Entrer, Sortir, Traverser. A visual ethnography at the margins of the city

What does a visual methodology add to an ethnographical research at/on the margins of the city ? How does it affect our knowledge of the field and the consequent representations? How does the positioning of the researcher articulate when she/he uses a camera, specifically when urban margins are concerned? This paper comes from my recent research on urban margins and is based on a visual ethnography that I conducted in Marseille between 2015 and 2016 with a Romanian Roma family living in a squat. The documentary Entrer, sortir, traverser (Going in, out, through - Marseille, 2016, 36’) is the result of this experience at the crossroads of relational pragmatism and more-than-representational theories. These two theoretical approaches underline, in particular, the progressive character of knowledge that is made through the body and the experience, as well as the relational nature of knowledge that comes from the relationship we have with others (people, objects, environments). Based on this framework, the documentary builds on the experience of marginality of the Roma people I met, as well the one I personally did within the field. In other words, the guiding thread that forms the narrative of the film is played around the encounter: between the Roma people, the margins, the city and I. Today, the spatial and temporal distance makes it possible to rethink the experience I made, both of the field and the documentary, proposing my reflections on: - the epistemological issues I faced during the field, which question the positioning of the researcher vis-à-vis of her/his research subject, particularly when marginality is at stake; - the opportunities and challenges that a visual methodology entails in terms of knowledge, representation and communication of a research; - the opportunities and challenges that a camera involves as a machine-tool within a research field.