On hybridisation. Three exercises in crossbreeding anthropology and photography

Abstract

Drawing reflections from my experience of close collaboration with photographers, this piece presents three projects representative of different but complementary ways of putting anthropology and photography into dialogue. The first one is the work Delta (2014-2022) that Camilla de Maffei developed through in-depth field research in the Danube delta in Romania; the second project is Lorenzo Vitturi’s Caminantes (2017-ongoing), an exploration through images and matter of the artist’s mixed heritage connecting apparently unrelated places such as Venice and Peru; the third example is Dialect (2020-2023), by Felipe Romero Beltrán, both a photographic series and a performative act exploring the indefinite state of suspension that migrant bodies are subjected to while waiting to be admitted into the receiving society. Through an analysis of these artistic practices, some common threads emerge, ways of thinking and making that bring the work of the photographer closer and closer to that of the anthropologist. In this piece, we ask ourselves what can be gained from such a disciplinary juxtaposition, especially regarding a possible renewal of anthropology.