Douglas Harper and Visual Sociology

What you will listen to, by scrolling down the pages of this project, is an interview with informal tones, taken in front a cup of coffee. I had not prepared questions in advance; rather,  I followed the flow of my interest towards a new discipline - Visual Sociology - of which Professor Douglas Harper has been a pioneer.
That same curiosity had already led me, a couple of months earlier, to travel to Minneapolis to attend his course named: Visual Pedagogies in Education and the Social Sciences, at the Univeristy of St.Thomas Department of Educational Leadership.
Here it was, the right time to seize an opportunity, that of asking, to learn more.
So, I made my interview, which lasted just over an hour but was very densely filled with content. Later, I split it in sections, organizing them by themes (one for each chapter), as they emerged during our chat. I also purposedly choose some of Douglas's photos to signify each theme, and he kindly granted permission to use them. I also chose and wrote the texts you read on each page. These are either quotations from the interview, personal interpretations of what Douglas said, or both. This is my attempt at presenting a rich set of materials while avoiding the difficulty of having to listen to a very long audio, which would have likely been hard to follow. In fact, Douglas himself admitted that: [...] because of how my brain works, [the speech] rambles around. I talk about one thing for awhile and then another [...].  

Douglas Harper's way of doing research emerges quite naturally retracing the steps that led him to write some of the books he published, enriched here by intertwining precious insights regarding his research, funny anecdotes and memories of his personal life.

I just have to say: Take your time, make yourself comfortable and enjoy listening!

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