Since the so-called "ethnographic turn" (Forster 1995), social sciences have had a relevant influence on contemporary art practices. These have opened up to theories and approaches borrowed from anthropology, such as the free adoption of field research methods, long-term projects focusing on socially- or politically engaged themes and collaborations with local actors, with the stress put on the relationships generated by these encounters more than on the final artwork (Schneider & Wright 2013). More recently, anthropology has opened up to its own disciplinary renewal, with methodological hybridisation helping decentralize the gaze, confront the colonial past, and overcome Western-centrism to co-create anthropological knowledge. In my proposal, I analyse the first results of an ongoing project involving asylum seekers and refugees in Italy, which has been conceived as a participatory photographic workshop with two professionals (one photographer and one anthropologist) working as instructors and curators. We provided participants with the primary means of photographic creation and tried to accompany them in constructing their own narratives. The idea was to generate a safe space for self-expression and self-representation and establish a dialogue around themes such as home, territory, hospitality and whatever the participants wished to discuss through their images. In this context, with its immediacy, affordability and availability, photography seemed the best option as it overcomes verbal language and other barriers against which words – spoken or written - would instead clash. However, some major setbacks forced us to ponder whether it is sufficient to provide a technical tool of self-expression (the camera) to overcome power imbalances, shyness, and structural uncertainty and thus collect the "native point of view". My intervention will address these and other ethical and epistemological issues that have emerged during this process.