Picturing Commutes: Informant Photography and Urban Design

Abstract

In this work-in-progress report, I describe my developing dissertation project emphasizing the role of photography as a social research method. The project examines how the problems of and potential solutions to multimodal conflicts in urban transportation are understood differently by people of diverse social standpoints. After describing the project and a general approach to photography as a social research method, I explain my use of informant photography, photoelicitation, and photo-stories in a pilot study. I use the concept of boundary object to explain the usefulness of photography in eliciting heterogeneous views on design problems and solutions and for defamiliarizing people's everyday experiences of the built environment.