Introduction

1More than 60 years ago, John Collier (1957) was the first to deconstruct and decipher the challenges surrounding the use of photographs in sociological research. He underlined the benefits of this methodological tool in interviews—its capacity to get people to talk, to be an effective aid to memory recall and to facilitate the understanding of a position by encouraging engagement with the interview process [1]. His article became a reference work for subsequent researchers in the domains of visual sociology and visual anthropology [2]. However, the work of Sadie American (1898) or the illustrative anthropological photography of Bateson and Mead (1942) should not be forgotten. It is clear that the use of pictures in the social sciences is not new and dates from the middle of the 20^th century (Maresca & Meyer, 2013). Nevertheless, recourse to pictures was often perceived as being not very scientific and, as a consequence, not very legitimate (Bouldoires, Reix, & Meyer, 2017) [3]. Visual methods only began to get a more enthusiastic reception as of the 1970s and 1980s (Pauwels, 2000). In the USA, more and more studies began to present sociology with pictures rather than the sociology of pictures (Harper, 2002). What is more, the researchers who called for greater use of visual methods defended the idea that using pictures could (and should) be central to sociological investigation and argumentation (Chauvin & Reix, 2015) [4].

2In line with this stance, the present article proposes reflections on the methodology of a survey which used photo elicitation as part of interviews to try to understand the relationships which former high-level sportsmen and sportswomen had with their bodies. We aim to better describe and explain this survey technique and share the lessons learnt about its use in the sociology of the body and especially the body in sport. First, we present the dispositional perspective which we adopted and how this can be linked to our methodology. Next, we address the modalities of our protocol, as well as the inherent benefits of this approach. Finally, we present a case study involving the contradictions between the images used during one of our interviews and those posted by the interviewee on social media networks.

1. Sports sociology, the dispositional perspective and photo elicitation

3What happens to the body habits of former high-level sportsmen and sportswomen once they have moved on from the world of competitive sports? What traces do the different environments of socialisation they encounter (family, peers, clubs, trainers, etc.) leave on their body? These questions formed the basis of a planned qualitative survey of 30 former high-level sportsmen (n = 17) and sportswomen (n = 13) conducted between 2018 and 2019. Photo elicitation was very quickly added to our initial approach involving biographical interviews. How would this tool be able to help us answer our research questions?

1.2. The unimaged consequences of an loosely-defined protocol

7A photo elicitation approach can be designed in four ways. The first method relies on photographs produced or presented by the researchers (Duteil-Ogata, 2007; Riom & Hummel, 2018). Second, photographs selected by the researchers can be used, such as images from the press, the internet, social media or other institutions (Meyer, 2017). Thirdly, photographs produced and presented by the interviewee themselves for the specific purposes of the research project (Bigando, 2013). The fourth approach is to use archive images (family photograph albums, photographs from sports clubs, etc.) which the researchers ask the interviewees to bring to their interview (Jonas, 2009). With regards to our research question and our hypotheses, we opted for the fourth option. When we made contact with the former athletes, we asked them to bring along “a few photographs” illustrating how their body or their body self-image had (or had not) changed throughout their life. A posteriori, we regretted not having given more precise instructions about the ideal number of photographs to bring as there was a great disparity in the number of pictures brought to the interview by the interviewees, reinforcing the heteroclite nature of the assembled materials [6].

8The photo elicitation approach was introduced at the very start of the interview, by asking the subjects to lay out their photographs on the table (or to show them to the interviewer if they were on their smartphone). Next, we chose to use a supple form of photo elicitation, that is, at the participants’ discretion. We informed the participants that the subject of the photographs would be broached mainly at the end of the interview, but they were told that they could refer to them at any moment during the discussion. Our aims here were to identify the interviewees’ priorities with regards to their body and to test how they would use their images.

9Furthermore, particularly strong attention was paid to the interviewees’ verbal and non-verbal reactions to the photographs: “You smiled as you were looking at that picture. Can you explain to me why?”, or “You don’t seem to like this photograph” and so on. At the end of the interview, whether the photographs had been commented on or not, we concluded the meeting with a few questions about them: “Can you describe them for me?” or “Why did you choose these particular photographs?” or “Are there elements in this photograph that have any particular meaning to you?”

10Using this protocol, we identified different ways of using photo elicitation [7]. Some people brought photographs which might be described as evidential, whose objective was to illustrate their physical commitment and notably their continued assiduous sporting activities or their relatively well-maintained, post-career body aesthetic (picture 1) [8]. Others selected photographs that evoked nostalgic feelings, in which one could see a high-performance body, thus illustrating—according to the interviewees—the high point of their sporting career (picture 2). Another category of photographs could be described as testimonial images (picture 3), whose aim was to demonstrate what a subject’s body had been through, marked by struggles and difficulties (e.g. injuries). Lastly, another usage of photo elicitation could be considered as supplementary. Some subjects thus chose photographs which did not put their body to the fore but instead showed, for example, their sporting sociability, such as in team photographs (picture 4).

11The heterogeneity of the visual material used in the interviews was also partly linked to these varied uses of them. Although individuals may have used different types of photographs, most of them stuck to a certain kind of photographic bias, privileging either an evidential, a nostalgic or a testimonial discourse. For many interviewees, the photographic support to their discourse turned out to be somewhat limited, both in time (only post-competitive-career pictures) and content (only pictures of training, competitions, leisure, etc.). Considering our theoretical perspective, however, it would have been heuristic to use photographs to discuss each significant stage in the body self-image of the former athletes.

Pictures 1, 2 and 3 (left to right): Photographs of a male former gymnast, a female former footballer and a female former gymnast

Pictures 1, 2 and 3 (left to right): Photographs of a male former gymnast, a female former footballer and a female former gymnast

Picture 4: Photograph of a former footballer

Picture 4: Photograph of a former footballer

2. Multiple bodies and multiple views on those bodies

12Of the 30 athletes interviewed, 17 brought photographs to their interview (6 men and 11 women). Without being able to make a definitive affirmation, we believe that former sportswomen were more enthused by and committed to providing images of their sporting careers and post-competitive life than were former sportsmen [9]. As such, photo elicitation’s differentiated effects on our interviews enriched some of our findings. Indeed, with socialisation through sports being so highly gendered (Mennesson, Visentin, & Clément, 2012), expectations of body habits (especially on the part of trainers and coaches) were not even the same for sportsmen and sportswomen participating in the same discipline. More particularly, the injunction to control one’s weight frequently forms a part of the life experience of high-level sportsmen and sportswomen; it is as much a sporting and performance prescription as it is an aesthetic one (Louveau, 2007), and it is not insignificant that the photographs brought to the interviews by the former sportswomen were often used by them to broach the topic of their weight and appearance.

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“Investigator: There is a dimension that we haven’t necessarily evoked yet, and that’s… aesthetics, appearance, in fact. With regard to that… What did you look like at [name of club] versus [name of another club]? Was there anything different?
Sophie: Is this where the photos come into it, or… ? [Laughs]
Inv.: Well, maybe. If you like. [Laughs]
S.: No, well, actually… Because I, I looked for the photos and I… I remember very well how I was… not my face, not my hair, not my hairstyle, but physically—because I think that’s the theme—well, … was I was pretty slim, pretty muscly, pretty ciccio [10] […] (Sophie, 28 years old, former footballer)”

Picture 5: Photograph of Catherine, 57 years old, former tennis player

Picture 5: Photograph of Catherine, 57 years old, former tennis player

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“Catherine: And here there are a few photos, but… that was… that was before I started training. […]
Investigator: It’s the start of your career?
C.: It’s… yes, a little bit, yes.
Inv.: Because you’re saying that it’s before you began training seriously?
C.: Yeah, before I did any physical training. Seriously, that looks a bit pudgy there, though.”

15Certain photographs (picture 5), and especially sportswomen’s commentaries on them, allowed us to understand more precisely the extent of the nutritional restrictions which they imposed on themselves, particularly during puberty, in order to meet the gendered aesthetic norms imposed by their sporting disciplines. Indeed, all of the former sportswomen who had experienced anorexia during that period of their life chose to show us photographs of themselves on the cusp of puberty (picture 6).

Picture 6: Photograph of Martine, 50 years old, former figure skater

Picture 6: Photograph of Martine, 50 years old, former figure skater

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“Investigator: How old were you, there?
Martine: I think that I was 14 years old—something like that. And that, that’s really a time, I think, that’s difficult… when you are not built like a wand, I mean to say, a classical dancer. It’s not easy, eh? Because your body is changing and because… well, that’s not great for a skater. [Laughs]”

17Photo elicitation’s principal positive contribution within our survey’s framework was to provide more consistency to the interviewees’ perceptual patterns. When physical attributes such as being slim, good musculature or good tonicity were mentioned, they were referring to different body types and representations of those bodies depending on who was being addressed: a woman, a man, a female gymnast or a male gymnast, and so on. Photographs provided us with elements that helped us to understand and confront our points of view with those of the interviewees. For example, Alexandre showed the researcher a photograph (picture 7) on which, with no commentary on his part, they would normally have seen and noted a well-muscled body, especially the legs. Yet, this was not what Alexandre wanted the investigator to see. On the contrary, he described the legs in the picture as “legs that don’t look like anything much”. After Alexandre had given up his sporting career, his body habits led him to work-out intensively in order to create a new bodily appearance for himself—the opposite of the body self-image he had had as a competitive figure skater (picture 8) [11].

Pictures 7 and 8: Photographs of Alexandre, 44 years old, former figure skater. On the first picture, at 18 years old, and on the second one, at 23 years old.

Pictures 7 and 8: Photographs of Alexandre, 44 years old, former figure skater. On the first picture, at 18 years old, and on the second one, at 23 years old.

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“So, here, you can’t see my body too much, but there, in that one, I was 18 years old. So, I think that that was around the time when I’d stopped everything, in fact. So, I’ve got legs that don’t look like anything much, I’ve got no arms.”

19The ability to make subjects talk about their past bodies using photographs also enabled us to more easily see the changes (or not) in their patterns of perception This can be illustrated in the fact that Kathy’s obsession with being slim during her career as a tennis player was still evident more than 15 years later, during our interview. Commenting on the comparison between a photograph of herself at 16 years old (picture 9), when she weighed 60 kilogrammes and measured 1 m 72 cm, and a photograph taken shortly before the interview, in which she weighed 55 kilogrammes (picture 10), she described herself as “not pretty” because she did not think that she was slim enough: “And still, it was funny, because all my old friends who saw that, they said, ‘Hey, that’s unbelievable!’ They said, ‘Oh, but that’s good, there. You’re too slim now’ ”

Pictures 9 and 10: Photographs of Kathy, 36 years old, former tennis player. On the first picture, at 16 years old, and on the second one, just before the interview.

Pictures 9 and 10: Photographs of Kathy, 36 years old, former tennis player. On the first picture, at 16 years old, and on the second one, just before the interview.

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“Investigator: And when you were playing tennis? Here, for example.
Kathy: Well, looking at that, I was…
Inv.: You were 16 years old?
K.: Well, I don’t find that pretty.
Inv.: No?
K.: No. And still, it was funny, because all my old friends who saw that, they said, ‘Hey, that’s unbelievable!’ They say, ‘Oh, but that’s good, there. You’re too slim now.’”

3. Associating social networks and photo elicitation

21When investigators use pictures, it is impossible to ignore those that are brought to their attention without them being asked for. Indeed, we were unable to create clear boundaries or limitations to the types of photographs used in our interviews, notably because we were obliged to recruit our former sportsmen and sportswomen via social networks. Thus, it was common for them to use images posted on their Facebook or Instagram profiles in response to our requests for photographs.

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“But the photos, do you want me to… If you have Facebook, I can friend you, and you can use all the photos that are on my profile.” (Tim, 25 years old, former gymnast)

23From that point onwards, we had to friend or follow the digital profiles of some of the interviewees a posteriori, which had not been foreseen in the study protocol. Indeed, we had not anticipated using the photographs present on these profiles and which had not been talked about during the interviews. Nevertheless, we could not close our eyes to these images published on social networks, especially those published deliberately after the interview and which sometimes seemed to directly contradict the statements collected during them. This situation can be illustrated using the particular case of Samantha, a 33-year-old former figure skater [12].

24At the age of 25, after ten years of continuously maintaining her body habits, especially with regards to diet (periods of restricted eating coupled with extreme weight monitoring, alternating with periods involving the complete abandonment of restrictions and significant alcohol consumption), Samantha stopped skating. This young woman’s career had been tense from the moment she began puberty: “From 16 to 25, I never liked my body.” Although as a child, her body shape had corresponded to the physiological and aesthetic norms that were perceived to be adequate for her chosen discipline (picture 11), on reaching adolescence this was no longer the case (picture 12). Samantha was never socialised to the body habits that was coherent with the dominant norms of what was considered healthy [13]: “I didn’t really have parents who were very food or meal conscious. They made me food like they made food for themselves. […] it wasn’t horrible, you know. And then my mum liked everything to have a sauce.” In adolescence, she had repeated conflicts with her trainer and her club provided her with no supervision or guidance as to managing or caring for her body. Samantha began to put on weight, and her level of skating went down:

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“One moment I’d do these draconian diets, and the next I’d eat anything. So, it was… really… quite a struggle… all the time, all the time. Or I didn’t have a good understanding of what it was to eat well. I think that that’s… well… because I didn’t learn about it when I was little.”

Picture 11: Photograph of Samantha from her first skating competition

Picture 11: Photograph of Samantha from her first skating competition

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When asked why she chose it, she replied that thought it was “cute”. She associated that time of life with being carefree, passionate about her sport and having no problems with her body shape or image.
“If I had a daughter, I think that I’d quite like her to… maybe not in skating, but that she’d… get into an activity like that…”

Picture 12: Photograph of Samantha from one of her last skating competition

Picture 12: Photograph of Samantha from one of her last skating competition

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This photograph evoked the tensions (between the normalised ideal body for figure skating and her own body) which she was forced to face from the start of puberty.
When asked to describe herself then, she answered:
“I don’t like myself… it won’t do at all. […] I don’t think that I was in good physical shape! [giggles] At least not for skating.”

28When she stopped skating, Samantha discovered cross-training, and a new phase in her body habits began for her. She recounted to the investigators how she became passionate about nutrition during this time; she followed a weight-loss programme and, above all, sought to learn more about food. The programme “worked”, and she stuck to it. She described how now, every day, she weighed what she ate and followed an identical menu all week: a courgette omelette in the morning, chicken and vegetables at lunchtime and in the evening. “I’m really careful about what I eat. I weigh everything I eat. Erm… I’ve become… Yes, I’m hyper-focused on my food now [giggles].” Despite admitting that she sometimes gave herself some slack on the weekends, even having “orgies of food”, overall, Samantha seemed to have a new relationship with her body: she no longer drank alcohol (which she associated with the period of her sporting decline) and she no longer partied. Cross-training had become a central part of her daily routine. She explained that she no longer had the time to do other sports because her involvement in this new discipline had reactivated the coenesthetic disposition [14] that she had acquired during her figure skating career: “I get the same sensations that I had skating, of pushing yourself, going for perfection, working hard to reach something… […] There’s that performance side to things, so if I’ve got this body, it’s also because of what I’m able to do, and that makes me stronger.”

29On analysing the empirical photographic material collected, the main points of Samantha’s career helped us to highlight the very significant transformation in her body habits after the end of her career, in all the domains investigated (physical appearance, nutrition, physical and sporting activities, rest and recuperation, and caring for the body). Although this interviewee seemed to have acquired a varied range of dispositions during her sporting career—notably because of the inconsistency between her familial and sporting socialisations—it became apparent to us that her post-career period had been characterised by a search for coherence. This search involved the rejection of a number of her past practices (notably putting her hedonistic disposition on hold) and an intensification of her commitment to sporting and physical rigour (either the reinforcement of her stoic disposition or the development of her ascetic dispositions). Our analyses were partly corroborated by the many photographs that Samantha showed on her Instagram profile. She usually posted pictures to do with her current sporting practices—more specifically and almost systematically, the photograph’s theme would be the physical and bodily effort of cross-training (pictures 13 and 14). Even though this interviewee was of a particularly stoic disposition from a very early age, thanks to the physical commitment presupposed by figure skating, this disposition became absolutely central to Samantha’s relationship with her body once her career was over. We had detected the reinforcement of this disposition during the interview, but the sheer quantity of photographs posted was a sounding board for this supposition. This was also the case for other photographs, including the numerous close-ups of healthy meals (picture 15).

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32Some of the other images, however, seemed to contradict parts of our analyses. Although we thought that we had understood the course of Samantha’s body habits, with its succession of different periods of socialisation which had brought her to a tipping point between two sharply different relationships with her body (those during and after her career), some of her photographs somewhat qualified that analysis. For example, we discovered that Samantha was still drinking alcohol, notably cocktails. The investigators were intrigued by the number of photographs featuring cocktails, as well as the captions which accompanied them. Commenting on a picture of a glass of alcohol with the words “This is the life” (picture 16) or announcing a week’s holiday with a picture of a cocktail captioned “Day 1”, which did not suggest that this drink was going to be an exception. On the contrary, these pictures harked back to the previous excessive consumption of alcohol which Samantha had described during her interview. Could we still talk about that tipping point and the supposed radical transformation in her body habits?

Pictures 16, 17 and 18: Screenshots of photographs posted on social networks by Samantha in July, August and September 2019

Pictures 16, 17 and 18: Screenshots of photographs posted on social networks by Samantha in July, August and September 2019

33The hiatus between what interviewees say and what they leave unsaid is inherent to any data collection process in the field of social sciences and almost always leads to social desirability bias (Mercklé & Octobre, 2015). Because a photograph is “a cultural product resulting from the dated and socially situated constructs of codes and conventions” (Papinot, 2016, paragr. 7, our translation), selecting photographs and, above all, presenting some of them to the subject, is regulated by the frontiers of “the domain of what can be photographed” (Bourdieu, 1965, our translation). In other words, in all social spaces, there are photographs which “can be taken”, which “should be taken” and which are thus “presentable” (Hummel, 2017, p. 4, our translation). Deciding to involve interviewees in the selection of pictures for discussion during their interview requires reflexivity. The domain of what can be photographed, within the framework of our survey, reflects the more or less legitimate areas of practice that can be spoken about, depending on the context of the narrative. The interviewee’s narrative is only ever “one plausible version, among others” (Demazière, 2007, p. 93, our translation). So, this approach is less of a quest for reality and more of a search for one reality; that is, the investigator’s attempt to form a sociologically coherent whole from the statements made by the interviewee. As with any other type of discourse, the elements exposed on social networks [15] must also be deconstructed and discussed.

34In Samantha’s case, two quite distinct types of presentation underly the photographs evoked. Whereas the photographs showing her during her sporting activities are permanent, because they are posted on her Instagram profile, the photographs of cocktails and parties are only shown as parts of “stories”, which are by definition ephemeral [16]. These two types of presentation methods fulfil different functions: on the one hand, there is a totally transparent image of her sporting activities, fully living up to her body habits and coherent with the identity she claims; on the other hand, there is only partial visibility of how she parties, which breaks from how she usually presents herself and how she usually represents herself.

35Just as the respondent to a survey never says everything, the survey itself cannot show everything. Even if the contradictions in some narratives are not specifically linked to the photo elicitation, it is this approach which enabled us to reveal them by making us interested in the visuals and above all in the way in which individuals portray themselves using their photographs on social networks [17]. This digital consideration helped us to unravel the “biographical illusion” effect (Bourdieu, 1986) produced by some bodies of photographic work, most notably Samantha’s.

Conclusion

36We showed that photo elicitation could undoubtedly add something positive to research, especially in a survey investigating patterns of body self-image or self-perception. On the one hand, using photographs gave us additional elements with which to understand subjects’ discourse by enabling us to reinforce our analysis of a differential and gendered socialisation through sports with regards to the aesthetic norms in place in the world of high-level sports. Aided by their photographs, former sportswomen were able to describe and comment on the imposition of slimness. On the other hand, photo elicitation offered the investigators the chance to question their own representations by comparing them to those of the subjects interviewed. Talking about somebody who is “muscly”, “over-weight” or “toosmall” is far easier and relevant when the image helps to make those words explicit. However, this presupposes that the investigator has the photographs that allow those discussions to take place with the interviewees, and this was not always the case. Having more prescriptive instructions about the number of photographs, their contents, and their place in time (before, during and after a sports career) would have enabled us to establish a more homogenous visual record and made transversal comparisons far easier. Furthermore, greater photographic homogeneity would have helped to answer more of the research questions because it would have used photographs from every period of the former sportsmen and sportswomen’s socialisation through sports.

37Samantha’s case illustrates the potential for incoherencies between discourse and practice. The presentation of her photographs revealed several contrasting levels between her narrative and her photographs published on social networks. One should remember that a photograph is always limited in what it can show and therefore biased because something is left out. There will always be something unforeseeable when one chooses to use photo elicitation to support an interview. It is essential to remain vigilant and “to question what it means to make somebody talk using pictures” (Papinot, 2016, paragr. 13, our translation). The incoherencies revealed in this survey underline the utility of using social networks to investigate individuals’ relationships with their bodies and body image. If the internet has not radically transformed the practices of social actors (Martin & Dagiral, 2016), its use has nevertheless become commonplace in very many domains of daily life, and very notably when it comes to making one’s body habits visible to all, from the aesthetic, sporting, and nutritional viewpoints. (Tubaro & Casilli, 2016). In this respect, taking (treated, filtered, and contextualised) content taken from the internet and confronting it with data collected using more traditional methods may well become a normal part of research methodologies.