Visual anthropology follows a much debated objective : to obtain equal recognition of visual and verbal means of expression in the production of knowledge. Many ethnologists do not consider image as a proper scientific document. The article shows how the “ethnographic turn” and the diffusion of the ethnographic method in other fields deeply changed the judgment on the relation between word and image, between verbal and visual codes. In the same way as image is appropriated by the verbal world, visual representation, and here more especially the cinema with its editing techniques, proposes models for ethnographic writings.