Visual methods and ethics: Stories from the field

This special issue on ethical issues in visual research arose from our collective observation that there is an urgent need for researchers to share and reflect upon stories about the ethical challenges they are facing in their research, including how they have navigated the formal procedural ethics review process and how they have identified and responded to ethical challenges in their research practice. Our approach in this special issue has been to call for tales from the field that raise new questions and highlight concerns within the context of real and ongoing research rather than attempt to derive solutions to ethical problems in an abstract or decontextualized way. The overall collection is therefore one that highlights the importance of good descriptive self-reflexive accounts of ethical and methodological issues, especially in terms of what is useful for other visual researchers and also for members of research ethics boards or committees (REB/REC).