Photography and alterity: Concerning the uses of photography and the meaning of others

In this article we will present some of the main findings arising from seminars and workshops that we have been holding for four years as a way of thinking about photography and alterity together. First we clarify the meaning of "alterity" and then we consider the practice and use of photography in the social sciences as well as the closely aligned and complex relations that these practices and uses have with the perception and analysis of the process of alterization and alterities. Accordingly, we propose that photography can be, in addition to an excellent tool for the production of information, a different language, and complementary of the oral and written language in our scientific task of describing and understanding the meaning of the other in contemporary societies. We also examine the conditions necessary to make a photoethnography or a sociophotology possible. © QUADERNS-E DE L'ICA.