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Paper short abstract:

Starting from the ethnographic research on the representation and perception of migrant women's bodies conducted in Siena, Italy, this study explores the combined use of photography and ethnography as collaborative research tools to discover new methods of collaboration between the two disciplines.

Paper long abstract:

Starting from an ethnographic research on representation policies and the perception of the bodies of migrant women residing in the province of Siena, in this intervention, I will focus on the combined use of photography and ethnography as tools that allow for the exploration and experimentation of new collaborative research methods. The goal I set for myself is to offer a nuanced perspective on the theme of the body and the experiences of migrant women, avoiding reducing ethnography to a mere "data extraction process" (Ingold 2014).

Ethnographic methods and the reflective drive they feed have indeed significantly influenced my artistic work. Tracing the trajectories of my training and research in the fields of photography and anthropology, in my contribution, I will emphasize the integrated use of visual and ethnographic representations as tools for interaction and the co-construction of meaning.

By combining the two perspectives I have moved in an attempt to "liberate" the stories of migrant women from the stereotypical representations in which they seemed to be trapped solely because of their migratory background, portraying them instead as the bodies of women narrating a story. Configuring real experiments of experience, these multimodal research practices allow us to view anthropology as a discipline interested in the "production of knowledge and ways of knowing, rather than... the collection of data" (Pink 2013, 35). From such a perspective, photography can be considered a conversational practice (Gunthert 2015), in which the captured images can be tools to initiate and sustain meaningful dialogues.