The movement of the obtuse direction is wandering. It follows an eccentric trajectory. It departs from the domain of representations. In this issue, by presenting different ethnographic situations, we show how the concept of the obtuse allows us not only to address the legal-evidential value of the ethnographic record but to extend and even reimagine it.

Whis essay examines photomontage practices in rural contexts of Michoacán, Mexico, in order to ask how social uses of photography are intimately linked to collective subjectivities and affects of loss, between histories of migration and recurrent cycles of violence. These visual practices cannot be understood without paying attention to intrinsic aspects of photographic technology-such as its indexical character, its materiality, its artificiality, and its temporal anchoring. Here a careful reading of the concept of "the obtuse" proposed by Roland Barthes reveals how photomontage techniques, in the hands of local photographers, generate visual effects and dislocations through the manipulation of subtle details that contribute to recreate, but also to subvert, the "ways of looking" among the inhabitants of the region.