Ethnography and Photography Today: New Perspectives, Technologies and Narratives (Special Issue of Visual Ethnography Journal)

Ethnography and Photography are founded on relational practices which are based on encounter and storytelling. In such an observation, participation and representation space, these disciplines are configured as two forms of writing with their own methodological specificities, as well as zones of contact. Considering the profound technological changes in the recent decades (such as greater accessibility to photographic devices, the increasing production and circulation of photographs, the diversification of virtual spaces, the new digital ethnography), what are the current links between ethnographic research and photography? What kind of contribution do the visual languages offer to the production of anthropological knowledge? Which kind of relations are established between texts and images? How creative and/or authorial artistic research combines with scientific knowledge? The aim of this issue of Visual Ethnography, is to generate a critical reflection starting from intersectional points between the two disciplines and the plurality of visions and methods. It is conceived as a moment of thought and comparison on the role and the future of photography in ethnographic research, through a theoretical and visual approach, to start a reasoning about theoretical and practical tools of cultural and social anthropology, considering how photography and/or post-photography and its uses declined through the different devices, in addition to making the research contents visible, can also be considered as a real collaborative practice, methodology of intervention, restitution and/or autonomous authorial narration.