Abstract
This is a mock-up of doing sociology on visual experiences. How socioculturally, or how differently do we "see"? Many discussions have been made on the visual and the ocular-centrism in the modern world. Sociologically, the seeing is a way of conduct or an institute, and investigating the visual is exploring the social. However, in this connection, fewer empirical examinations have been conducted. I intend to do this in the everyday world. Here, the target is the "visual experiences", which are various vision-related experiences, distinguished from "vision" as physiological given and "visuality" as sociocultural abstract. Research is attempted using the autophotography, a social psychological method for self-concept study. That is, I requested the subjects to take photos of "you as you see", to select photos appropriate to the theme, and to describe how the photos were taken. In the beginning, the photos were classified with regard to their main objects. Many autophotos, taken by Japanese university students, were of things rather than persons—things as favorite, for-daily-use, memorial, relationship-signified, and so on. Although this is an interesting result, which indicates that Japanese youth constructs their selfhoods "via things," the research focus was not on the selfrelated contents of photos. In fact, I was not concerned about whether and how they really were autophotos. I wanted to see how the subjects did visual experiences respectively when taking-photos activated their experiences. Then, for example, the photos appeared to be only ordinary, the images of bodies seemed connotative of how the subjects touch themselves, and the photo's objects were very rambling things. I believe here are points of departure. The arrangement and display, rather than the analysis, of visual images is the practical way of exploring visual experiences. Or the continuous re-arrangement and re-display is a somewhat effective way for visual study.
