Paper short abstract:

What are the specificities and consequences of being a woman when you decided to dedicate your life to Visual Anthropology?

Paper long abstract:

What are the specificities and consequences of being a woman when you decided to dedicate your life to Visual Anthropology?

We could start from the training as a cameraperson in order to avoid the "power relationship" with technicians, to the fieldwork shared with women colleagues, to the decision of dedicating your work to the women daily life in the Dogon country.

My choices permitted to better understand the ways the Dogon society could be perceived by Dogon men, the crucial importance of men rituals and that daily life was probably one of the most difficult aspect of the society to render. Also, I clearly understood it was not "the cup of tea" for festivals and in the French cultural surrounding. The last exhibit at Quai Branly Museum was exemplar by presenting 330 exceptional "pieces" from international collections without giving any explanation regarding the social surrounding of the population. Women were still in the backstage waiting for the next century to be allowed to have their own existence, rights and proper beliefs.

As I'm starting, with a woman colleague of mine, a new fieldwork on the biggest French maternity in Mayotte island, where 6.000 to 8000 babies are born every year, during this presentation I will describe precisely the reasons, consequences, specificities and the evolution of a woman' eye behind the viewfinder.