När jag letade efter Göteborg. Bilden och arkivet i (re)konstruktionen av ett ursprung – en visuell autoetnografi

Abstract

I am presenting a work-in-progress in visual autoethnography, as it is currently unfolding, based on my experiences as a foster child in 1960s Sweden. My aim is dual-fold: I will describe the multi-faceted bricolage cultural analytic method that I am using in the project, and I will give examples of how one can tentatively interpret and analyse the visual materials. My methodological focus is the visualisation of the archive, where I survey the substantial archival material that directly concerns my own history, and I then choose textual excerpts and visual images to weave together and interpret. The visuals consist of historic images, my own photographs, family shots, postcards, and vernacular visuals. I use Roland Barthes’ punctum as a subjective tool, and I rely on reflexive writing and memory work in writing and in curating the archival material. I combine the visual and textual into visual synthesises for sociohistoric analysis and theorising, and I pay special attention to the gendered traces present in the building that was once my orphanage. This house served as a women’s prison for several centuries until the early 1900s, and in its archives one can catch material hints of the conditions for poor women in public places and the control of their sexuality in early and mid-1900s Sweden. I end the article briefly discussing the different ontological stance of the word and the image, making a call for letting the image take the lead in my investigation.