The 2022 Rachel Tanur Memorial Prize for Visual Sociology

Home Page Image Credits

Henry Moncrieff Zabaleta
1st Prize Rachel Tanur Contest 2020
Venezuela is internationally known as a “Factory of Queens” for the Miss Universe, the most important female beauty contest in the world. This beauty pageant represents a hegemonic, transversal, and gendered construction of the female body in the socialist country… (read more)

Camilo Leon-Quijano
1st Prize Rachel Tanur Contest 2018
Koumba, 16, is one of the best players of Chantereine High School. She lives in a social housing tower in Sarcelles. This city has the biggest social housing density of the country. Her father is retired and he suffers from a chronic illness… (read more)

Aubrey Graham
1st Prize Rachel Tanur Contest 2014
At first glance, this image may look similar to those that appear beside ‘donate here’ instructions in magazine ads and non-governmental organization (NGO) websites… (read more)

Kristin Miller
1st Prize Rachel Tanur Contest 2014
Three men stand on a sidewalk in San Francisco. They stand equidistant from each other, not even their shadows touching. In any event, they are more engrossed in the smartphones they hold than in anything going on around them… (read more)

Eryn Snyder
1st Prize Rachel Tanur Contest 2012
Four to six times a day, Bedik women haul water from a nearby well back to their community. Their feet have cut trails into the red earth and worn smooth the rocks along the paths up to their mountain villages… (read more)

Emilie Dubois
1st Prize Rachel Tanur Contest 2010
I swung off the curb and onto the M4 bus relieved to finally step out of the thick, simmering street air of a New York City late summer afternoon… (read more)

Haruna Miyagawa Fukui
1st Prize Rachel Tanur Contest 2010
This photograph was taken on a sunny spring weekend at the Japanese Friendship Garden in San Diego, California. The photographer is a graduate student from Japan… (read more)

2020 1st Prize - Henry Moncrieff Zabaleta
Venezuela is internationally known as a “Factory of Queens” for the Miss Universe, the most important female beauty contest in the world.This beauty pageant represents a hegemonic, transversal, and gendered construction of the female body in the socialist country... (read more)
2018 1st Prize - Camilo Leon-Quijano
Koumba looks at the horizon from the balcony of her apartment. In the background, we see the social housing buildings of Sarcelles, France... (read more)
2016 1st Prize - Apgraham Kitza
At first glance, this image may look similar to those that appear beside ‘donate here’ instructions in magazine ads and non-governmental organization (NGO) websites... (read more)
2014 1st Prize - Kristin Miller
Three men stand on a sidewalk in San Francisco. They stand equidistant from each other, not even their shadows touching. In any event, they are more engrossed in the smartphones they hold than in anything going on around them...(read more)
2012 1st Prize - Eryn Snyder
Four to six times a day, Bedik women haul water from a nearby well back to their community. Their feet have cut trails into the red earth and worn smooth the rocks along the paths up to their mountain villages... (read more)
2010 1st Prize - Emilie Dubois
I swung off the curb and onto the M4 bus relieved to finally step out of the thick, simmering street air of a New York City late summer afternoon... (read more)
2008 1st Prize - Haruna Miyagawa Fukui
This photograph was taken on a sunny spring weekend at the Japanese Friendship Garden in San Diego, California. The photographer is a graduate student from Japan... (read more)

What we are and who we are...
The RC57 History

What we are and who we are...

V

isual Sociology RC57 is an international, inter/trans disciplinary community of academics, practitioners and professionals with a shared interested in the visual as a way to unpack and frame our experience of the world. We live in a visual age and so it is right that we work with images and think about visual artefacts, building global partnerships and scholarly links to collaboratively see the world, sociologically. We have an elected board which is revised every four years, with one member not being able to serve for more than two-terms.

With members from the Middle East, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas, specialising in a range of disciplines, including (but not limited to) Sociology, Anthropology, Ethnography, Visual Culture, Photography, Media and Communication, Criminology, Geography, Pedagogy, Politics and more, we are well represented, academically and globally.

Through our workshops, conferences and publications, we encourage debate, analysis and application of Visual Sociology, both in the interest of scholarly and methodological advancement as well as for practical application that contribute to a better world. In particular, we host free, pre-Forum and pre Congress workshops wherever the ISA participates globally. The workshops are an important facet of what we do, and we are one of only a handful of groups (TG/WG or RC) who offer free, pre-forum activities. In an effort to democratise knowledge and make it accessible to all, the Pre-forum/Congress workshops reflect the ethos and values of our group to share ideas, spaces and understanding with local partners, academics and communities, to better acquaint ourselves with the spaces outside our immediate locality and to collaboratively co-create knowledge and build
relationships.

Additionally, we also pride ourselves on our very own, standalone event, the Visual Workshop. A biannual event that moves between a Board member’s host institution, the Visual Workshop is our own international, PGR/ECR focused forum. These workshops offer a space to build collegiate relationships, learn and exchange ideas, whilst emphasising PGR/ECR development, supported by key thinkers and established academics and
practitioners in the field.

The RC57 History

T

he Visual Sociology Research Committee (RC57) is the 57 th Research Committee within the International Sociological Association (ISA), having achieved RC status in 2018, 10 years after its initial inception. Originating as an ad-hoc group of graduate students who first met at an International Visual
Sociological Association (IVSA) summer school in 2006, the Visual Sociology Thematic Group (TG05) was formally established one year later in 2007 by Dennis Zuev and Regev Nathansohn, holding its first sessions at the ISA forum, Barcelona in 2007 and was officially approved by the ISA in 2009. The group was upgraded to a working group (WG03) in 2013 and again, finally to a full Research Committee (RC57) in 2017, having exceeded the 100 members threshold. At present, the RC 57 is only one of two official bodies engaging with and foregrounding Visual Sociology as a disciplinary field.

In addition to our collegiate and scholarly work, we also offer a photography prize, the Rachel Tanur Prize in Visual Sociology (in collaboration with the SSRC, USA and the Mark Family Trust). The prize recognizes students in the social sciences who incorporate visual analysis in their work. It is named for Rachel Dorothy Tanur (1958–2002), an urban planner and lawyer who cared deeply about people and their lives and was an acute observer of living conditions and human relationships.

The award is also biannual and is administered by SSRC in collaboration with ISA RC57 who provide jury members for the prize. The award is given at the ISA Forum/Congress and in addition to a financial award and publication, the winner is given honorary membership of the RC57 board and mentoring for two years by members of RC57, which we are delighted to participate in and consider it an honor to co-host.

Dec, 2021