‘Ça aurait pu faire une bonne photo !’ Réflexions sur les déboires d’une pratique photographique dans une recherche pluridisciplinaire au Burundi

In reflexive mode, this article re-examines the difficulties of producing photographic materials in a research project in the humanities and social sciences which took place in Burundi between 2018 and 2020. The author was co-lead in this programme, Suburbu (Subsistance urbaine et mobilisations du travail au Burundi, early 20th century-early 21st century), carried out at the Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines of the university of Burundi in the framework of the support provided by the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (“Jeune équipe associée à l’IRD”). In this text, she takes note of the setbacks that stood in the way of achieving initial aims of the project with regard to photography—in particular holding an exhibition—to investigate the oversights that caused them, and to examine the disciplinary, cultural and human impediments and stumbling blocks that limited the range of possibilities in terms of taking photographs and the uses of photography for scientific purposes. The aim is to describe the practical situations as well as the theoretical negligence and technical lacks that caused the difficulties, and to highlight their impact, starting with the photographs taken by the team, in particular, and taking into account the expectations of what might have “made a good photo” for a public exhibition, and beyond that, for research and its heuristics.The text does not elude the succession of errors and the impression of levity that can be seen with hindsight regarding the (non-)use of photography in the Suburbu project. If certain of these anomalies are understandable and justifiable, for example the self-censorship that a hostile security situation obliged the team to practise, or ignorance of certain basic techniques for producing pictures that would be usable for scientific or aesthetic purposes, others are less so and can be put down to carelessness or amateurism that the author endeavours to examine. The expectations and the value of the rapprochement between the social sciences and photography had not really been thought through in advance, nor had the corpus of knowledge been consulted. Similarly, subjective reticence or objections bolstered a certain detachment with regard to photographs, considered as mere accessories or even of no use. Between the two, photographs were nonetheless taken, which “could have been good ones” if only their very low resolution had not made them unusable (a few examples are shown in this text). This last point, along with other failings of competence, have led the author to review the benefits, technical and practical, or intellectual and scientific, to be derived from collaboration between researchers and professional or experienced photographers. Finally, the idea is to encourage the teams to envisage the use of photography more routinely in humanities and social sciences projects by including professional photographers right from the preparatory stages or at the very least planning appropriate training courses.