Photography and Urban Marginality

In recent years several monographs have appeared in Italy, though even more abroad, as a report of ethnographic research into the everyday life practices of marginal urban social groups; all fall under a disciplinary subfield the author calls “Anthropology of urban marginality.” The authors of these works have increasingly been using technologies other than written representation, as for instance the medium of photography. There is a question at the core of this article which could be summed as, Why and how can this medium aid in a better understanding of the phenomena being investigated?