This special issue of Visual Ethnography proposes to illustrate what visual anthropology provides to an anthropology of the body, that places the action (whether it is accomplished or not) and the senses (whether they are extended or not) within the unbreakable bond with the material culture that makes our human nature. For this reason, this issue is not purely methodological, but rather, it is an invitation to the authors to reflect on their works, considering what visual methodologies bring to the analysis of human practices, or in other words, of the bodies in motion with manifold material cultures, contemplated within various power relations. What specific tools do they offer in order to explore the efficacy of actions on both materials and the subject in his or her bio-psycho-social dimensions? This also would require to consider how efficacy is understood and how it may fail.