As a sociologist I am interested in social change. This includes the way people spend their time and their various hobbies and rituals. One thing that is interesting in recent times is the growth of film photography. There is very little sociological analysis of photography either as a practice or as an art or craft. Many years ago the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu did a study of photography and there was a collection of essays put together in the book Photography: A Middle-Brow Art.
I am beginning to go through this now as a way of starting to think about how to approach the practice of photography in a sociological sense. This will aid me in writing a research paper on the resurgence of film in the digital age.
This will also contribute to the course I am designing on the sociology of photography. To the best of my knowledge there is no course on the sociology of photography in the UK.
