The attention for the integration of arts within qualitative research arises from a demand not only to report and capture situations of social injustice but also to simultaneously set stage for change and social intervention (Delgado 2015). Studies have adopted the camera as a participative methodology. They have entrusted the camera to the hands of people to enable them to act as recorders, and potential catalysts for change in their own communities. As a tool that is able to help people to express and locate emotion, joy and grief the camera was understood to be an anti-oppressive research methodology - aiding participants to challenge dominant understandings of their lives (Jarldorn 2019). In this contribution I build upon this current interest in the camera as emancipatory research tool. However, instead of using it as an instrument to create new knowledge, I will defend the camera as a practice that exclude from the outset any interpretations referring to some-thing other than itself. My argument is that however, there is a lot of interest in the camera as a research tool, it does not imply that we look at what it reveals. Meaning that the pictures often do not call into being a reality, but an ‘affiche’: an expression of an idea, a need or a feeling, often narrated by a voice-over (cf. Ranciere 2009). Therefore, in this contribution I want to explore the camera as an artistic research practice. That is to say, I do not want to conceive of the camera practice as an operation aiming at valid knowledge production but as an operation that installs a space in which what we look at invites us to look, and urges us to investigate what we see. For this I will rely upon the camera practice of the French filmmaker and pedagogue Fernand Deligny, who did not use the camera, merely to express feelings or needs, but as a practice that calls into being an in-between-ness and turns ‘text’ or ‘codes’ into pre-text, or wandering lines (lignes d’erre) (cf. Deligny 2007). The focus is on the joining of forces that give shape to ideas and things (Ingold 2017). In other words, instead of using the camera as a tool to observe particular (learning) needs, this contribution investigates the potential of the camera to create conditions that generate interest and allow students to establish new relationships with the world.

Delgado, (2015). Urban youth and photovoice. Visual ethnography in action. Oxford University Press. Deligny, F. (2007). Oeuvres. Paris: L’Arachnéen. Ingold, T. (2017). Correspondences. Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen. Jarldorn, M. (2019). Photovoice. Handbook for social workers. Palgrave. Rancière, J. (2009). Moments politiques: Interventions. 1977-2009. La Fabrique