Deep sight. On the heuristic value of Visual Research for Marine Social Geography

Visual documentation, including professional and amatorial film-making and photography, has a long and established history within geography and represents a powerful means in creating transformative knowledge and advancing participatory, engaged, and action research practices. In this work we explore whether it is possible to expand our understanding of visual techniques potentialities beyond the role of complementing scientific data collection with visual evidence of phenomena already identified, communicating research results, and engaging participants in taking action in research and transformative action. Specifically, we try to identify and expand a fourth distinctive heuristic potentiality of visual research in exploring the issue under scrutiny, making researchers adopt different perspectives and understanding of the topic, highlight aspects not noticed by existing knowledge, and therefore reshape scientific narratives. This contribution addresses these questions by drawing from the research experience of the Collaboratorium for Socio-Environmental Analysis of the Ocean (CO>SEA) at Sapienza University of Rome, which has been exploring the ocean-society nexus through a series of European research projects - namely SeaPacs (2023), FishArt (2024), and PartArt4OW (2024). These projects put the participation of coastal communities at the centre of the research process and involved professional photographers and documentarists. Because of its specific characteristics that make it a difficult context to engage with traditional research methods, the ocean has proven to be a productive place to push visual methodologies further and understand both what happens when the subject of study is located in a difficult to access, mutable, and largely unknown environment, and how visual documentation and research can advance in the critical geography of the sea and the ocean. The performative nature of visual practices creates spaces where the visual, research processes, and participants’ experiences intersect, prioritizing the narratives and deploying all the potentialities of professional visual reportages and its entanglement with research practices.