Encounters: Handling, Placing and Looking at Photographs in Relation to Migration

Looking at global migration, we are constantly confronted with the 'excess' and 'noise' of photography.1 This is not only the effect of the technology of photography as a recording medium and the sheer abundance of visual material, but also of the contrast or conflict between emic and etic perspectives, between the perspective of the subject and the perspective of the observer. This contrast is evident, for instance, when looking at images circulating on social media, or at press coverage. Contemporary and historical photographs connected to migration are often excessive: sometimes because they are explicitly made to represent suffering and displacement, sometimes precisely because they also contain a noise that escapes the photographer's intentionality. It is exactly