seeing otherwise - photography workshop

This course is designed for those interested in exploring visual anthropology and integrating its perspectives into photographic practice.

What does it mean to adopt an anthropological approach to images?

How can photography engage with methods developed within social sciences?

Using these questions as a starting point,the course explores the vital relationship between anthropology and documentary photography, highlighting how research-based practices become a framework for powerful visual storytelling. Participants will be introduced to key anthropological methods—including interviewing, fieldwork, participant observation, and data collection—as well as participatory and collaborative strategies such as photovoice and photo-elicitation. These practices will be contextualized through the study of major theoretical frameworks and authors in visual anthropology, with particular attention given to the role of images, their meanings, and their interpretation in contemporary contexts, alongside critical issues surrounding ethnographic representation.

By examining landmark works in ethnographic photography and cinema, the course traces the evolution of visual languages and recurring themes within the history of photography, while also engaging with current and experimental approaches.

The workshop combines classroom lectures with extended fieldwork. Over the seven days, participants develop an individual/collective photographic project, alternating theory with on-site research and image-making. Daily collective reviews support critical reflection and ongoing dialogue between practice and theory.

The course addresses both the conceptual and practical dimensions of building a visual narrative, from research and development to editing and presentation, while also considering different forms of dissemination such as books, exhibitions, magazines, and other platforms.

Analog and darkroom section

This workshop treats analog photography as an autonomous method within visual anthropology. Through field shooting and hands-on darkroom work, participants engage with film as a material, temporal, and relational process in which slowness and attention to the presence of photographer and subject are central. Film’s delay, manual development, and chemical variability are used productively: imperfections and accidents become research data rather than faults. The course covers the full analog workflow—from shooting and developing to reading contact sheets and making prints—supported by daily mentoring on formats, stocks, developers, and printing strategies. Teaching favours limited-roll assignments, contact sheets as analytical tools, interpretive printing sessions, and group critiques. A portrait session explores natural and artificial light (flash and continuous), focusing on simple setups and on shaping light to reflect who the sitter is and why they are photographed.