Visual Ethnography
We are observers, not just viewers.“5 Desk Tops” and “9 Outlooks”
Initial Frame
Lesbians – tomboys. Visually research their outlook, accessories and clothing to see how and why they dress differently from other girls, and to see whether their outlook affect their social life.
Changed Frame
Lesbians. Combined research of their outlooks and their desks. Hope to see something more from them than just observing their outlook, e.g. accessories, daily necessities, habits, etc.
Definition of Terms
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an adjective, to describe characteristics of an object or activity related to female same-sex desire. (From Wikipedia)
Tomboy
A tomboy is a girl who exhibits some characteristics and or behavior considered typical of the gender role of a boy, including the wearing of typically masculine-oriented types of clothes and engaging in games and activities that are often physical in nature, and which are considered in many cultures to be the domain of boys. (From Wikipedia) In Hong Kong, short forms “TB” or “B” are usually used to stand for a tomboy.
Tomboy Girl
Tomboy girls are widely used in Hong Kong to describe girly girls. A tomboy girl acts the gender role of a girl in a homosexual relationship between two girls. Short forms “TBG” or “G” are usually used to stand for a tomboy girl or girly girl.
Research Approach and Data
I took 9 photos of lesbians among my friends and their friends. I cropped out their heads in the photos to protect their identities. The photos show them standing still and show only from their neck to feet, mainly focus on their clothing style. Among 9 lesbians, only 1 is TBG, the other 8 are TBs. I also asked them to take photos of their domestic desk tops. Only 5 of them sent me their desk photos, while the other four rejected.
I invited all of the 9 lesbians to do interviews regarding their clothing style and their social life. Only 6 of them accepted my invitation and did detailed interviews with me. 4 of the interviews are face-to-face interviews with sound recorded, while the other 2 are phone interviews without recording.
Reasons of rejecting detailed interview are mainly to protect their identities and privacy, while reasons of rejecting to provide desk tops are mainly to protect their privacy and also they think their desk tops are too messy to let people to see. They think that their desks are even more private than their portrait photos.
Summary of research data
| Target | Gender Role | How to get to the person | Outlook Photo | Desk Top Photo | Interview |
| A | TBG | My friend | Y | Y | Y |
| B | TB | A’s friend | Y | Y | Y |
| C | TB | Waitress in where I interviewed A and B | Y | N | Y |
| D | TB | C’s friend | Y | Y | Y |
| E | TB | D’s friend | Y | Y (same as D’s) | N |
| F | TB | My friend | Y | Y | Y |
| G | TB | My friend | Y | Y | Y |
| H | TB | A’s friend | Y | N | N |
| I | TB | A’s friend | Y | N | N |
Remark: D and E live together, so they share the same desk top photo.
Only targets A, B, D, F and G gave me their outlook photos, desk top photos and did interview with me. Therefore, this report will mainly focus on them.
Observation from Outlook Photos
All of the TBs wear boy’s cut, loose, trousers with dark colour tone, for example black, navy blue or dark green. The TBG, target A, wears girl’s cut, slim, trousers, high heel leather shoes in black colour tone. Please refer to Appendix i to iii.
Summary of their clothing
| Target | Body | Legs | Feet |
| A | White shirt, black coat | Black skinny jeans | Black leisure lace-up |
| B | Black shirt, black jacket | Light blue loose jeans | White Sneakers |
| C | Black shirt, black sweater | Black loose jeans | Black leather shoes |
| D | White T-shirt, black wind jacket | Blue relax straight jeans | Black leisure shoes |
| E | Army green thick wind jacket | Black sports pants | Black flip-flops |
| F | White stripped long T-shirt, navy blue short T-shirt | Black slim jeans | Navy blue leisure lace-up |
| G | Black T-shirt, grey suit | Black relax straight jeans | Black leather shoes |
| H | White stripped shirt, black leather jacket | Grey loose trousers | Black leather shoes |
| I | White stripped shirt, black coat | Dark blue loose jeans | Black sneakers |
Analysis with Interview Results
All of them said they wear that kind of clothes (their style) because they are comfortable and they never wear dress, regardless of their role of gender. Target A wears girl’s wear and all the others prefer to wear loose cut or male’s clothing, while some of them even only wear male’s clothing. TBs will go to buy male’s clothes but none of them buy those clothes especially designed for TBs, e.g. special vests. The common reason for wearing loose and male’s clothing is comfortable. They feel those clothes comfortable to wear. Second, they find themselves comfortable to wear that way, because they think that is who they are, their personality. Third, to show their identity, whether they consider themselves as boys or not. They want to show their identity as this, a boyish outlook.
For the first reason, choosing to wear comfortable materials is a functional and objective reason. It is related to how the manufacturer and garment companies produce the garments; related to the quality of garments or style of fashion. Whereas the second reason, finding themselves comfortable in that way, it is somehow related to in-born personality, an instinctive reason, personal choice reflecting who they really are. For the third reason, showing their identity, it is strong, conscious and subjective way of seeing. They try to impose a way of seeing to other people of how they want people to look at them. This is quite interesting to study why they want to impose a particular image to themselves. It is possible to study whether this is related to media and peers affection. For examples, if masculine has been promoted as cool, handsome and positive, adolescents might perceive it that way and mimic it. In addition, if they are studying in pure girls’ schools, some of their friends are lesbians and they have less chance to get contact with boys. They might have chance to become lesbian in that kind of environment. Many of my friends are having such experience.
Observation from Desk Top Photos
Only targets A, B, D, E, F and G provided their desk top photos for the research. Please refer to Appendix iii to v.
Summary of their desks
| Target | Gender | Table Type | Things on Top |
| A | TBG | Desk | Desk top computer, shelf, books, papers/documents/notes, drawing board, dictionary, printer, a pair of glasses, cup |
| B | TB | Desk | Framed Disney puzzle, Mickey Mouse decoration, dog’s photo in photo frame, speaker phones, bottle of water, bottle of wine, books and magazines, clock |
| D & E | TB | Plastic box | Laptop computer, cigarettes, remote controls, fire lighter, bag, garment clip |
| F | TB | Computer table |
Empty water bottle, pencils, pencil case, notebook, keyboard, drawing board, mouse and mouse pad, lecture notes, cell phone, a book from the library |
| G | TB | Desk | Books, documents, shoe box, a bag, paper document holder from IKEA, shoe pads, stationery, Doraemon figure |
Individual Analysis
A’s desk is quite neat and tidy, this can show that she is a self-discipline person, which also matches with her dressing style. She always dresses in the standard style: elegant, neat and tidy. She has a drawing board with the computer, this shows that she uses the drawing board to draw graphics or do graphic related work. She has a thick “辭海” dictionary, books and documents, which means that she might also like to read books and check the words from the dictionary, obsessing with learning more knowledge.
B’s desk is even more clean and tidy, because she tidied up her desk before taking the photograph as told. I told her that it is no need to pack her things, however she really insisted. This shows that she cares about her own image in front of other people very much. Try to pretend and act what she wants to be. This is also being reflected in the conversation with her, that she tried hard to convince people who she is. Also, this shows that she is quite girly inside her heart, which is quite opposite to her outlook. This can also be reflected by her framed Disney puzzle and Mickey Mouse decoration. By only placing the speakers on her desk in a position good for listening, this shows that she might be a person who loves music. Magazines also show that she likes to get information from media, regarding the youth trends and fashion trends. By looking at her desk, we know that she is a dog lover as well.
D and E live together and share a studio flat. They don’t have a proper table or desk, and generally the “tabletop” is quite messy. This also shows that their flat is too small to place a table. Also, this means that they both no need to use a proper table. The main feature on the desk is the laptop computer, which tells that they don’t have enough space for a desktop computer and normally place their computer on their laps or the plastic box. They are obviously smokers. There are at least two remote controls on top, most likely AV controls, which means they have more than one AV devices. They love audio-visual entertainment, because even if they have a tiny living space, they still reserve places for those devices.
F’s desk shows pencils and pencil case, which means F uses pencils very often. And, there is a drawing board connected with the computer, which means she does graphic related work. She may use pencils to draw sketches before drawing in the computer. She was charging her cell phone on her desk, she might be a person who always use cell phone or consider cell phone very important to her. Lecture notes show that F is a student. It is a typical student’s desk.
G’s desk is very messy. There are lots of different things on her desk, e.g. shoe pads, shoebox, books and documents. The things on top almost cover the whole desk top, which means she seldom uses her desk to work. Also, there is no computer on her desk, which means she works in another place. She might abandon this desk for quite a long time and just treat this desk as a place to put her stuff. For example, there is a brand new IKEA document holder on top, it seems that she just bought it for a short while or someone bought it for her recently. Also, there are things supposed not to appear on a desk top, like shoebox and shoe pads. There are lots of books and documents on her desk. She is a person who reads books. In addition, she has intention to tidy up her documents by buying IKEA document holders. I consider she is a busy person as well. It is because from her portrait, she was attending some events. She was wearing suit and there is a red-clothed long table like a reception counter at the background. She is too busy to tidy up her own things or she is a very lazy person and hates to do housework. For there are many books on the shelf, I would rather say she like to read books and has read many books in the past. It is because those books are not placed properly on the shelf and they seem to be put there for a long time.
Conclusion
TBs are like boys. They don’t like to wear bright colour and would rather choose male’s clothing. They might consider themselves boys mentally, but most of them don’t. They think that is just who they are. From the interview, most of them like to make friends with lesbians. It is because they think they understand each other more than those heterosexual people, and their outlook somehow helps them to make friends with each other. Their outlook as a sign telling people that they are the same kind of person. Also, their outlook somehow helps them to attract girls, and eventually become their girl friends. From the interview, almost all of them meet their girlfriends from their workplace or friends around them, and the process is rather passive as told. They seldom or never find girlfriends so intentionally and actively, just by chance and luck. Only target D and G had experience to meet girls from online lesbian websites in the past, and both of them didn’t try that after their adolescence.
Their desks reflect their personality, while their outlook reflects their ideal image in front of other people. Some of them can be a totally different person by seeing their outlook and desks. For example, target B has a very boyish outlook and her voice is like a boy, but she is quite girly inside. That means she would rather like to impose a masculine image to other people. Take target A as an example, she wears the same style of clothing, neat, tidy and elegant. She talks and behaves as a girly girl, very polite and elegant. This also reflects from her desk and bedroom. She likes to read books and study dictionary in leisure. Also, her room is neat and tidy, with a nice and same colour tone. I know some of them in person, and their desks really reflect their inner personality and that is who they are when they are alone. Their outlook is somehow an image that they want to impose to other people or intentionally behave like that in front of other people. That is their outer personality, image, or even illusion they create. This is not only common in lesbians, but also all other people. We, as human beings, hope to conceal our inner parts from other people, in order to protect ourselves and cast a good image to other people. This might be more obvious in TBs, as they are girls in their inner, and boys on their outer.
Appendices
Photos of Outlook
Target A
Target B
Target C
Target D
Target E
Left: Target H Right: Target A
Left: Target I Right: Target A
Photos of Desks
Target A’s desk top
Target B’s desk
Target D and E’s “desk top” (They don’t have a table at home. They just use a box.)
Target F’s desk
Target G’s desk
Direct Cinema | Cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité is a French word meaning “truthful cinema”. It is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects.
Direct Cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera’s presence.
Wolf Koenig is a film director, a pioneer in Direct Cinema and Peter Wintonick is also an independent documentary filmmaker based in Montreal.
Things with a Future Tense
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My initial frame of the topic “Things with a Future Tense” is something related to cyber, technology, I thought it is future theme in photo context or something that foresee the future, e.g. fortune telling and constellation. However, when I read carefully the instructions, I knew that I was on the wrong track. Therefore, I started to reframe again. When I saw children on the street talking, smiling and playing together, I thought they are our future, the future of Hong Kong. Children are not only representing present tense, but also all kinds of future tense, e.g. future tense (they will do), future continuous tense (they will be doing), future perfect tense (they will have done) and future perfect continuous tense (they will have been doing).
The series of photos were taken in Gough Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong. That was the event “Sing for Gough” (歌賦節).
I feel that the children showed their hope and anticipation to their energy and future through their smile, emotion, expressions and actions. They are representing both present tense and future tense. They loved what they were doing and they loved the art and cultural festival. I feel that art and culture give them space and platform to perform themselves, to show off their talents. When I see children in Gough Street, I think of many keywords, like “creativity”, “energy”, “happiness”, “innocent”, “education”, “art and culture”, “Western Kowloon Cultural District”, “Family”, “Society”, “Knowledge”, “growth and reproduction”, “港孩現象”, “etc.
I can summarize several new frames within cultural and social aspects: -
- Is creativity dead in Hong Kong new generation?
- How to promote art and culture within the new generation? Is Western Kowloon Cultural District a way out?
- Hong Kong education issues, is the new 334 system good to children in long term?
- What is “happiness” to children? (From perspectives of 1. children, 2. parents, 3. educators, 4. government) Do they have dreams? What are their dreams?
- What is “Hong Kong children phenomenon” (港孩現象)? Why did it appear? How are the responses of the parents? Do the parents and children think this is a “problem”? How will it affect the future of Hong Kong? and if it is a problem, what solutions can help?
- The issues about impoverished families in Hong Kong. What problems are they facing? How impoverishment affect the growth and development of children? Is it a problem reflected by rich-poor gap in Hong Kong? How different are the children living in different classes families, High-class, middle-class and lower-class families?
Next step will be selecting and narrowing down the frames. After finding a focus, I can start my research, interview and observations.
A day in the life of Miss Chow (3)
After the discussion with Jolene and the classmates, I found out that I can re-frame the work and show it from some other new perspectives.
- Middle class income family
- The perspective from a traveller (I think this is very interesting point of view)
- A woman
- A secondary school teacher
Titicut Follies
I think that Titicut Follies is a very treasurable ethnographic film since 1960s, for psychology studies, health studies as well as criminology studies. Also, this is a very good example of ethnographic film studies for the generation.
“Titicut Follies is a black and white 1967 documentary film by United States filmmaker Frederick Wiseman about the treatment of inmates / patients at Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane, a Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The title is taken from a talent show put on by the hospital’s inmates. (The talent show was named after the Wampanoag word for the nearby Taunton River.) In 1967 the film won awards in Germany and Italy. Wiseman made a number of such films examining social institutions (e.g. hospitals, police, schools, etc.) in the United States.” (Wikipedia)
Titicut Follies portrays the existence of occupants of Bridgewater, some of them catatonic, holed up in unlit cells, only periodically washed down with a hose and taken out in order to receive force feeding. It also portrays the indifference and bullying on the part of the institution’s staff.
Movie’s link: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a97_1233076955
A day in the life of Miss Chow (2)
Comments and Review
Enrica Ho
Reason for the Choice
Miss Chow had been my class monitoring teacher for 2 years (F.6 and F.7). Even we have known each other for almost 10 years, I am still not very familiar with her as we do not meet each other not very often. That’s why I think she is quite a good subject for me to observe, because I can have a more objective observation, I have a motivation to know her more and a motivation to do this as a project but not as an assignment.
Our class 7C promised to have a class gathering every year when we graduated from our secondary school. We chose 1 Oct every year as our gathering date, but this is the first year that we all can gather in Miss Chow’s house. Therefore, I picked that special day for my ethnographic research, so that I can observe both her alone at home and her interaction with other people. Besides, I can have an easy permission to follow her for most of the day.
Observations
- She doesn’t like boring stuff.
- She likes to go vacation for enjoying her life, not really like a self-achievement, but for filling “full” in her life, for her happiness.
- She loves her husband and is willing to listen to him.
- She doesn’t like to cook because she doesn’t like to make her place dirty. So they go dine with her mother-in-law every night.
- She is not quite environmental friendly.
- Even she is not willing to be our subject of this project, she still cares about us so much.
- She is an easily self-satisfied person but at the same time she asks for quality and standard.
- She also likes to browse her photos for reminding her happy memories.
Difficulties
As stated in our group report in the previous post.
Learning for improvement
After my first experience of ethnographic research for a whole day (13 hours field experience), I have learnt…
- Should have initial framing before shooting, so that we know what and how to shoot.
- To have adequate equipment. I suggest to have at least 10 tapes, 2 cameras, a remote clip mic and an extension mic. (if possible and available)
- 2 cameras are for contingency plan and for enriching visual effects.
- A remote clip mic is useful when the subject walks away faster than you, or when the subject hide away from the camera, or to capture conversation on phone. However, clip mic will easily capture the wind noise or scratch noises as the subject moves.
- An extension mic is for distant sound recording.
- Plan well before the start. Not every single moment will be edited into the final cut version of the film. It is easier for editing if you shoot with care and planned choice.
- Don’t frame too large for an assignment!
Sentiments
A day in the life of Miss Chow (1)
Group Report
Enrica Ho and Rachel Yim
Initial Frame
To observe how a secondary school teacher spends her holiday (1st October 2010).
Frame Change
We were surprised that even though Miss Chow was so unwilling to be observed by us, she was still so talkative and willing to share her points of view of life to us. Finally, we have around 2.5 hours footage of showing her attitude, interest and hobbies, and around 1 hour more footage of how she interacts with her friends. Therefore, we decided to change our frame to observing her personality and attitude towards life.
Observation during the process
Miss Chow imposed three different identities in front of the camera. The first one is her own self when she is alone. She builds up hobbies likes making tiramisu cakes, watching TV or browsing the Internet. She also like enjoying her life and to broaden her view, e.g. goes on vacation or watching vacation TV programs. She seems doesn’t like boring things, because she always says, “it’s so boring….” or “I feel so sleepy….”. Besides, she likes to watch soap drama TV programs for entertainment, unlike what we think about the character of a “teacher” that we perceive in our school life.
The other identity is a good and obedient wife, waiting for her husband to come back home. She was so happy to see her husband just like a child in his mother’s arms. Even she is doing things in her way, if her husband suggest another way, she will also listen to her husband to try his method.
The third identity is a very good and caring teacher. She browses Face book not only for her own leisure, but also for updating her students’ update and taking care of her students’ emotional problems. In addition, she also concerns her old students; even they have been graduated for many years.
We would like to summarize her character as follow: -
- She doesn’t like boring stuff.
- She likes to go vacation for enjoying her life, not really like a self-achievement, but for filling “full” in her life, for her happiness.
- She loves her husband and is willing to listen to him.
- She doesn’t like to cook because she doesn’t like to make her place dirty. So they go dine with her mother-in-law every night.
- She is not quite environmental friendly.
- Even she is not willing to be our subject of this project, she still cares about us so much.
- She is an easily self-satisfied person but at the same time she asks for quality and standard.
- She also likes to browse her photos for reminding her happy memories.
Difficulties
It is quite hard to follow a person for a whole day, as the existence of the camera and us affect her normal daily life. For examples, she said she wouldn’t eat breakfast if we didn’t find her, and also she would have browsing the Internet for a whole day if we were not shooting her, etc. In addition, following her outside her home is a very hard task for us, as we need to run faster than her in order to shoot her face. Therefore, most of the shots in the street are shooting her back. Also, the not all shops allowed us to shoot, even if it is not for commercial use.
Disagreement
Rachel’s standpoint
For starting, we have skimmed through all the 9 tapes, then after a roughly sketched, we cut away the useless shots first (such as hand shaking frames, the shot setting tripod and getting ready), after the big rough cut, there are still have 3 hours of footages we got. I would like to focus on how effectively the footages show what we have observed during the process. In order to make the film much precise, I suggest that not keeping too much irrelevant shots that are not including in or can’t present our “goal”, which we want to present what we have mentioned in the part “observation” accurately, otherwise audience will difficult to catch the point and will be easily to be distracted.
Enrica’s standpoint
We have total 9 tapes footage and they are almost 9 hours of that day. We found it hard to edit, as we wanted to keep it short. Rachel suggested only keep those important conversation involving Miss Chow. But I would rather like to keep both important conversations and some tableau shots to enrich the visual elements of the film. Also, I would like to keep some transition part of Miss Chow’s activity in order to make the whole film coherent and smooth. By just keeping important conversations in the film, may somehow make the film very “skipping” and unsmooth. It is because some of the words by Miss Chow are so short, it comes out that the visual part of the film will jump all the time. However, the point is that the rough-cut version of the film is almost 3 hours. I understand this is impossible for us to show all in class and it is not good for the audience to view an unknown person’s life for 3 hours. The problem is that the conversation part of the video took up over 2 hours. In addition, Miss Chow had a BBQ gathering that night, therefore there are lots of footage regarding her interactivity with her friends in the night section. The whole footage can roughly said to have two parts, one part is the morning to afternoon section which is her being alone at home and with her husband, while the other part is the night section which is her gathering with friends. I could not think of any reasons to delete either part as different parts can show different observations.
Negotiation
Finally, we compromised to delete the night section of BBQ gathering as we both think that the most important part of observation is those shot at Miss Chow’s home, talking about her husband, her view of life, her vacation and hobbies. Also, we compromised to shorten the tableau shots and to delete those relatively unimportant footage.
Found a useful ebook by coincidence
May I digress a little bit… I think Google Books is a really helpful and intellectual invention regardless the matter of copyright that only limited view is allowed, because they share knowledge online and at the same time allowing people to comment and review it. I found it very useful when I do research on my projects. It is just like an online library to me. I started my research by typing “text and representation” in Google search engine and a Google Books result poped out by coincidence, The Ethnographic I: a methodological novel about autoethnography while one of the related books results is Doing Visual Ethnography: images, media, and representation in research. So, I would like to share the two books with all of you. Hope they help us doing ethnographic projects.
I scanned through second book, Doing Visual Ethnography: images, media, and representation in research, and I think this is more related to our projects or maybe useful for our final year research projects. Part II: Producing Knowledge is a very important part in our ethnographic research, as it talks about the role of photography and video in ethnographic research and how to classify and interpret the materials we get. It is pity that most of this section is not allowed to read online and there is someone holding this book in our school library. The other book is more on how to write ethnographic form of writing or writing novels, so I didn’t pay much attention to that, but if you would like to write books or do literacy projects, that might be helpful to you.
Field work and research
I was trying to investigate the relationship between me, my cat and my room. I used MaxMSP runtime to automatically control the webcam to take photos for every 60 mins. These are the photos that my computer took on 23rd September 2010, and I get up at around 5:00am (that is now) to stop the program and post these photos.
Testing shot 1
Testing shot 2
7:00pm (watching movie)
8:00pm (went out for dinner)
9:00pm (went out for dinner)
10:00pm (bathing)
11:00pm (sleeping)
00:00am (sleeping)
01:00am (sleeping)
02:00am (sleeping)
03:00am (sleeping)
04:00am (sleeping)
Findings from the photos
From the photos, I can say that me and my cat spend most of our time in the room, and we both love the room, especially my bed. I normally work with my laptop on bed and my cat run around the bed. And my cat like to walk around the room, and he even stepped on me while I was sleeping. My cat quite like to walk around me. My cat appeared in several photos: testing shot 2, 8:00pm, 10:00pm, 00:00am. He walked around very freely on bed. I may say that the room is kind of small and that is why me and my cat always having activities on the bed.
Frame a frame
Photo by Linda C. H. Lai
1. Framed by illusion
Three ladies were employed by the shopping mall as promotors. They dressed in pink angel costumes and were standing towards the shoppers. They stood towards the shoppers and face back to the street, maybe it was an act to thank their customers. Somehow, they helped the shopping mall to provide a friendly and positive image by dressing like angels. And, at least they can get the attention from the public on the street.
2. Framed by reality
Three ladies are employed by the shopping mall as promotors. They dressed in pink andel costumes and were standing towards their shoppers to block their ways from leaving the mall. Dressing like angels is just an illusion that the shopping mall gives to the shoppers. The reality is that the shopping mall doesn’t want to let go the customers, and they employed three ladies to force the customers to walk more and stay longer in the shopping mall.
Enrica Ho
