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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.