Visual imagery of Czech society in collective memory between the years 1989 and 2009: The city and the countryside in pictures and in stories about pictures
Abstract
The study informs about the process and the methodology of a qualitative sociological study using primarily visual (photographic) methods and approaches in order to understand social realities such as "social" or "collective memory" (Halbwachs). The goal of the study is to grasp the re-presentations of a post-revolutionary era through photographic images and stories told about them.
Moreover, the study has also an ambition to understand the specifics and analogies of the re-constructing of one''s past in the post-revolutionary era by the means of photographic images and by stories. This should lead to a reflection about the functioning of so-called "media of memory" (Kansteiner) as well as to a reflection regarding the approach towards the empirical research.
In the second, analytical, part of the text the authors present a semiotic analysis of photographs and focus on those photographs, which according to the spokesmen represent the display of a city or countryside