Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to inject a note of reflexive phenomenological wonder into the practical engagements with visualities in tourism research. Doing so it unravels the overwhelming moments of ethnographic research to contribute to epistemological discussions in tourism research.

Paper long abstract:

Ethnographic methods appear increasingly popular within a tourism research environment continuously informed by the 'critical turn' in tourism studies. Heeding the call for a new research agenda, partly aimed at rethinking ontological, epistemological and methodological conventions, it seems, however, that surprisingly few have drawn on radical reflexivity to inject a modest phenomenology of the too often neglected, overwhelming and less intentional moments of engagements with visual methods. Drawing upon non- representational theories and current trends in tourism research dealing with sensory ethnography and reflexivity this paper seeks to convey some of the disorders also constituting tourism ethnographies and the production of knowledge. Subsequently, this paper proposes the notion of distorted representations in seeking to illustrate examples of fieldwork entanglements. Doing so the article plugs into epistemological debates in tourism, and sheds light upon an alternative mode of rendering visible the production of knowledge, which, to a certain extent, stands in stark contrast to the 'polished' and published representations in journal articles.