his discussion of Malinowski's fieldwork, the descriptive power of photography is highly significant: "Anyone who has glanced through his three major monographs will have been struck by the narrative force of his photography, the capacity of his images to evoke a distinctive and, to European eyes, exotic way of life. His photographs do more than simply embellish his texts, they recreate a distant world in quotidian detail" (Young 1998: 1). Though of course, as ethnographers have become increasingly sensitive to their role in the construction of fieldwork, so to has the idea of photography as a purely objective record been problematised. Prosser and Schwartz make this point:

 

 

Prosser and Schwartz go on to make a distinction between a visual diary and a visual record, though it is likely in practice that there will be a considerable overlap between the subjectivity of the former and the objectivity of the latter.

 

Research in the area of visual sociology has tended to view photography as a means of documenting a variety of social settings, for the purposes of producing a richer ethnographic account than can be achieved through words alone. However, taking this further it is clear that for some projects the visual or artefactual is not simply of contextual significance, but is itself the focus of the research. In these cases visual images and objects are the main subject of reflection in a research diary, with some form of visual record being a necessary counterpart. Indeed, in the visual and media rich context of (post)modern societies research into visual culture has become increasingly significant. The sub-discipline of visual anthropology has seen a shift of emphasis from the dominance of ethnographic film-making to an approach that also includes the anthropology of visual communication, and the role of anthropological knowledge and methods in popular forms of visual display.

Although the social science disciplines concentrate on watching and recording the activities of others, the research diary is also of particular value to practitioners seeking to observe and research their own practice, for example in the visual arts. Herivel (1997) in a study of her own practice as an artist employs a diary as a central means of recording: "My objective was to discover what it meant to experience the process of being immersed in the discipline of visual art making" (p.55). Importantly, as those in other disciplines have also discovered, diary-keeping is not merely a passive means of recording: "As the 'drama' of the five months progressed, the act of writing took on a more important role. I found that it clarified many of my ideas in the creation of art objects. I began to think of writing as part of the creative process of making art. It became a significant aspect in understanding how I construct visual knowledge" (p.58).

 

Perhaps one of the most interesting roles a research diary can play in relation to the variety of visual research topics is that of bringing together words and images. For the researcher the diary can be the place where the central theoretical and methodological issue of how to write about the visual is struggled with and worked out.

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