An iconoclast video ethnography: destruction as a sociological method

• In Event: Open Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 1: Qualitative Methods

Abstract

This presentation puts in dialogue two projects that, 10 years apart, involved the destruction of cameras as part of our work as visual sociologists. One project (2014) exposed several cameras from each decade spanning 1950-2010 to direct sunlight refracted through a fresnel lens into their sensors until they died by combustion; the other (2023-2024) exposed a 1978 model of waterproof film camera to seawater to then dismantle the camera as part of a performance. Both projects visually documented the cameras’ dying processes (e.g., the last-captured images flaring in the sensor during combustion and the prints of water spreading on a film until disrupting the camera’s light sensor). Both projects were also motivated by pushing these cameras into a space where their nominal credentials would become irrelevant or inoperative—as in a subversion of their primary function and of the scientific knowledge that conventionally framed their capabilities.
These works led us to question some ethical principles of our practice as ethnographers and filmmakers, leading us to argue that the intentional destruction of these cameras can constitute a research method for further exploring the norms, representations and politics involved in lens-based practice. Questions we will explore include: What does the alteration or destruction of images mean for filmic ethnography? What are the affects, practices, beliefs, and norms involved in this destruction for visual sociologists? And how can a participatory approach to the destruction of these video ethnographic images (e.g., through a performance) help us reflect on the truisms and power dynamics that shaped the development of ethnographic film in sociology?

Authors

• Julie Patarin-Jossec, DePaul University

• Gregory Shawn Scott, De Paul University