Husniah Sahamid
Fatimah Hashim
Faculty of Education
University of Malaya

Date: 26 October 2001
Time: 10.00-10.30
 

Photographs allow the audience to see the context of the study and to bring in a measure of the reality of the researcher's experience.  At times, words may not be as effective in giving a faithful description of the context in which the experience takes place and photographs can be used to this end.
Photography also has the power to "engage thought, extend imagination and …undermine the implicit authority of the written word." (Walker, 1993).  Hence the old adage: "Seeing is believing" - it lends credibility more than if merely words are used to describe a study.  When used with other sources of data, it can also" add to a growing pool of evidence", (Bogdan, 1988).
In this paper, we shall describe how photography was used to acquaint the researcher with the problems under study and to aid in actually "seeing" the big picture.