Despite significant strides from the beginning of the 20th century, there was
no systematic or institutionalized reflection on photography in Serbian
ethnology and anthropology until the 1980s. Until then, photography was
mainly used as an additional technical tool for field recording,
documenting, and presenting field materials in museums or scientific
institutions. However, since the end of the 20th, and especially at the
beginning of the 21st century, an increasing number of social scientists
have included photography in their works, either through historical and
theoretical reflection or through practical use in specific research. This
step can be related to the institutionalization of the sub discipline of
visual anthropology in Serbia. The paper presents the assumption that both
flows are part of a broader process called the visual turn, and the
associated flourishing of systematic thinking about visual culture. In this
paper, we aim to reconstruct the main features of the visual turn in the
local academic community and point out some of its consequences. In
addition, our goal is to present the most important achievements related to
the mentioned turn, and consider their impact on recent examples of thinking
about photography, i.e. its use in ethnological and anthropological research
in Serbia. This paper emphasizes the examples that are important in the
theoretical, methodological, or applied-scientific framework.