My contribution will focus on the visual composition of a field diary that I wrote during two and half years of research as a clinical anthropologist within a European project for refugees and asylum seekers. The images, conceived as pieces of a mosaic, tell of the encounters, suggestions and evocative power of the stories heard in the clinic. The project, already selected in international photography calls, proposes the objective of composing an artistic narrative of doing ethnography. As Anna Grimshaw (Edwards, 2015) uphold, anthropology (and ethnography) can be seen as a project of visual imagination. In this perspective, photographs can be thought of as a translation of an affect, a matrix of the subjectivity of experience. Thus, the images that composed my field diary are a 'way of seeing', a recording of thought in a synaesthetic manner, as some of the literature on the practices of visual anthropology claims (McDougall, 2006; Marano, 2013). The resulting mosaic presents itself as a possible way of traversing and experiencing 'difficult' terrains such as those of ethnoclinics.
This photographic essay presents a photography workshop held in Ankara, Kale Mahallesi (castle neighbourhood), with a group of Romani and Syrian children aged 6 to 13, as part of an ongoing effort by Birlikte Kent (a collective based in Ankara) to create space for dialogue, exchange, and knowledge production. Guided by critical social theory and Freirean notions of conscientisation, the workshop encouraged children to use photography as a method for reflecting on and narrating their urban environment marked by community, gentrification, and displacement. The workshop, which was organised through a collaboration between two collectives, Birlikte Kent (Ankara) and Fotohane Darkroom (Mardin), positions children as 'knowers', supporting them in documenting their personal and collective stories, claiming ownership of their narratives, and bringing attention to conditions of urban transformation and the rightto the city. This photo-essay presents 15 photographs taken bythree of the participating children.
This article addresses dialogical practice between anthropology and art and how it afforded connection of elements of different scales: seemingly distant and disconnected processes and bodies with the multiple, interdependent ways climate crisis manifests in a small valley in the Mediterranean Alps. It discusses how methods and disciplines the author sought to keep separate ended up coming into dialogue that, while in the field, helped in a situation of overwhelm, when back from the field-contributed to making sense of things and, later, helped return to text.
The stereotyped image of the Maasai is a significant aspect of Tanzania's tourist industry, with photography playing a key role as a form of commercialization as well as a source of income. For some Maasai women themselves, however, selling their image is a complex endeavor implying cultural, economic, and affective challenges. Unlike tourists seeking an authentic experience, Maasai women question where their images go, for what purpose, and to what end. Departing from a collection of colonial photographs brought to the field, this article explores the intricate relationship Maasai women have with their own image, contrasting their perspectives with broader themes of tourism and photography. Photographs are highly affective objects that facilitate relationships of looking and being looked at; at the same time, they can carry memories and are, in the case of tourist photography, highly mobile objects, that circulate globally. While their photographs become a commodity, Maasai individuals are often excluded from the consumption and control of their own images. However, within Maasai households, women often function as the safekeepers of the family's photography; the images in these contexts become carefully guarded objects that the women cherish and care for. The article explores the women's complex relationships with the medium of photography, facilitating a more nuanced understanding of photography and photographic practices in the Maasai context.
