Anthropologists have typically relied on text to represent the
field. Advances in technology have offered ethnographers a new
repertoire of tools to represent their subjects. The use of photography,
soundscapes, and film can amplify and thicken the sensorial depth of
the field. Joel and Ella teamed up to create an ethnographic film in
Yafo Dalet, where Joel is conducting part of his doctoral research. The
film focuses on individuals of diverse backgrounds, status and sense of
place in the neighbourhood. It seeks to explore their narratives as
vernacular mappings and forms of dwelling that interact with
neighbourhoods and cities. In doing so, it interrogates the political and
social meaning of the shikunim in Jaffa.
As a type of methodological intervention, and as an
ethnographic technology, the introduction of the camera into the field
changed the nature of its interpretation, and bred new forms of
understanding and communication with informants. The presence of
the cinematic technology constantly made visible the act of observing
and the entanglement of aesthetics and ethics. It also enhanced the
understanding of the materiality of shikunim – that is, how materiality
shapes the social, and the social shapes materiality – through the
sensory experience of the place.
