Abstract
This paper presents a case study in the use of photographs as data for historical sociological analysis. Based on a larger study of the first century of the social development of a large state mental hospital, the paper describes how a sample of 343 photographs was generated from the over 800 images the authors collected. We developed a layered analysis in which we examine the images in continuously greater depth and discuss the connections between each consecutive stratum of explanation. At the first level we produce anappraisal, a comparison of the images with the written historical record. The next level,inquiry, concentrates on themes in the collection as a whole. Finally, the concept of “thick description” guides the third level,interpretation, in which we examine in depth individual images. We present a series of images that correspond to each of these layers of analysis. A concluding section evaluates the costs and benefits of photographic evidence for the historical sociology of organizational change.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
1974 “Photography and sociology.” Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 1: 3–26.
Becker, H. S. 1978 “Do photographs tell the truth?” Afterimage: 9–13.
Burns, S. B. 1980 “Early medical photography in America (1839–1883). V. Beginnings of psychiatric photography.” New York State Journal of Medicine: 270–282.
Davidson, J. W. & Lytle, M. H. 1982 “The mirror with a memory.” In After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection. Pp. 205–231. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Deutsch, A. 1948 The Shame of the States. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Dowdall, G. W. 1986 “The birth of the Buffalo Asylum: James Platt White and the professionalization of medicine.” Paper presented to the American Association for the History of Medicine, Rochester, May.
Dwyer, E. 1987 Homes for the Mad: Life Inside Two Nineteenth-Century Asylums. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Forthcoming “The historiography of the asylum in Great Britain and the United States.” Law and Mental Health: International Perspectives: 110–160.
Emerson, R. M. (ed.) 1983 Contemporary Field Research. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press.
Fox, D. M. & Lawrence, C. 1988 Photographing Medicine: Images and Power in Britain and America Since
1940. New York, Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press.
Fox, D. M. & Terry, J. 1978 “Photography and the self image of American physicians, 1880–1920.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 52: 425–457.
Geertz, C. 1973 The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Griswold, W. 1987 “A Methodological Framework for the Sociology of Culture.” In Clifford C. Clogg (Ed.), Sociological Methodology 1987. Pp. 1–35. Palo Alto: Annual Reviews.
1966 The State and the Mentally Ill: A History of the Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts, 1830–1920. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
1973 Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875. New York: The Free Press.
1979 “Rediscovering asylums: the unhistorical history of the mental hospital.” Pp. 135–157 in Morris J. Vogel and Charles E. Rosenberg (Eds.), The Therapeutic Revolution: Essays in the Social History of American Medicine. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
1980 “Abuse in American mental hospitals in historical perspective: myth and reality.” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 3: 295–310
1983 Mental Illness and American Society, 1875–1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hurd, H. M. (Ed.) 1914–1916 The Institutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada. 4 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Kowski, F. C. 1986 “Richardson's Buffalo State Hospital.” Paper presented to the Social Science History Association, St. Louis, October.
Layne, G. S. 1981 “Kirkbride-Langenheim collaboration: early use of photography in psychiatric treatment in Philadelphia.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography: 182–202.
Luey, B. 1987 Handbook for Academic Authors. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Marable, D. 1985 “Photography and human behavior in the nineteenth century.” History of Photography 9 (April–June): 141–147.
Marshall, J. R. & Dowdall, G. W. 1982 “Employment and mental hospitalization: the case of Buffalo, New York, 1914–1955.” Social Forces 60 (March): 843–853.
Meyer, J. W. & Scott, W. R. 1983 Organizational Environments: Ritual and Rationality. Beverly Hills: Sage.
New York State 1872–1980 Annual Report of the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane. Albany: State of New York. (titles, authors, and publishers vary; c.f. text).
Newhall, B. 1982 The History of Photography: from 1839 to the Present. Revised and enlarged edition. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.
Pinchoff, D. M. & Mirza, M. 1982 “The changing role of the state hospital director: restructuring the top management team.” Administration in Mental Health 10 (Winter): 92–103.
Potter, W. W. 1895 “Fifty years of medical journalism in Buffalo.” Buffalo Medical Journal 35 (August): 65–113.
Rosen, G. 1942 “Early medical photography.” Ciba Symposium (August–September): 1344–1355.
1977a Decarceration: Community Treatment and the Deviant: A Radical View. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
1977b “Madness and segregative control: the rise of the insane asylum.” Social Problems 24 (February): 337–351.
1979 Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of Insanity in 19th Century England. New York: St. Martin's Press.
1981a Madhouses, Mad-Doctors, and Madmen. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
1981b “Humanitarianism or control? Some observations on the historiography of Anglo-American psychiatry.” Rice Universtiy Studies 67: 21–41.
Singleton, R. Jr., Straits, B. C., Straits, M. M., & McAlister, R. J. 1988 Approaches to Social Research. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sontag, S. 1977 On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Stasz, C. 1979 “The early history of visual sociology.” Ch. 8 in Wagner (1979), cited below.
Tomes, N. 1978 “Little world of our own: the Pennsylvania Hospital Training School for Nurses, 1895–1907.” Journal of the History of Medicine: 507–530.
Wagner, J. 1979 Images of Information: Still Photography in the Social Sciences. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Webb, E. J., Campbell, D. T., Schwartz, R. D. & Sechrest, L. 1966 Unobtrusive Measures: Nonreactive Research in the Social Sciences. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Ward, M. J. 1946 The Snake Pit. New York: Random House.
Weber, R. P. 1985 Basic Content Analysis. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Winnick, C. 1982 “The image of mental illness in the mass media.” Pp. 225–256 in Walter R. Gove (Ed.), Deviance and Mental Illness. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dowdall, G.W., Golden, J. Photographs as data: An analysis of images from a mental hospital. Qual Sociol 12, 183–213 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00988997
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00988997