Ethnographie rétrospective au comptoir. De l'intérêt des collages pour revenir sur son terrain.

This research focuses on the practices in a bar, in the city of Macerata (Italy), where I worked as a barmaid. The Piranha is located on the ground floor of a building, whose inhabitants are also the usual customers of the café. Here, the public practices of the bar (conversations between customers and patrons, drinks, meetings, coffee breaks) and the private practices of the building (mail delivery, supervision of children, elders’ card games) merge, the café being at the center of the social life of the neighborhood. The objects (furniture, decor, photos) attest this multiplicity of activities and the shared use of space. To understand what happens in this café, in a situation of physical distance from the field, due in particular to the health crisis, this article shows the place that collages had in the ethnographic investigation: the images have a key role in the interpretation of data and in revealing details that would have remained unnoticed during the field survey. The article proposes, beyond the single case, a reflection on retrospective ethnography through images.