ABOUT 
the Research

But always the marvel of the thing remains, one with the inexplicable wonder of all existence...

This research project is the second-phase continuation of a vignette on colour ethnography originally developed during the 5th International Workshop on Visual Research for PhD Students and Young Researchers organised by the International Sociological Association (ISA) RC57 Visual Sociology and hosted by the University of St. Joseph, Macau in November 2025.

I took several hundreds of photos over three days of fieldwork, working on my chosen theme colours of Gold and Red. As a native of Macau, I intuitively realised that I have to include a night theme to do justice to the colours of Macau after dark. This second vignette is an outcome of analysing the night scene photos not included in the original vignette, out of which a new research theme emerged.

Research Theme:
A colour ethnography of Macau after dark, minted in visual tokens of ambiences and materialities to invite a reflexive unknowing of Macau and its spectacle at night.

Research Process:

Unlike the original vignette, this night-themed vignette applies a token template which frames the colour under question in a wider picture, prompted by design aesthetics to accentuate the main images against a dark background. This situates the image in the greater spatial and cultural context of Macau and its hyperlocalities. Also, it foregrounds the dynamics of framing and unframing/visibility and invisibility. The format and style of deep description subsequently reflect this direction of exploration. The emerging texts begin to point towards a strategy of knowledge (re)configured by darkness, commonly taken as the anti-thesis of light/knowledge. 

So ladies and gentlemen, I present to you MACAU_Nights - a Colour Ethnography 2.0