Send message to Contributor

Short abstract

This opening contribution introduces the panel’s central themes—unwriting, unframing, and unfixing—by outlining how visual and collaborative ethnographic methods reconfigure knowledge production.

Long abstract

This opening contribution offers a point of departure for the panel “Unwriting with Photography: Collaborative and Visual Anthropology” by introducing the shared themes that thread through the contributions, and signaling a collective move away from linear, text-bound modes of ethnographic narration toward dialogical, experimental, and image-based practices of knowledge production.

Drawing on key theoretical foundations - including Haraway’s situated knowledge, Bakhtinian dialogism, and Rancière’s partage du sensible - this introduction reflects on how photography and collaborative visual methods open up new spaces for ethnographic engagement. Polyphony, co-authorship, and the creative negotiation of meaning across disciplines, positionalities, and media are central to these approaches.

The contribution also briefly situates the five following papers: from visual elicitation in clinical blood donation contexts and fictional photo-narratives in scientific labs, to decolonial ecofeminist photo-practices in Ukraine, collaborative image-making with migrant women in Italy, and long-term participatory projects among marginalised communities in France. Together, these works explore how visual anthropology can unsettle hierarchies, co-construct narratives, and expand the epistemic boundaries of the field.