Camilo Leon-Quijano

CAMILO LEON-QUIJANO, EHESS, Paris, France, received a Fejos Fellowship in Ethnographic Filmmaking to aid editing and production of ‘The Imaged City. A Multimedia Anthropology of Urban Experiences in a Marginalized French Banlieue.’ Sarcelles is located 15km to the north of Paris. Symbol of French banlieues, the city represents both hope and despair of the urbanistic utopia of a post-war society. From 2015 to 2018, as part of their doctoral research (EHESS, 2020), the grantee explored the social life of pictures in this marginalized city following a creative, participatory, and experimental photo-ethnographic activity Analyzing the politics and poietics of visual representations of the banlieue, the research explored how local dwellers see, perceive, and experience the city through a series of visual methods. With support of the Fejos Fellowship, ‘La Cit’: A Photographic Anthropology’ was produced from this research consisting of three multimodal objects: a multimodal book, an exhibition, and a website. This threefold project aimed to develop new ways of doing, conceiving, and publicizing visual ethnography by fostering innovative ways of sharing anthropological insights. To this end, experimental activities with large audiences were developed, particularly during the exhibition that took place in Marseille in 2022. La Cit’ shows the extent to which photographic storytelling might expand anthropological frontiers by engaging new publics through sensorial and multimodal practices. Photography-driven narratives, along with sounds, videos, archives, and texts, are an opportunity to explore new ways of doing and sharing anthropological research.