Introduction:

The project called “Workshop on Anthropology and Photography” (WAF) is related with the scientific line of Applied Anthropology (AA). I believe that AA is not just a branch or specialization of anthropology, but the epistemological principles, methodologies, and objectives through which the anthropologist deals with his or her subject of interest, whether it’s in the field of medical anthropology, visual anthropology, or the anthropology of human rights, for example. It is also a way of using scientific research (academic literature) and fieldwork to analyze and try to solve problems posed by the people in the field of research we have chosen to study and not only that, but also, to produce theoretical models that allow us to expand our understanding of reality. That said, the academic references for this AA project are David Graeber; Robert Borofsky, Didier Fassin and Tim Ingold since this project also crosses aspects of the anthropology of education.

It lasted 8 months, from March to September 2023, in a small town near Lisbon (Portugal) and in a public primary and secondary school, with a particular characteristic: being a multicultural school, attended by children of many nationalities other than Portuguese, with a high number of immigrants and refugees (migrants).

Background: 

the school where the workshop was set up, has chosen to develop and support various inclusive projects centered on interculturality, in order to facilitate dialogue and coexistence between Portuguese and migrant students, with particular attention to learning the Portuguese language. WAF came about because of another project with international partnerships (New ABC https://newabc.eu/) applied in this school. One of its outputs was the training of a group of students from various school levels, whose role was to become “mentors/ambassadors”. These, selected and recruited by their teachers, were students who were already well integrated and represented autonomy in the school environment. They could be Portuguese or migrants. One of their priority tasks was to translate other languages into Portuguese, during classes.

The aim of this school project (New Abc) was to directly respond to newly arrived children and youth’s needs, regarding enabling them to integrate into the school environment, in terms of autonomy, trust in the school institutions and wellbeing, trust in other colleagues and support for building multicultural and pro-diversity contexts. Both newly arrived and long settled children and youth, as well as teachers, were trained in mentoring skills, participate in the activities ‘planning and were encouraged to reflect in the process of integration of newly arrived students. 

It was in the context of this project, to which I already belonged as a consultant, that I was invited to do the “Anthropology and Photography Workshop” (https://newabc.eu/2023/10/08/multimodal-workshops-with-school-students-in-portugal/).

The strategy for the development of this specific workshop, consisted of putting together a transdisciplinary team made up of myself – as coordinator and responsible for the content and dynamization of the workshop sessions; a student of mine (doing his master’s degree in international studies), who is also a photographer and expert in filmmaker. He was responsible of teaching the students cell phone photography techniques; a psychologist and researcher, who coordinated the New ABC project in Portugal, and two leaders of refugee associations. The last four persons were already part of the project that framed the workshop. 

In each session, the basic concepts mentioned at the beginning of this text, were presented, and related to the photographic images that illustrated them. These photographs could either be chosen by the coordinating team – preferably just as an initial stimulus – or they could be captured by the students themselves. 

Like Brent, we also consider that “photography is not merely a passive or neutral recorder of personal observations but rather exists alongside those observations, expanding upon and complicating them. In short, photography exerts a kind of agency over anthropological practice. It helps shape the field of anthropology rather than merely serving its ends” (p.1) .

Also, according to Jason Cabañes, “Photography might mediate voice, defined as the capacity to speak and to be heard speaking about one’s life and the social conditions in which one’s life is embedded. It focuses on the affordances that the image provides for migrant cultural minorities to articulate such a voice within the context of collaborative research” (p. 33). But photography by itself has not enough political power to empower the marginalized people. Questions about who is looking, in what conditions, and what kind of political solutions are there to acknowledge the needs and perspectives for the immigrants and refugees in a near future with dignity, is the most important goal of this project. As refereed by Deborah *Poole, “We do not simply ‘see’ what is there before us. Rather, the specific ways in which we see (and represent) the world determine how we act upon the world and, in doing so, create what the world is”. (Poole 1997, 7). 

We assumed that the images taken on the students’ cell phones, after learning the technical elements of photography, followed by a debate on different concepts related to the anthropology of migration, would help young students to think about themselves and the worlds around them.

Thus, the aim of the “Anthropology and Photography Workshop” was to generate dialogues of mutual learning between everyone, in the sense that we believe that both, the team members, the students, and also the teachers at this school, regardless of age, curricula and life experience, have something to learn from each other, particularly migrant children who have already accumulated remarkable experiences in their diasporic process that contribute to an extensive perception of life.

Methodology: the workshop sessions took place once a week, for around 3 hours each day. The whole team, one or two teachers and between 15 and 20 students were present. The variation in the number of students depended on their asylum processes. In other words: every time refugee families were sent by the institutions responsible for their integration to another territory, the children had to leave school to go to another designated city, losing contact with the whole community and having to start their integration process, all over again, in another country region.

The students who took place in the workshop came from different backgrounds: Somalia; Bangladesh; Brazil; Angola; Cape Verde; India; Congo and also Portugal.

The concepts covered in the sessions were based on themes from the anthropology of migration, namely: cultural, religious and gender diversity; the notion of identity and belonging; everyday living conditions; the idea of Europe; social inclusion and school integration; different notions of family; migration and mobility; racism; bullying, and perspectives on the future. In order to work on these complex concepts, but in an age-appropriate way (the age of the students ranged from 11 to 16 years old), from a creative and participatory perspective, the sessions always began with an introduction to cell phone photography techniques, followed by practical exercises. All the students had cell phones, so it was a democratic option, available to everyone.

Teaching photography techniques was meant to improve their quality, and to have different perspectives when taking pictures. By teaching “different perspectives” of seeing, we could also address the idea that each person, each notion of culture, each experience of leaving can change, if we make the exercise to adopt another angle to look at the world, and to look at the people that makes part of it. The students were then asked to apply what they had learned, in the school’s outdoor spaces and in their everyday lives, taking into account the concepts discussed in class (cultural diversity; identity; the notion of belonging…), followed by a debate on each topic.

This practice served a dual purpose: honing their photographic techniques and providing an alternative means for self-expression. But, most of all, there was another important purpose: to ensure that each student was heard, seen, valued and appreciated for their own ideas. As students delved deeper into the essence of the workshop, their photographic subjects evolved to include also objects or landscapes reminiscent of their home country, culture, or traditions. For instance, the tree featured in the following picture was taken by a student, who remarked that it resembled the place she/he lived before relocating to Portugal. 

Such moments offered opportunities for discussions on cultural differences, coping mechanisms, the significance of culture, and the challenges of being a migrant. It is essential to recognize that photographs served as an avenue for expression and as a catalyst for addressing more nuanced and delicate issues.

While facilitators and minors were discussing the photos, some issues around different cultures, different religions, and discrimination were raised by participants. These moments led to a delay in the implementation of the workshop, as facilitators and the team felt the need to devote more time, than previously estimated, to talk about these issues with the minors, as they were hindering their integration process. If a situation was deemed more complicated, the coordination team was summoned to help talk deeply about that issue. Some issues potentially impeding the integration of any student were brought to light during the session, or sometimes privately. Some of these challenges included instances of discrimination and racist discourse directed at migrant minors, with participants sharing firsthand experiences. In one of the examples, students recounted how, in situations where something went missing at the school, some peers immediately attributed it to migrant students based solely on their different countries of origin and skin color. Reports regarding the conduct of certain teachers were also troubling, particularly concerning subtle actions and narratives. In another case, some pupils mentioned that certain teachers would request pupils from Brazil to speak “correct Portuguese.” Consequently, the team made the decision to organize a session on discrimination and racism, enlisting a facilitator experienced in these topics.

In one of the final sessions, students, facilitators, and the team, work together to choose the more illustrative photos to present in an exhibition during the Intercultural Week at the school. The goal of this exhibition was to present the project and the workshop. An additional exhibition was organized, this time hosted by an ONG collective event in Lisbon, during the 2023 World Refugee Day. Besides the photos, each exhibition had several reports written by minors about their experience in the workshop – ones in English and others in Portuguese. In general, the students expressed satisfaction with it, highlighting their enjoyment of gaining insights into new perspectives, cultures, and the importance of inclusion of immigrants and refugees. They strongly recommended the continuation of the workshops, with the only drawback identified being a constraint in time. It is noteworthy that both collective exhibitions were collaboratively created and planned, involving all stakeholders invested in the workshop.

At the end of the Workshop, the team asked the students to evaluate the sessions. Here are some testimonials: 

“When students of different nationalities are asked: ‘What does culture mean, to you?’ we learn a lot about each other, when we hear them speak.” 

“I was very impressed to see that the same photograph, sometimes the same photographed object, was interpreted in such different ways. For example, one girl said, regarding a photo of a parrot: ‘Oh! Whenever I see a parrot I remember my home in Brazil, my house, and the memories I have from there’. Not everyone sees it the same way. It depends on the culture”.

“Once, the teacher asked what ‘home’ meant. There was a refugee girl who answered: ‘I was born in Somalia, then I went to live in Sweden. And although I’m now in Portugal, for me, my culture, the one I identify with, is Sweden. That’s where I have my best memories. Maybe one day it will even be Portugal, but for now, my home, my identity, is not that of the country where I was born, neither the country where I currently live’. So, we could all understand that our culture isn’t necessarily the country where we were born, and our nationality doesn’t always have to do with our identity.”

“On the subject of discrimination, racism and bullying, I learned that we should talk to a qualified adult. We shouldn’t keep quiet about it.”

“I’ve learned that just because we have a different culture or religion from the majority doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just different and we can learn from the differences.” 

“I learned that, after all, discrimination exists and is everywhere. There are colleagues who suffer from it, just because they’re not Portuguese, or because they’re a different color, or even because they don’t speak Portuguese. When we say that racism is bad, we know that it is, and that you shouldn’t be racist, but I didn’t realize that making seemingly innocent jokes, can really affect someone who is the target of the joke.”

Conclusion: as we said before, our main task was to enable all students to feel welcomed and supported. For this, we tried to set a safe space where they could speak about their feelings, needs, personal experiences, challenges, fears, and achievements. We also tried to highlight their skills and expertise, knowledge about their own countries, cultures, mastering different languages and life experiences. We used photography as a mean to facilitate self-expression and communication in a more creative in easy way, knowing that the way we observe is shaped by our own culture and that culture is permanently changing. But we also know that photography will not be able to guarantee that what is spoken will be correspond exactly to what is heard.  

These project, that included the Workshop of Anthropology and Photography should, of course, run in parallel with other works, based in Applied Anthropology, focusing on the ways different cultural groups express, by images, concepts like “belonging”; “cultural diversity” or “racism”. The images captured by the eye are linked to life experiences and memories that could be preserved in a photo and discussed in a group.

1. Luvaas, Brent. (2022) 2023. “Photography”. In The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by Felix Stein. Facsimile of the first edition in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Online: http://doi.org/10.29164/22photography
2.  Cabañes, Jason Vincent. “Migrant narratives as photo stories: on the properties of photography and the mediation of migrant voices”, Pages 33-46 | Published online: 15 Dec 2016
3. Poole, Deborah. 1997. Vision, race, and modernity: A visual economy of the Andean image world. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
4.