Visualising ethnography : ethnography's role in art and visual cultures

This special issue of Visual Studies explores the intersection of art, ethnography and creative practice in the light of the recent shifts in contemporary media ecology. From artists revising ethnography and ethnographers deploying creative methods to the interrogation of the production of culturally inflected aesthetic values and practices, this special issue seeks to examine the key questions around the relationship between ethnography and the production and circulation of creative and aesthetic forms. This special issue brings together an array of approaches, methods and theories in order to re-examine the changing relationship between visual culture and ethnography. From discussion about screens and other forms of visual culture as platforms, new forms of ‘seeing’ in ethnographic practice and the circulation of imagery through brands and advertising, the authors seek to provide insight into some of the multiple ways in which this relationship is being amended, reviewed and reconceptualised.