Paper Short Abstract:

What can a photograph of a home collection of medicines tell us about its owner? As part of a research experiment, I asked research participants to send me pictures of their home medicine collections. In addition to any artistic value, these images provide valuable ethnographic material.

Paper Abstract:

As a methodological experiment, I asked my research participants, with whom I had already conducted face-to-face interviews, to send me photographs of their home medicine collections. My research focuses on the (dis)trust that Russian-speaking people in Germany experience towards the German healthcare system. I discovered that this community demonstrates a high degree of medicalization, meaning that medications play an essential in their daily lives and healing practices. One of the manifestations of low trust in the system is the stockpiling of medicines imported from Russia and other post-Soviet countries, making the home medicine cabinet an important object.

I received pictures accompanied by texts, anecdotes, and audio comments. Conventional approaches for analyzing photographs (Bourdieu 1990) would not work in this case since these photos were not intended for public display or attention-seeking purposes but rather for personal or scientific use. Although these pictures do not possess any artistic value, unlike the photos we typically see on social media or in family albums (Panáková 2019), there is an entire world behind the captured material objects. This world is associated with a particular healing experience, and each medicine provokes a narrative about it.

Despite seemingly trusting the researcher when sending photographs (Canals 2020), participants still found artistic ways to fulfill the request by adjusting the composition of the photographs, such as removing or repositioning medications or other objects in the frame. In my paper, I would like to discuss the methodology used to work with this visual ethnographic material.