Paper short abstract:

What happens if a professional photographer embarks on intense fieldwork, trying to investigate a complex issue of visual representations of Indigenous identities in Colombia? Where is the balance between artistic measures and the scientific research? A new quality emerges, serving both needs

Paper long abstract:

Practical side of the audio-visual academic fieldwork, conducted by a profession photographer/filmmaker, implicates a complex consequences. Direct research experience becomes translated into a medium, which simplifies a complex set of impulses from all the senses (including not only vision and sound, but also sense of touch, smell, taste, and emotions accompanying it), into a two-dimensional representation.

Nevertheless, in some cases, the audio-visual media, proves to be the much more appropriate than the textual one. Like in case of negotiating the visual representation of the identity of selected Indigenous communities in Colombia, which is my research area. Because the research topic is VISUAL representation, it seems much more sensible to give it justice in some form of visual medium. It obviously creates a constant tension between artistic and scientific aspects of the research, especially if the researcher is a professional art photographer at the same time. And the outcome of such work will inevitably be placed on the boundary of the scientific research and artistic production, potentially appealing to two different types of the audiences. It also raises a question about new standards of such research, and possibility of using different art forms in pursue of the research question.