Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials.

Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials. Third edition. London: Sage, 2012. 386 pp. $51.00 paperback (978-0-85702-888-4) I begin with the suggestion that Rose's book addresses slightly different topics than it claims to. Rather than an overview of visual methods per se, the book consists primarily of eight essays that analyze how some topics have been studied visually, and in some instances, how visual methods have been constructed to do so. Discussion of topic and method are generally paired. For example "compositional interpretation" is applied to fine arts paintings and films (and video games, less convincingly); visual content analysis is applied to the study of National Geographic magazine photographs; semiology (semiotics) is almost entirely devoted to the study of advertising; psychoanalysis to the study of sexual difference in film. The pairing continues with "discourse analysis I," which combines documentary or historical images with other forms of data, but it breaks down "discourse analysis II," which is a study of institutionalization of visuality rather than the study of visual methods per se. Rose's chapter on "audience studies and beyond" reviews the long tradition of television audience studies before turning to new studies, including ethnographies of family photo worlds, mass media viewing, and other forms of viewing in society. Finally, her chapter on "visual research methods" attempts to review all research in which researchers make rather than find images in thirty brief pages. The schema is presented as a table on page 45, and is easier to grasp in that form. From this perspective the book is an interesting inquiry into ways of seeing, with commentary on what visual methods work for each topic, rather than a text on methods. For example, at the end of her chapter on Discourse Analysis II she writes, "there are no methodologically explicit deployments of discourse analysis II that I know of" (p. 259). Liberating the book from an attempt to place all chapters under the umbrella of methods would, in my view, allow for a fuller appreciation of what the book does accomplish. This is especially the case since she moves through visual ethnography and other visual field methods with such alarming alacrity. Some especially noteworthy general themes include the idea that images should not and cannot be reduced to their causes or even constituent parts. There is always something greater; something in the gestalt of seeing that defies definition. The chapter on content analysis raises the interesting issue of how to code visual images, and the overview of visual semiotics questions assumptions that photos contain deep structures and messages. By using social semiotics to study the social landscapes of new Apple stores, Rose shows that semiotics may survive its disappearing subject matter of print advertising. In fact her attempt to analyze a recent ad for an Alfa Romeo automobile (p. 125) using the traditional Barthes-inspired approach, seems forced rather than illuminating. The book draws upon a huge intellectual landscape, including Freud (scopophilia), Lacan, Foucault, Sekula, and Haraway, among others. Often the chapters are deconstructions and recontextualizations of the arguments of these giants, although the spirits of some of them might appear bemused to find themselves treated as "visual methodologists." Rose defines criteria for a "critical visual analysis" which are applied to each approach. These include an admonition to look carefully at images, to understand the social basis of their making, and to include an element of reflexivity, here defined as a dialogue on how the process of making data are part of those data themselves. Interestingly enough, most of the approaches or methods covered do to not measure up to these criteria. For example, compositional analysis looks carefully at images but does not address social practices and reflexivity; content analysis also looks carefully at images but does not study the social practices of production and has nothing to do with reflexivity. …