Electro+ (Ghid). Artistul ca etnograf într-un spațiu străin / Electro+ (Guide). The Artist as Ethnographer in a Foreign Space

Abstract: The book that is the subject of this critical reflection on the relationship between photographic art and ethnographic practice is called Electro+(Guide), written by Agnès Birebent (text) and Nicu Ilfoveanu (photography) and published in 2011, in Bucharest. The book is just a reason for reflection because it offers an attractive framework for questioning the interferences between the arts (especially photography), literature and the practice of social sciences in Romania. Hence, its content is profitable for critical discussions in relation to the ways in which ethnography and anthropology are practiced in Romania, to the understanding of field research and to the ambiguous – still increasingly widespread – relations between art and anthropology on the one hand, and between the familiar and the exotic on the other. Often used in the social sciences in Romania and less practiced as a scientific method, photography seems to be, unintentionally, an auxiliary element of the written text or, in happier cases, a harmless witness or an ethnographic document. Photography is practised and then used by anthropologists, ethnographers, ethnologists, sociologists but more often as an auxiliary element that is supposed to speak and tell stories by itself, thus becoming illustration.

Keywords: Romania, photography, ethnography, anthropology, medium-smalltowns.