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That photography was more than a mere technological breakthrough was clear to its inventors but not to their contemporaries or generations after. The fast visual appropriation of “reality,” the sudden transformation of this reality into an image which mirrored our world, gave us a new lease on immortality. From its inception, photography became an act of assertion and vainglory and biographers could study the psychology of a face as well as the depth of the soul. Walt Whitman once wrote: “I've been photographed, photographed, and photographed until the cameras themselves are tired of me.” (As quoted by Justin Kaplan. Walt Whitman. A Life. Simon & Schuster, 1980.) From Whitman's ego trips to the forced smiles in that brief but powerful scene in the film, Ordinary People, when family soul‐searching is captured by the click of a camera, the world around us is preserved and mythologized. Photography is witness to history and art, and shapes our lives as well. In a recent interview, Mikhail Baryshnikov stated that as a dancer he had been influenced not only by other choreographers but by “movies, musicals,(and) photo exhibitions.” (The New York Times, June 28, 1981, p. 6). Thus, photography becomes archival material, for it speaks of the human adventure in all its diversity.

This chapter offers a symbolic perspective on the Egyptian Revolution. It does so by analyzing the transformation of Khaled Said, a 28-year-old Egyptian man beaten to death by police on June 6, 2010, into a key visual injustice symbol. Activists were motivated by a horrifying cell phone photograph of Said taken by his family at the morgue and uploaded on the web. Although the postmortem photograph had a powerful emotional impact in itself, the transformation of Said from local/particular incident to injustice symbol with society-wide repercussions cannot be explained by its mere availability in the public sphere. The transformation required intervention and appropriation by activists who creatively and strategically universalized the case, linking it with existing injustice frames in Egypt. This chapter analyzes this interplay between photographs, activism, and society in two steps. The first provides an analysis of the genesis of the Said symbol and identifies three levels of agency in its formation. The second step analyzes the process through which Said was infused with injustice meanings by activists. Providing the first systematic analysis of Said from a social movement perspective, the chapter draws on several data sources that are subjected to interpretive analysis: visual material available on the internet, Facebook pages, and interviews with and accounts by key activists. And it calls for more attention to photographs and symbols in the analysis of activism and points to several historical and present cases with relevance for such an approach.

This chapter provides an ethnographic account of conducting organisational research in a deep-level gold mining workplace. The ethnography presented in this book entailed living in the mine hostel, observing and participating in the production tasks of the underground mining teams for a full production shift for a period stretching over six months. The chapter discusses the day-to-day running of the production process at the rock-face down the mine. This section is important for understanding the organisation of the production cycle and the actions of the mining teams, foremen and management to ensuring the smooth daily running of the production process inside the pit. Furthermore, the chapter presents an overview of AfricaGold’s business performance in terms of operational efficiency, productivity and safety.

Dorothea Lange was one of the first US documentary photographers, and she was empowered by the belief that seeing the effects of injustice, in photographs, could elicit social and political reform. She famously documented the plight of Dust Bowl migrants during the US. Great Depression and harsh difficulties endured by incarcerated Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Lange’s photographs brought suppressed issues of class and race to the surface, depicting those impacted by national tragedies into recognizable, honorable, determined individuals. By showing Americans how suffering and injustice look in real life, she stimulated empathy and compassion. This inquiry is not particularly about the Great Depression or Japanese Internment, though disciplinary concept lessons would certainly support students’ prior knowledge. This lesson focuses students’ attention on broader ideas regarding social justice and how social and political documentary photography transform people’s views about distressing problems, even today. Supporting questions are: How can deep analysis of photographs affect our thoughts and emotions about social issues? What is empathy? How can social documentary photography affect people’s emotions? Supporting questions guide students to answer the greater compelling question, How can visuals, such as photographs, impact social change? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This is an inquiry lesson plan based on a National Council for the Social Studies Notable Trade book for Young People award winner, Dorothea’s Eyes, written by Barb Rosenstock.

The paper is a lesson plan, which incorporates students’ analyses of primary sources and other research methods to engage the learner in understanding how Dorothea Lange helped change perspectives regarding the need for social and political reform. Though the story is historic, similar social justice topics still persist, worldwide, today.

Through inquiry and research, students begin to learn how social and political documentary photography began in the USA, and students create their own social documentaries. Though the US Great Depression and Japanese Internment are highly relevant within this lesson, the overall, greater message is about class, race, suffering and how to inspire empathy.

Video game players, equipped with image capturing and rendering features, are taking photographs within digital worlds. This study examines video game photography as a documentary practice. By considering the experiences of a gamer-turned-photographer, this study offers an initial synthesis of this new document phenomenon and provides considerations for categorizing such photos.

To discover the attributes of video game photography, this study utilized an auto-hermeneutic approach with self-interviewing and picture-sorting techniques. The resulting data were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Without tangible artifacts to commemorate gaming experiences, photographs empower the player to document and artistically reconstruct moments from purely digital worlds. The three themes from this study's findings – that video game photographs act as (1) vehicles for storytelling, (2) creative trophies, and (3) aesthetic tokens – reveal how personally meaningful documents emerge from this medium. Furthermore, the findings uncover the fuzzy boundaries between play, artwork, and documentation.

This study explores techniques for categorizing in-game photographs and eliciting gameplay memories. The methods outlined may assist video game researchers, conservators, and archivists with organizing photographs as context materials.

By considering the lived experiences between one individual and their video game photographs, this study expands document theory into the underrepresented hobby of video games.