Visuelle Wissenssoziologie der Fotografie

The article sketches the outlines to a visual sociology of knowledge of photography. It begins with a discussion of the epistemological and methodical approaches to photography by Roland Barthes and Pierre Bourdieu, and it reflects upon the theoretical and analytic conceptions of the art historians Erwin Panofsky and Max Imdahl in regard to their significance for an empirical visual sociology. Based on this, Erving Goffmans metaphor of the frame is introduced for the sociological analysis of photographs between single frames, picture contexts, and social milieus. A photograph taken from current everyday communication is used for the illustration and for the empirical testing of the methodological and methodical considerations.