ABSTRACT
The taking of photographs currently holds, as does video, a central position in our ethnographic work. We use photographs as data, as a means to illustrate, and as a medium to think with and through. As we move through spaces or places, or even while sitting and talking, we generally have a digital still camera in hand, taking photographs of telling details, significant actions, what catches our eye as potentially meaningful, configurations of people and objects we imagine as valuable illustrations for an eventual report, as well as, at times, simply someone or something that holds the promise of producing an aesthetically pleasing photograph. In Figure 10.1, the photograph that opens this chapter, it is easy to imagine that all of these motivations were at work in its taking and it is difficult to discern which of these might have been in the forefront.
