Fieldnotes. Diary of a clinical anthropologist
by Maria Elisa Dainelli
portfolio shortlisted call 'Urbanautica Institute Awards 2024', 2024
Category: People and Communities
These pictures are part of an extended project called “Fieldnotes”. In anthropology, this term describes the way the ethnographer collects his data, writing her/his impressions on a diary, which, after, will be elaborated in a scientific relation.
During the years from 2021 to 2023 I worked as a clinical anthropologist, taking care, with psychologists, of migrants coming from Mediterranean Sea, Afghanistan or Ukraine. We sat and listen to people who need psychological support after their traumatic journeys to Italy. After hearing them, I wrote my ethnographic data but needed to fix something else, deeper. This is a collection of visual suggestions I took during my work. Some of them are details I saw during my days, going in reception centers, some others are visual impressions I received from the interviews.
My intent is to try to compose photographic fieldnotes which can describe by themselves the work of the anthropologist, trusting in the evocative power of pictures and the possibility they have to be a therapeutic tool for caregivers too.
also from Urbanautica Institute Awards 2024