Free Write #2!

"Visual Ethnography and Racial Theory: Family Photographs as Archives of Interracial Intimacies" by Winddance Twine explains the enthography of interracial relationships through photography throughout the past decades. He explains that to understand the dynamics of interracial friendships and romances throughout time, pictures are required for full comprehension. Photos have often been discredited in social sciences and the author believes it should be the opposite. "Historically photographs were discredited as a legitimate form of ‘evidence’ in mainstream sociology journals, in part, because in the early twentieth century sociology was engaged in a campaign to establish itself as a ‘science’ and anxieties were generated by visual images because they were associated with photojournalism and ‘political’ activism rather than viewed as apolitical academic inquiry" (489). Twine not only sees the beauty in the photos, but also good references for his future and past enthographies about interracial families. He discusses how he learned so much from past photos of these families and friendships and how they should be credited as scientific references. He uses personal experience: "I have learnt from photographs how to ‘see’ the socio-racial world in which my research subjects operate" (491)