Visual Studies, 2016
Vol. 31, No. 4, 335343, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2016.1243019
Trajectories: digital/visual data on the move
EDGAR GOMEZ CRUZ
This article presents an outline of the concept
Trajectory. I propose to understand trajectory not only
as a trace of movement in a path but also as a working
concept to reect on the possibilities of visual/digital
data collection for ethnographic research on the move.
Images, I argue, along with some digital aordances
such as metadata and GPS, can be a powerful device for
ethnographic enquiry and a useful tool for reexivity if
used by making sense of the randomness of everyday
mobility. The concept of Trajectory seeks to reect on
the relationship between four elements: mobility, visual
data, digital methods and reexivity, focusing on the use
of the mobile phone as a tool to engage with these
elements while reecting on them. The concept of
trajectories is intended to establish a dialogue with that
of the neur in de Certeaus and Benjamins work and
with some current approaches to visual/digital
ethnography, especially those related to movement and
senses, art and ethnography and mobilities and locative
media.
INTRODUCTION
Many years ago I was taking a walk with a friend along a
Mexican beach. We were enjoying the scenery while talking
about everything and nothing. I noticed that, from time to
time, my friend picked up small stones from the sand and
put them into her purse.
What are you doing? I asked.
Youll see, she replied.
When we came back to the house, while having a drink and
continuing the conversation, she threw all the rocks into the
sink, patiently cleaned them and grouped them by colour,
size and shape. I was observing her with curiosity while she
took a clear glass jar and put the stones in a very aesthetic
and delicate order forming a single unit that resembled a
sculpture. Suddenly, the randomness of the rocks shapes
and colours became an ordered pattern, as if she was putting
together parts of a cohesive puzzle. She lled the jar with
water, put the lid on and handled it to me by saying Here, a
little gift so you can always remember our walk. And I did.
Every time I saw that jar in my house, I remembered the
landscape, the conversation, the weather and even specic
Edgar Gmez Cruz has a background in media studies, sociology and anthropology and his interests are digital visual culture, digital ethnography and digital
photography. He has worked in Mexico, Spain, the UK and is currently in Australia.
2016 International Visual Sociology Association
moments when my friend picked up some of those rocks.
The jar became a material reminder of our walk a single
object that comprised our entire trajectory.
This article presents an outline of the concept Trajectory. I
propose to understand trajectory not only as a trace of
movement in a path but also as a working concept to reect
on the possibilities of visual/digital/mobile data collection for
ethnographic research. Images, I argue, along with some
digital aordances such as metadata and GPS, can be a
powerful device for ethnographic enquiry and a useful tool
for reexivity if used by making sense of the randomness of
everyday mobility. This approach is aligned with a
multisensory turn in visual studies that understands the
sensoriality of images as something that is generated
through their interrelatedness with both the persons they
move with and the environments they move through and are
part of (Pink 2011, 4) and the emergence of innovative
digital and visual methods (Favero 2014; Parmeggiani 2009;
Jungnickel and Hjorth 2014; Lury and Wakeford 2012; Bates
2014).
While visual data have become more or less accepted as part
of anthropological (and sociological) research, digital
technologies are increasingly becoming central in the data
gathering of all sorts of disciplines (Berry 2012; Meyer and
Schroeder 2009). Nevertheless, there still seems to be a gap
when merging both the visual and the digital in a
comprehensive way. In that sense, theres one device that
represents a convergence of many of the possibilities of both
the visual and the digital: the mobile phone. With the
ubiquitous use of smartphones in western urban societies,
the mobility and uidity of social life and the increasing use
of technological mediations could open new paths for
ethnographic imagination. When using smartphones that
combine camera features, metadata recording and GPS
systems with dierent apps to store and organise data,
interesting possibilities for ethnographic work could be
discussed. These possibilities are not necessarily (only)
technical but they could also open epistemological
discussions, for example about our role as researchers, about
the construction of the eld or our ethical standpoint.
There are many accounts of the use of smartphones for
social research that assume, to some extend, that they
336 E. Gmez Cruz
could represent an opportunity to provide unobtrusive
yet systematic access to all social behavior while being
aordable and easy to use (Raento, Oulasvirta, and
Eagle 2009, 427). These interpretations are part of a
wider movement that some authors signal as a threat to
the way social sciences data recollection traditionally
took place (Savage and Burrows 2007). While
acknowledging these debates, this paper aims to take a
dierent direction: what I propose here is to think about
how the use of certain technologies, such as the
smartphone, could support researchers observations in
a reexive way.
The concept of Trajectory seeks to reect on the
relationship between four elements: mobility, visual data,
digital methods and reexivity, focusing on the use of
the mobile phone as a tool to engage with these elements
while reecting on them. This way, Trajectory looks to
grasp these elements in a single theoretical standpoint,
acknowledging, at the same time, the use of the mobile
phone as a technology. I will discuss two eldwork
situations as examples of this, one on supermarket
trolleys in Barcelona, and one on Urban Screens in
multiple settings. The concept of trajectories is intended
to establish a dialogue with that of the neur in de
Certeaus and Benjamins work and with some current
approaches to visual/digital ethnography, especially
those related to movement and senses (Pink 2009, 2008,
2007a, 2007b; Jung 2014), art and ethnography (Hjorth
and Sharp 2014) and mobilities and locative media (de
Souza Silva and Sheller 2014). The intention of this
paper is to contribute to the current discussions about
the role of new qualitative methods for exploring
technologically adept, rapidly moving and
multidimensional social worlds (Jungnickel and Hjorth
2014, 136).
First, I will present some ideas regarding the relationship
between mobility, gaze and technologies, to later discuss
how the in-transit gaze could be a helpful concept for
ethnographic purposes. Second, I will briey describe the
current landscape of digital methods to situate the
concept of trajectories into these discussions and,
nally, I will discuss two eldwork sites where I had
used the concept.
IN-TRANSIT GAZE: FLANEURS AND
SMARTPHONES
In his text The Painter in Modern Life (originally
published in 1863), Baudelaire, praises the painter of
manners,1 a painter capable of grasping the
characteristics of modern life because, according to
Baudelaire, such artists possess a strong literary
element. Baudelaire states that the painter of manners
is, simultaneously observer, philosopher, neur (4),
comparing the painter to a poet since he is a painter of
the passing moment and of all the suggestions of
eternity that contains (5). For the painter of manners,
Baudelaire continues, curiosity has become a fatal,
irresistible passion (7). In order to feed that curiosity,
Baudelaire states, the instruments and working style of
the painter have to be the most expeditious and the
least costly (4) so the painter can grasp the ephemeral,
fugitive, contingent, characteristics that Baudelaire
relates to modernity. The French author then takes
these elements to present an overall project of the
modern painter:
This solitary [painter], gifted with an active
imagination, ceaselessly journeying across the
great human desert, has an aim loftier than that
of a mere neur, an aim more general,
something other than the fugitive pleasure of
circumstance. (Baudelaire 2010, 12)
Although clearly framed in the discussion of
modernity, The Painter of Modern Life could be a
useful model for the purposes of this text in two ways:
rst, by reminding us that the use of certain
techniques and ways of looking are always specic to
a certain time and place; secondly, the text is useful in
signalling the importance of certain technologies in
the conformation of these ways of looking in
historical and contextual settings. Finally, Baudelaires
analysis of elements such as mobility, gaze,
representation and techniques, focusing on a concrete
goal (in this case, painting), becomes interesting when
combined with the randomness of the neurs
wandering activities. I nd Baudelaires ideas
inspiring for opening up a discussion on how
mobility, gaze and image-making could produce, with
the use of certain tools, a reexive tool for
ethnographic observation.
There are several accounts for the relationship between
nerie and ethnographic inquiry, most notably Jenks
and Neves (2001). In their text, A walk on the wild side:
Urban ethnography meets the Flneur, Jenks & Neves
propose several convergence points between the neur
and the urban ethnographer, namely:
The desire to know the underdog, the creation
of alternative discourses on social reality and
the peculiar pace, the will to make the strange
familiar and the familiar strange, and, nally, a
continuous reexivity between perception and
knowledge; experience and memory; sight and
citation. (4)

Jenks and Neves text is valuable for framing the concept
of Trajectory in relation to the aforementioned
convergences. Nevertheless, my interest is not restricted
to the city, as such, but extends to what we could
understand as the emplacement of mobilities between
the researcher and their object, and, moreover, the
possibilities that mobile visual digital technologies could
bring to that emplacement. As Pink states when talking
about visual ethnographers: we ourselves are emplaced,
but at the same time we are both seeking to understand
the emplacement of others and the practices through
which the places they form part of are continually
reconstituted (2008).
Translating some of Baudelaires ideas to the point I
want to make, while still inspired by Jenks and Neves, I
want to argue that a constant looking and wandering
could become, with the use of certain visual/digital tools
and their aordances, and through the researchers
constant reexivity, a useful approach for ethnographic
research. The resulting image-data, always created by the
researcher, always contextual, always rooted in the mix
of interest and serendipity that constant mobility
generates, could form an important research device.
These images, along with the mobility that generated
them, could create a single narrative reminiscent of what
Michel de Certeau called narrated adventures that
reproduce geographies of action while organising the
walk. As de Certeau, points out: they make the journey,
before or during the time the feet perform it (de Certeau
1998, 116).
The randomness and serendipity of everyday mobility,
forming this in-transit gaze, could become a powerful
tool when directed towards a research goal which guides
the observations. It aords a seamless continuum
between observation, mobility, registration and
imagination. This is what the concept of Trajectory is
trying to encapsulate.
DIGITAL METHODS, IMAGES AND TRAJECTORIES
The concept of Trajectory is also related to the growing
interest in developing inventive methods (see Lury and
Wakeford 2012). Mobility and visuality seem to be two
elements currently growing as transversal interests for
several disciplines. Both elements are tightly related to
digital technology practices in everyday life, not only as
observable practices of our informants but also, and
more importantly here, for our research activities. This
opens some interesting opportunities to explore both,
visuality and mobility, not only as new areas of study but
also as methodological challenges to reect upon (see
Bscher, Urry, and Witchger 2010; Pink 2012; Benson
Trajectories 337
2011). In this sense, the mobile phone is increasingly
becoming an important research tool precisely because
of its converging capabilities of image-creation and
locative metadata.
There is already an important corpus of work that deals
with the relationship between image-making,
movement, GPS and metadata (Favero 2014; Pink 2011;
Pink and Hjorth 2012). Some authors even regard this
combination as a new medium called geomedia
(Lapenta 2011). There have been multiple accounts of
the role of mobile phones in the conguration of new
ways to gather data (Boase 2013) and specically visual
mobile data (Parmeggiani 2009). The resulting analysis,
with the use of these Mobile Methods, engenders new
kinds of researchable entities and a new or rediscovered
realm of the empirical, and it opens up new avenues for
critique (Bscher and Urry 2009, 99). There seems to be
an agreement that, to understand mobile-digital
phenomena we need ethnographic methods that see
mobile media as not just a media practice and cultural
artefact but also an essential part of the researchers
toolkit that moves in and out of messy mobile spaces
(Jungnickel and Hjorth 2014, 144).2
At the same time, while mobility has been mostly
understood as a phenomenon to be explored, our own
activities as researchers are equally and increasingly
mobile. Nowadays, is not uncommon for an academic to
live in a dierent country or city to the one he or she
was born in. We attend conferences, meetings and do
eldwork in remote places. Furthermore, many of us like
to travel, as well. These mobile activities turn us, almost,
into mobile academics: our oce (and sometimes our
home) is a device with Wi-Fi connection. Many of us are
peripatetic academics. I suggest that this mobility could
be interestingly productive for our research.
Most of these accounts about inventive, mobile visual
methods seem to be interested in the possibilities for
gathering raw data, meaning data created by the
informants rather than the researcher. However, my
interest here is aligned with the combination of mobile
and visual possibilities for ethnographic reexivity as an
instrument in the researchers hand, as a tool to be on
the move and to use methods that are capable of
recording and collecting data while in motion (Benson
2011, 222).
The images, taken with mobile phones and enhanced by
metadata, are more than representations of specic
emplacements; this image-data could also work as
provocation (Tormey 2013). While Tormey analyses
street photography as representations, as frozen and
static moments and situations in the city, the images that
338 E. Gmez Cruz

trace a Trajectory arent looking to full the function of
a series of facts, testimonies or observations. Rather, they
could be a useful tool to reect on our own movement
and encounters between people, objects, sensations and
ourselves. This element, contrary, for example, to the
never-ending ow of surveillance images from a single
point, creates a narrative of random encounters, which
could serve not only as a reection but as an
acknowledgment of the casual and serendipitous
moments and places of observation. They form a digital
backup map of our own psychogeographies (see Debord
1955).
I will present two case studies as examples of how our
own mobility, along with the use of certain tools, could
become a research device. These examples have three
goals: (a) to open up a discussion about the possibilities,
aordances and constrains of smartphones when used
for visual/digital/mobile data collection; (b) to reect on
our position as researchers in urban, mobile and digital
contexts using Trajectories as a working concept; (c) to
discuss a possible future agenda. These two examples are
a visual-mobile exploration of the supermarket trolleys
in Barcelona (Gmez Cruz 2013) and a current project
about the screen as an epistemic object (cf. Knorr Cetina
and Bruegger 2002). These two examples are intended to
be merely the beginning of a discussion for a future
agenda on mobility and digital tools for ethnographic
research.
Every morning I travelled exactly the same route on my way
to the oce and exactly the same route on my way home
every evening, crossing exactly the same streets more or less
at the same time every day. One day, while waiting for a
light to turn green, I couldnt help watching a young African
guy pushing a supermarket trolley containing various items
which he had just taken out of the garbage, mostly electrical
or metal pieces. I found the scene interesting because of the
composition of elements and I took a photo of him while he
was crossing the street. I did this because of my personal
interest in street photography but also, without realising at
the time, reifying Jenks and Neves observation that neurs
and early urban ethnographers shared a common interest in
particular urban groups (6).
Since that rst photo, I developed a targeted gaze that
made me be aware of the supermarket trolleys and the
people who push them. Every time I encountered one or
the other, these encounters were materialised in images
produced with my mobile phone (see Figure 1).

SUPERMARKET TROLLEYS IN BARCELONA (AND

BEYOND)

After many years of living in Barcelona I started using

the bicycle as my main method of transport3 (before that
I used to walk or take the subway). Cycling changed my
relationship with the city in so many dierent ways
while, at the same time, it opened a new way to look at
it. The cycling speed, the freedom of movement (or its FIGURE 1. Supermarket trolleys in Barcelona.
new constraints), the direct contact with the weather, all
made me looking at familiar things in a new way (e.g.
During my daily route, I took photos of these men (there
the dierent levels of respect from drivers, distances
were dozens of them) pushing or pulling their supermarket
didnt matter as much as the cycling time). As
trolleys in the streets of Barcelona, many times, recklessly,
Jungnickel4 and Aldered state:
from my bike while in movement, steering with one hand
and shooting with the other. The images began to take shape
Cyclists are in a distinctive position vis-a-vis the
as a project that I rst thought of as solely photographic but,
urban environment [. . .] open to the
when I was ordering the photos, I noticed the amount of
environment to a much greater degree than car
and public transport users. For this reason, they information they provided (location, time taken). This
are also likely to experience distinctive feelings, metadata, along with the image, almost imperceptibly
needs and responsibilities relating to both their turned the set of photos into eld notes (Spinney 2011)
sensory experiences and their use of sensory that, from that moment on, I started to use in a
technologies. (2014, 240) dierent way.

I began to notice that the routes of these trolley-men
constantly intersected with mine and I found that their
basecamp, where they lived and where they took their
daily collections, was indeed very close to my oce.
Nevertheless, although they took the same route as me,
at the same time, it was in the opposite direction. While
I went to the oce they were coming to the city centre;
when I came back to my house they were coming to
theirs carrying the things they had found during the day.
In a strange and almost paradoxically we were all
moving towards the city to work. I moved from the
centre of the city to the periphery where a lot of
cultural industries, universities and research centres
were being relocated or built, turning an area of former
factories and mills into an innovation district while
they were moving from their shelters in abandoned mills
in search for the leftovers of consumerism.
Our encounters, always in motion, always random and
most of the time documented, created a trajectory to
reect on. My images, metadata, along with the cityscape
and our movements (theirs and mine), made me nurture
an interest in the topic to analyse ethnographically (see
e.g. Gowan 2010). Moreover, from this point on, I
started to take pictures of supermarket trolleys in the
street of every city I went to. I have come to realise that
nding supermarket trolleys in the street, most of the
time used by homeless or poor people, represents a
powerful signal of the decay and growing inequality of
urban societies. The supermarket trolley, a quintessential
enabler of shopping on a large scale (see Cochoy 2009) is
transformed, in this way, into a survival vehicle, mobile
home and a reminder of capitalist paradoxes.
In this specic example, Im fully aware of the ethical
problems that this approach has, since, as Mah states
about her work on dereliction tourism, it could be
related to voyeurism. Nevertheless, I agree when she
points out that this approach could oer alternative
ways of imagining places and raising social justice
awareness and that ethical dilemmas in the eld should
be addressed through intrinsically ethical research, based
on principles, values and sensitivity to a wide range of
research contexts, rather than limited to identity-based
reexivity (Mah 2014, online). The key element in this
paper, however, is how a random collection of images
and metadata taken while in movement, led me to a
research topic that is worth pursuing ethnographically.
The working concept of Trajectory also implies and
reects on our embodiment as researchers. The
researchers body, thus, becomes central in its inquiry
precisely because every image accounts for an encounter
between the researchers body and the object of inquiry;
it is always an emplacement of both, the researcher and
Trajectories 339
her gaze and the object and its context. As Pink
understands, the sensoriality of images is something
that is generated through their interrelatedness with
both the persons they move with and the environments
they move through and are part of (Pink 2011, 4).
While my encounters with the supermarket trolleys were
not always recorded, for myriad reasons (distance from
the subject, a battery having run out, lack of sucient
lighting, trac etc.), meaning that I dont always have
images, these encounters, registered or not, were always
a source of reection about the emplacement of our
encounters. These Trajectories, following Rose & Tolia-
Kellys proposition consider the (geo)politics of
embodied, material encounter and engagement [they]
connect to processes, embodied practices and
technologies (2012, 3)
SCREENS: A (MOBILE) ETHNOGRAPHIC
APPROACH
My current research is an ethnographic project of the
role of screens in Digital Culture. I am trying to extend
the idea of the screen as an epistemic object (Cetina
and Bruegger 2002) while focusing on its role of world-
making in everyday digital practices, and while also
acknowledging the material implications of screens in
everyday life and their growing importance in social
sciences (see McQuire, Martin, and Niederer 2009). I am
constructing an ethnographic eld following and tracing
dierent screen-based practices in everyday life. Along
with Helen Thornham, my colleague at the University of
Leeds, I have been carrying out eldwork in an
audiovisual production facility in Leeds (Gmez Cruz
and Thornham 2015) and in hackathons in London,
Leeds, Manchester and Sheeld, where our interest was
in how innovation is created for and through the screen.
However, the third entry-point is more elusive. I have
been observing and documenting public use of screens
in places as disparate as Melbourne, Hong Kong, Mexico
City, Tokyo and Bogota. Following Mitchells
provocation (2005), my aim is to understand
ethnographically the relationship between mundane
everyday screen-based practices and forms of being in
the city.
Many years after the episode with my friend at the beach I
had to travel to ve dierent countries in a very short
period of time. While constantly in airports, I started to
take pictures of screens: in shops as electronic billboards, in
shopping areas as visual (and sometimes interactive)
advertising, in halls as public displays, in fellow travellers
hands (as oces, entertainment systems or intimate spaces
for conversations etc.). I was already interested in the
340 E. Gmez Cruz
materiality of the screens as objects, as part of my research
project, and also I had the experience of the supermarket
trolley exercise, where the encounters led me to dierent
questions regarding consumerism, inequality, urban
development, immigration etc. This time, the question led
me to the screens as image-displays, as architecture
elements and as ubiquitous companions. The dierence
with preexisting screens, such as TVs, cinema or
computers, is that these screens are part of modern
mobility and, therefore, can be followed and traced in their
own movement. As Jenks & Neves state in the derive the
explorer of the city follows whatever cue, or indeed clue,
that the streets oer as enticement to fascination (2001,
78).
I carried on taking pictures of screens in dierent cities
and countries when travelling for other reasons
(attending conferences, holidays, meetings). I took
pictures of screens in settings as varied as cafs, private
ats, cars and many dierent public spaces, from
shopping malls to stadiums and from public squares to
trains and airplanes (see Figure 2). I have been saving
those images, geo-tagging them, adding small comments
while on the move using dierent apps such as Evernote5
and extending those comments when I had more time,
at home or at work. I am treating these randomly found
images as a Trajectory related to my eldwork by
discussing issues about mobility, interfaces, space/place,
media and digital practices.
There are several layers of analysis on this image-data:
the depiction of the screens (in the contexts where I
found them), their sizes, shapes and uses; the image(s)
FIGURE 2. Screens in multiple settings.
on the screens (i.e. advertising, public announcements,
static and/or dynamic, etc.); and nally, the location of
these screens, facilitated by the metadata obtained. This
generates an analysis of the images in relation to my
own emplacement in the places where I found them.
This allows me to complement the more traditional
eldwork I have conducted, where I spend time with the
people Im studying with (young people, hackers,
designers) by following their practices in more xed
surroundings. This double approach has allowed me to
develop some ideas regarding my research. To mention
just one example, on many public screens, the
information displayed relates to the place itself
(announcements etc.). The public screens create a layer
of dynamic information on top of the material and
architectural elements, turning the immobile and xed
spaces into displays for mobile and emplaced media. At
the same time, the screen allows mobility (e.g. with the
use of a smartphone) that changes peoples spatial
relation to their surroundings. From a critical
perspective, this double movement has implications on
how screen proliferation can be seen to relate greatly to
consumerism and control (McQuire 2006). This
understanding of mobility, images and emplacements is
aligned with the project of Hjorth and Sharp when they
suggest that we need to rethink place as not just
geographic but its relationship to multiple forms of
presence (2014, 129). In that regard, mobile phones and
tablet and laptop screens turn public places into intimate
spheres of action that, observed with the same kind of
mobility they aord, create alternative readings that
could be help to show hidden tensions in the study of
mobile digital phenomena.
My trajectory showed that, for example, screens are
more present and visible in places where there is a
greater concentration of commercial and economic
transactions. Although, clearly, my trajectory was not
random, the intersection between my own path and the
paths that are precisely embodied by these info-screens
opens up interesting ways to think about agency,
infrastructure and movement (see e.g. Urry and Larsen
2011 for the case of tourism). The collection of screen
images in dierent places and geographic does not aim
to represent an exhaustive map of screens in the globe
but to turn my own mobility into a research tool. This
trajectory is useful to reect not only my object of
inquiry but also my own paths and practices as
researcher (and as human) and how these could become
a way to think about those objects in terms of the visual,
the mobile and the digital. The trajectory helps me
emplace my reexivity by digitally visualising and
mapping my encounters with the object of inquiry while
opening new ways to reect and participate in

knowledge construction (see Hjorth and Sharp 2014;
Bscher and Urry 2009).
CONCLUSION
In the study of digital culture, we cannot reduce nor
equalise our research objects to online practices (nor
even to technologies in general, see Pink et al. 2015). The
territories where digital culture is being shaped and
materialised are wider and more complex than social
media or specic devices. Our own academic culture has
become predominantly digital and, while Big Data and
Digital Humanities are growing areas of interest, there
are some other interesting possibilities worth exploring,
especially the embodiment of visual and digital
technologies in mobile practices. This new landscape
opens up new reections and tools that need to be
critically addressed. The intention of this paper was to
reect on the possibilities of mobile digital tools for
visual data gathering on the move. This implies
thinking of movement not only as a resource but also as
the enabler of a specic way of looking. Moreover, it is
the random encounters between me as a researcher and
the screens and supermarket trolleys, what binds
together movement, reexivity and looking
ethnographically with the use of visual and digital
technologies.
I used the working concept of Trajectories to
describe the experience of moving/looking and my
encounter with two potential eldworks. In both
examples observing the paths, materiality and
emplacement and use of supermarket trolleys in
Barcelona, and documenting the dierent
emplacements and embodiment of screens while
travelling the relationship between movement,
stasis, gaze, image recollection, metadata and an
organising idea resulted in a complex and meta-visual
reection that I called Trajectory. My constant route
in Barcelona and my random engagement with
dierent places in dierent cities and countries could
both be understood as trajectories (as in moving in
space) but also as Trajectories, a reexive tool that
stands for the in-transit gaze that becomes
constitutive of the mobility in ethnographic research.
The eld is always a relational connection between
my body, my gaze and my tools, with reexivity as
the key element. What both eldworks have in
common is my movement and the reexive ways of
seeing that were enabled (and constrained) by my
own trajectories.
Pink (2008), when discussing the movement and
sensorial and visual elements of ethnographic research,
Trajectories 341
points out that: these experiences and practices are not
simply visual, rather the visuality of them is embedded
in multisensorial experiences and contexts and is
inextricably tied to the use of verbal, tactile and other
forms of communication (online). The concept of
Trajectory is, equally, more than just observing: it is
observing, moving, emplacing and reecting at the same
time. It comprises the movement, the visual and
sensorial elements and the dierent emplacements of the
researcher while in movement. Using the concept of
Trajectory, in this sense, could become a useful exercise
for training the way we look ethnographically but,
moreover, for creating an image(i)nary gaze that
combines image making and imagination in ways that
could be useful for ethnographic thinking. The concept
of Trajectories is an open invitation to think about the
role of our tools and the way we build research objects
and contribute to the debates about eld engagement
and eldwork in contemporary urban ethnographies.
While acknowledging and experimenting with the
integration of mobile digital technologies, as tools
employed in our inquiries, there is also a wider
discussion about research timing and the particular
characteristics of research that seems to be necessary.
Our own mobility as researchers creates interesting
opportunities. Research and eldwork become as mobile
as the devices studied or used. There is a constant
connection between researchers gaze and their tools
that is materialised in images recollected with the
aordances and constraints of their device.
George Marcus, in his seminal paper on multi-sited
ethnography, claimed that the Word system was not the
right theoretical frame within which to understand
contemporary practices of people. In the same way, perhaps,
we are dealing with the emergence of an ethnographic
approach that not only accounts for our informants
mobility but also reects on how this mobility could be used
to think about new tools for ethnographic enquiry. If we
follow Marcus statement that the contexts of ethnographic
work in a multi-sited approach is constituted by the path or
trajectory it takes in its design of sites (1995, 99), then
maybe we could start thinking about an ethnography of
emplacements where the essential are the trajectories and
not the sites themselves. In this way, I suggest, we could take
the idea of multi-sited ethnography and experiment with the
idea of a mobile-sited ethnography. Time will tell.
NOTES
[1] Baudelaire mentions in a footnote to the text that
Constantin Guys, an illustrator who Baudelaire saw as a
role model for this Painter of Modern Life, inspired the
essay.
342 E. Gmez Cruz
[2] Although the relationship between ethnographic inquiry
and technologies is clearly subject to controversy and
discussion, see for example Vergunst (2011).
[3] In a rst attempt to think about the concept of trajectory,
I have published a photo-essay with some seed ideas
(Gmez Cruz 2013) that I extend here.
[4] A cyclist practitioner herself.
[5] I could use any other app, it just happens that I was
already using this one. Nevertheless, it is important to note
that an app that can synchronise images, texts and audio
recordings in real time, along with GPS information,
creates a workow that allows these trajectories to be
cohesively observed as such.
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