Camilo Leon-Quijano

My project aims to expand the understanding of photographic practices in anthropology through a multimedia project that explores urban experiences in a marginalized French city. The project emerges from a central statement: ethnographic photography has not kept pace with the critical thinking around filmic ethnography. Instead, over the last fifty years, photography has often been reduced to the role of a descriptive or illustrative tool, with few genuine theoretical and narrative reflections on the material and narrative dimensions of the medium. This project aims to fulfill this epistemological and methodological hiatus by providing new insights into the creation, publication, and exhibition of photographic materials in anthropology. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2015 and 2018 in Sarcelles, one of the most stigmatized “banlieues” of France, this project explores new ways of depicting visual experiences based on a triple multimedia activity: an itinerant photographic exhibition, a photo-anthropological book, and an interactive website. Through a reflexive activity involving multimodal performances in Paris, Sarcelles and Marseille, this project expands anthropological knowledge about photographic practices and strengthens new thinking about sensorial experiences in urban settings. In sum, this multimedia project redefines the place of photographic depiction and encourages the development of public anthropology by fostering new visual dialogues with civil society.