This article builds on a workshop in visual sociology, held
in the fall of 2017, on board of the “Belle Époque” ship
on Lake Geneva. We reflect on the status of photographs
– intended to be primarily scientific – which seemed to
serve no purpose other than being “aesthetically pleasing”.
Instead of turning away from these images, which in our eyes
have an anecdotic or sometimes even problematic character
(scientifically speaking), we put forward the idea that the
tension – or even opposition – between the “beautiful”
picture (aesthetic quality) and the “good” picture (heuristic
quality) should be taken seriously. This question, still rarely
discussed in the literature on visual methods, is yet often in
the background of researchers’ visual material production.
In this way, we focus on a series of 57 “beautiful” photographs,
which we submit to an epistemological analysis,
using four strands of reflection based on different theoretical
frameworks. This exploratory approach aims to encourage
reflexive experimentation in the field of visual methods.