Abstract
Amateur visual archives, family films and home movies are relevant for visual anthropology because of their liminal position, as they revolve around an intimate visuality, a subjective view, a cultural rituality, the art of collecting. These peculiar objects of research, a marginal genre almost by definition, represent a challenge for anthropology: they spark new reflections on their poetics and aesthetics and at the same time on the different actors involved in their making and collecting. This talk addresses how these archives dialogue with the anthropological perspective through an ethnographic sensibility. How to frame a research topic that is characterized by its proximity, redundancy, sameness, familiarity and predictability, rather than by its distinctiveness? What is “the everyday” that has played such a significant role in the history of the discipline since its inception? What is the “we” in this collective memory?
Bionote
Alessandra Gribaldo is associate professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. After working on kinship, body and gender in the context of reproductive technologies in Italy and on procreative choices in low fertility contexts, she has conducted research on the relationship between visuality and gender, on migration and kinship, and on intimate partner violence. She has published in several national and international journals including “American Ethnologist” and “PoLAR”, and for Hau Books Unexpected Subjects. Intimate Partner Violence, Testimony and the Law, in 2021. Her latest research projects concern an anthropology of amateur films and the relationship between kinship and visuality.
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