ABSTRACT
With reference to two key studies, this chapter addresses the role of photography in works of visual urban ethnography. The two studies are Mitchel Duneier’s Sidewalk (1999) and Löic Wacquant’s Body & Soul (2004. Each study focuses on the lives of African American men in two of the largest cities in the United States – New York and Chicago respectively – and in each case the urban environment has an influence on the sociological narratives. In Duneier’s study, the streets, while frequently hostile and dangerous, are represented generally as a force for good in the lives of the men as they try to eek-out a living selling second-hand or discarded items and various reading materials. Enlisting the help of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Ovie Carter, himself an African American, Duneier exposes the obstacles and daily struggles faced by the men, as city officials, high street businesses and even some local residents seek to drive them out of the Greenwich Village neighbourhood that they depend on for their livelihoods. Wacquant’s study takes place mostly in the Woodland Boys Club boxing gym, situated in the middle of the dangerous South-Side Ghetto of Chicago. The gym is represented as a sanctuary for the young men who go there, saving them from the various temptations of the crime-ridden streets outside. Drawing on Bourdieusian sociology, Wacquant introduces what he calls the “pugilistic habitus”, the disciplined and tough constitution of the boxer, and he uses photography and an innovative writing style in an attempt to convey the sensory processes involved in its development. Sidewalk is also experimental in approach, as Duneier, adopting a journalistic style of ethnography in his pursuit of a more truthful account, ironically compromises the truth of his own account, largely because of its candid nature. Ultimately, the chapter argues that Wacquant’s experimentations are much more successful than Duneier’s. Body & Soul is a successful lamination of the traditional and the innovative in visual sociology, whereas Duneier’s experimentation backfires somewhat, rendering Sidewalk a mislamination.
