Photographic Collections as Visual Method

This book examines photographic collections as ways of doing and/or inspiring research in the humanities and social sciences.

Interweaving case studies and visual essays, this book:

• demonstrates the potential for photographic collections to launch new sociological, photographic, and creative work by scholars and practitioners;
• critically examines historical, social, and methodological issues revolving around a wide range of photographic collections in and of Asia;
• advances engagement with photographic collections as an innovative visual method in qualitative research.

Photographic Collections as Visual Method explores the ways in which photographic collections exceed their archetypal role as records of the past, to become not only a unit of analysis, but also the starting point for creative and critical work that intersects multiple disciplines. A wealth of data, stories, and inspiration, this book will appeal to scholars, students and practice-based researchers in the areas of visual and creative methods, especially methods for visual sociology and visual anthropology, photographic studies, museum studies, and area studies, with a particular focus on Southeast and East Asia.

Terence Heng is Reader in Sociology at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. He is the author of four books, including Visual Methods in the Field (2016), Of Gods, Gifts and Ghosts: Spiritual Places in Urban Spaces (2020) and Diasporas, Weddings and the Trajectories of Ethnicity (2020) and co-editor of Death and the Afterlife: Multidisciplinary Perspectives from a Global City (2024). His research ambulates through the intersections of cultural geography, visual sociology, and photographic practice, investigating diasporic Chinese identities, sacred space-making amongst Chinese Singaporeans, and visual methods. Terence is the inaugural winner of the International Visual Sociology Association’s Prosser Award for Outstanding Visual Methodologies, and 2016 winner of the Sociological Review’s annual prize for best journal article.

OH Soon-Hwa is Associate Professor of Photography at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She has participated in about 100 international exhibitions, including the Asian Art Museum in Nice, France, the Noorderlicht Photo Festival in the Netherlands, the Lucca Photo Festival in Italy, the Pingyao International Photo Festival in China, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham, the Houston FotoFest, the Pochon biennale, the Ssamzi Art Space in Korea, the Asian American Art Center, and the Society for Contemporary Photographic Art. Her curatorial endeavours comprise shows at the National Museum of Singapore and the Pingyao International Photography Festival. Her monograph publications include From Art School to Art World (2009), Quiet Dream (2018), and Liminal Landscapes 1940s-1960s (2025).