From documentation to dialogue: exploring new 'routes to knowledge' through digital image making
This article considers the mediating role of digital photography for eliciting embodied and dialogical processes of knowledge sharing and knowledge making in the course of ethnographic fieldwork. Based on research in the last remaining Leavers Lace factory in England, the article details examples of how the visual is linked with the aural, gestural, performative and discursive in attempting to reveal know how and understanding around machine made lace. The article shows that in spite of multisensory engagements, both knowledge transmission and knowledge uptake remain partial. However, through multisensory means to communicate and comprehend, researcher and participants create new ways of understanding, relating and representing the practice under study.