Visual Autobiographies in East London: Narratives of Still Images, Interpersonal Exchanges, and Intrapersonal Dialogues

This article reports on how a study of visual autobiographical workshops, conducted with social diverse groups in East London, provides us with insights about the narrative nature of still images, and the co-construction of narratives across a number of contextual levels, including those of interpersonal interaction, and internal dialogues within the self and with imagined audiences. The paper argues that such research can support and perhaps extend contemporary reformulations of "narrative" in the verbal field as involving multiple, co-constructed, temporally uncertain, often contradictory and incoherent narratives. It also suggests that the still image narratives and their dialogic production indicate the fragmented, deferred and montaged narrative constructions that could usefully be explored within more conventional forms of narrative.