Paper short abstract:

Deciding to do some self reflexive methodology in order to analyse my position as researcher with camera, I did admit easily that photography can mediate in different settings. The status of the camera and the anthropologist can bring “ethnographer with camera” to do an auto-ethnography (cf. Billy Ehn).

Paper long abstract:

Ethnographers are of course interested in using camera because of its role as memory capable to write and record events. Looking at that sense, one might think that camera has a power, but on the other hand protagonists to be filmed have also the power to refuse to be filmed by researcher.

Camera makes visible the work of a researcher, at the same it makes its role and its status visible. That's why I have been convinced that the use of camera and its equipments can resolve the issue of gender or non-initiated in certain cases. Because of the mediation of camera, the status of researcher is forgotten, priority is given to camera and its role. In a conservative Malian urban and rural areas, I have been filming several times among women without the presence of other men. Most of the time I felt it quite normal, but when capturing my images I wonder how did I manage to be in positions I would never be without camera.

During my presentation, I will focus more precisely on specific cases where I have been the only man among women: to analyse interactions between the different protagonists and at which level anthropological knowledge has been collectively produced, to underline the ways the protagonists and researcher are communicating with a self reflexive attitude.