Călin Ilea

Environmental Portraits as Means for Depicting Transnational Families

Călin Ilea

Article information

Abstract

By examining interviews with photojournalists, research in visual anthropology and observations made during field study, it become clearer and clearer the need to identify a new method to convey the information regarding the difficulties transnational families deal with in everyday life.

This paper makes a case for the usage of environmental portraits as a means of study for the relationships between family members in transnational families, but also as a new method to disseminate the research results regarding transnational families from Romania. Environmental portraits are generally used by photojournalists to display their subjects in their natural environment and, in doing this, to give more information about their personality or about the issues they are dealing with. The method employs a new type of presenting the results to a wider public, in which environmental portraits are coupled with relevant quotes form interviews.

Keywords: visual methods, photography, photojournalism, environmental portraits, transnational families.

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