Visual anthropology is a subfield of

social anthropology Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...

that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media. More recently it has been used by historians of science and visual culture. Although sometimes wrongly conflated with ethnographic film, visual anthropology encompasses much more, including the anthropological study of all visual representations such as dance and other kinds of performance, museums and archiving, all visual arts, and the production and reception of mass media. Histories and analyses of representations from many cultures are part of visual anthropology: research topics include sandpaintings, tattoos, sculptures and reliefs,

cave painting In archaeology, Cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric origin, and the oldest known are more than 40,000 ye ...

s, scrimshaw, jewelry, hieroglyphics, paintings and photographs. Also within the province of the subfield are studies of human vision, properties of media, the relationship of visual form and function, and applied, collaborative uses of visual representations. Multimodal anthropology describes the latest turn in the subfield, which considers how emerging technologies like immersive virtual reality,

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be de ...

, mobile apps,

social networking A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

, gaming along with film, photography and art is reshaping anthropological research, practice and teaching.

History

Even before the emergence of anthropology as an academic discipline in the 1880s, ethnologists used photography as a tool of research. Anthropologists and non-anthropologists conducted much of this work in the spirit of salvage ethnography or attempts to record for posterity the ways-of-life of societies assumed doomed to extinction (see, for instance, the Native American photography of Edward Curtis) The history of anthropological filmmaking is intertwined with that of non-fiction and documentary filmmaking, although ethnofiction may be considered as a genuine subgenre of ethnographic film. Some of the first motion pictures of the ethnographic other were made with Lumière equipment (''Promenades des Éléphants à Phnom Penh'', 1901).

Robert Flaherty Robert Joseph Flaherty, (; February 16, 1884 – July 23, 1951) was an American filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature-length documentary film, ''Nanook of the North'' (1922). The film made his reputatio ...

, probably best known for his films chronicling the lives of Arctic peoples ('' Nanook of the North'', 1922), became a filmmaker in 1913 when his supervisor suggested that he take a camera and equipment with him on an expedition north. Flaherty focused on "traditional" Inuit ways of life, omitting with few exceptions signs of modernity among his film subjects (even to the point of refusing to use a rifle to help kill a walrus his informants had harpooned as he filmed them, according to Barnouw; this scene made it into ''Nanook'' where it served as evidence of their "pristine" culture). This pattern would persist in many ethnographic films to follow (see as an example Robert Gardner's '' Dead Birds''). By the 1940s and early 1950s, anthropologists such as Hortense Powdermaker,

Gregory Bateson Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include '' Steps to an ...

, Margaret Mead (

Trance and Dance in Bali ''Trance and Dance in Bali'' is a short documentary film shot by the anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson during their research on Bali in the 1930s. It shows female dancers with sharp ''kris'' daggers dancing in trance, eventually ...

, 1952) and Mead and

Rhoda Metraux ''Rhoda'' is an American television sitcom created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns starring Valerie Harper that originally aired on CBS for five seasons from September 9, 1974, to December 9, 1978. It was the first spin-off of '' The Mary ...

, eds., (''The Study of Culture at a Distance'', 1953) were bringing anthropological perspectives to bear on mass media and visual representation.

Karl G. Heider Karl Heider (born January 21, 1935) is an American visual anthropologist. Life and education Heider was born in Northampton, Massachusetts. Heider is the son of psychologists Fritz and Grace (née Moore) Heider. He had two brothers; John and ...

notes in his revised edition of ''Ethnographic Film'' (2006) that after Bateson and Mead, the history of visual anthropology is defined by "the seminal works of four men who were active for most of the second half of the twentieth century: Jean Rouch,

John Marshall John Marshall (September 24, 1755July 6, 1835) was an American politician and lawyer who served as the fourth Chief Justice of the United States from 1801 until his death in 1835. He remains the longest-serving chief justice and fourth-longes ...

, Robert Gardner, and Tim Asch. By focusing on these four, we can see the shape of ethnographic film" (p. 15). Many, including Peter Loizos, would add the name of filmmaker/author David MacDougall to this select group. In 1966, filmmaker Sol Worth and anthropologist John Adair taught a group of Navajo Indians in Arizona how to capture 16mm film. The hypothesis was that artistic choices made by the Navajo would reflect the 'perceptual structure' of the Navajo world. The goals of this experiment were primarily ethnographic and theoretical. Decades later, however, the work has inspired a variety of participatory and applied anthropological initiatives - ranging from

photovoice Photovoice is a qualitative method used in community-based participatory research to gather information. Photovoice uses participant photography to guide interviews, and is commonly used in the fields of community development, international devel ...

to virtual museum collections - in which cameras are given to local collaborators as a strategy for empowerment. In the United States, Visual Anthropology first found purchase in an academic setting in 1958 with the creation of the Film Study Center at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. In the United Kingdom, Th
Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology
at the University of Manchester was established in 1987 to offer training in anthropology and film-making to MA, MPhil and PhD students and whose graduates have produced over 300 films to date.

John Collier, Jr. John Collier Jr. (May 22, 1913 – February 25, 1992) was an American anthropologist and an early leader in the fields of visual anthropology and applied anthropology. His emphasis on analysis and use of still photographs in ethnography led him ...

wrote the first standard textbook in the field in 1967, and many visual anthropologists of the 1970s relied on semiologists like Roland Barthes for essential critical perspectives. Contributions to the history of Visual Anthropology include those of Emilie de Brigard (1967), Fadwa El Guindi (2004), and Beate Engelbrecht, ed. (2007). A more recent history that understands visual anthropology in a broader sense, edited by Marcus Banks and

Jay Ruby Jay Ruby (October 25, 1935 – February 23, 2022) was an American scholar who was a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Temple University until his retirement in 2003. He received his B.A. in History (1960) and Ph.D. in Anthropology ...

, is ''Made To Be Seen: Historical Perspectives on Visual Anthropology''. Turning the anthropological lens on India provides a counterhistory of visual anthropology (Khanduri 2014). At present, the Society for Visual Anthropology (SVA) represents the subfield in the United States as a section of the

American Anthropological Association The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, ...

, the AAA. In the United States, ethnographic films are shown each year at the Margaret Mead Film Festival as well as at the AAA's annual Film and Media Festival. In Europe, ethnographic films are shown at the Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival in the UK, The Jean Rouch Film Festival in France and Ethnocineca in Austria. Dozens of other international festivals are listed regularly in the ''Newsletter of the Nordic Anthropological Film Association AFA'.

Timeline and breadth of prehistoric visual representation

While art historians are clearly interested in some of the same objects and processes, visual anthropology places these artifacts within a holistic cultural context. Archaeologists, in particular, use phases of visual development to try to understand the spread of humans and their cultures across contiguous landscapes as well as over larger areas. By 10,000 BP, a system of well-developed pictographs was in use by boating peoplesJim Bailey, ''Sailing to Paradise'' and was likely instrumental in the development of navigation and writing, as well as a medium of storytelling and artistic representation. Early visual representations often show the female form, with clothing appearing on the female body around 28,000 BP, which archaeologists know now corresponds with the invention of weaving in Old Europe. This is an example of the holistic nature of visual anthropology: a figurine depicting a woman wearing diaphanous clothing is not merely an object of art, but a window into the customs of dress at the time, household organization (where they are found), transfer of materials (where the clay came from) and processes (when did firing clay become common), when did weaving begin, what kind of weaving is depicted and what other evidence is there for weaving, and what kinds of cultural changes were occurring in other parts of human life at the time. Visual anthropology, by focusing on its own efforts to make and understand film, is able to establish many principles and build theories about human visual representation in general.

List of visual anthropology academic programs

Aarhus University Aarhus University ( da, Aarhus Universitet, abbreviated AU) is a public research university with its main campus located in Aarhus, Denmark. It is the second largest and second oldest university in Denmark. The university is part of the Coimbra Gr ...

: Master in Visual Anthropology * Australian National University: The Research School of Humanities and the Art
Centre for Visual Anthropology
* California State University, Chico: Home to th
Advanced Laboratory for Visual Anthropology (ALVA)
which offers students use o
RED Digital Cinema cameras
in it

program. Students receive a four-fields degree but complete an ethnographic film as partial fulfillment of their thesis requirement.

is also available for students who would like to pursue Visual Anthropology, and make ethnographic films as Undergraduates. * Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales Ecuador: offers
master program in visual anthropology
* Free University of Berlin:
M.A. in Visual and Media Anthropology
* Harvard University: Harvard offers
PhD in Social Anthropology with Media
in conjunction with it
Sensory Ethnography Lab
* Heidelberg University: The chair o
Visual and Media Anthropology
offers BA and MA courses in the field of visual and media anthropology. * New York University:''
The Program in Culture and Media
* Pontifical Catholic University of Peru: The Social Sciences Department at PUCP offers a two-yea
MA program in Visual Anthropology
* San Francisco State University
Visual Anthropology program
an
Peter Biella
* Tallinn University
MA in audiovisual ethnography
* Towson University: Undergraduate track i
Anthropology-Sociology
an

* Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana
Laboratorio de Antropología Visual (LAV)
* Universitat de Barcelona
Postgraduate and Master's programs in Visual Anthropology
* University of British Columbia
The Ethnographic Film Unit at UBC
* University College London: offer
postgraduate courses
that can be taken as part of a master's degree for credit or they can be audited with a certificate of completion provided. * University of Kent: The Department of Anthropology offers
Masters in Visual Anthropology
that explores traditional and experimental means of using visual images to produce/represent anthropological knowledge. Note (Nov 2020): this is no longer offered. Link is to web archive version. * University of Leiden: offers the Bachelor cours
Visual Methods
an
Visual Ethnography as a Method
as part the Master's programme. It teaches students how to use photography, digital video and sound recording both as research and reporting tools as part of ethnographic research. * University of London, Goldsmiths College: The anthropology department offers
BA
a
MA
, an
PhD
in Visual Anthropology. * University of Manchester: Th
Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology
offers MA, MPhil and PhD courses that combine practical film training, editing and production, photography, sound recording, art and social activism. Established in 1987, the Granada Centre's postgraduate programme has produced over 300 documentary films. Its students have made films for numerous international broadcasters, including the BBC and Channel 4. Manchester includes an Oscar nominee, two BAFTA winners, and a BAFTA nominee among its alumni. * University of Münster
Visual Anthropology, Media & Documentary Practices
Programme which accompanies employment. Master of Arts (M.A.) degree within 6 semesters. Provides skills in the area of visual anthropology, documentary films, photography, documentary art, culture media and media anthropology. * University of New South Wales: offers
PhD in Visual Anthropology
* University of Oxford
The Institute of Social & Cultural Anthropology
collaborates with th

to offer the highly ranked one-year MSc and two-year MPhil i
Visual, Material, and Museum Anthropology
and also awards DPhil degrees with numerou
competitive funding opportunities
* University of South Carolina offers
Graduate Certificate in Visual Anthropology
for graduate students enrolled in M.A. or Ph.D. programs in Media Arts and Anthropology but which also serves graduate students in such areas as Education, the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, as well as Sociology and Geography. * University of Southern California - ''

USC Center for Visual Anthropology The USC Center for Visual Anthropology (CVA) is a center located at the University of Southern California. It is dedicated to the field of visual anthropology, incorporating visual modes of expression in the academic discipline of anthropology. It ...

'': The MAVA (Master of Arts in Visual Anthropology) was a 2–3 year terminal Masters program from 1984 to 2001, which produced over sixty ethnographic documentaries. In 2001, it was merged into a Certificate in Visual Anthropology given alongside the Ph.D. in Anthropology. A new digitally based program was created in the Fall of 2009 as
new one year MA program in Visual Anthropology
Since 2009, the program has produced twenty five new ethnographic documentaries. Many have screened at film festivals and several are in distribution. * University of Tromsø: The University of Tromsø offers a program i
Visual Culture Studies
* Western Kentucky University: Western Kentucky University offers a BA in Cultural Anthropology with a focus on Visual Anthropology * Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (University of Münster)
Visual Anthropology, Media & Documentary Practices
Programme which accompanies employment. Master of Arts (M.A.) degree within 6 semesters. Provides skills in the area of visual anthropology, documentary films, photography, documentary art, culture media and media anthropology.

List of films

References

Bibliography

* Alloa, Emmanuel (ed.) ''Penser l'image II. Anthropologies du visuel.'' Dijon: Presses du réel 2015. (in French).
Banks, Marcus

Morphy, Howard Howard Morphy (born 13 June 1947) is a British anthropologist who has conducted extensive fieldwork in northern Australia, mainly among the Yolngu people. He was founding director of the Research School of Humanities and the Arts at the Australia ...

(Hrsg.): ''Rethinking Visual Anthropology''. New Haven: Yale University Press 1999. *Marcus Banks and
David Zeitlyn
2015
"Visual methods in social research"
(Second Edition), Sage: London * Barbash, Ilisa and Lucien Taylor. ''Cross-cultural Filmmaking: A Handbook for Making Documentary and Ethnographic Films and Videos.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. * Collier, Malcolm et al.: ''Visual Anthropology. Photography As a Research Method.'' University of Mexico 1986.
Daniels, Inge
2010. The Japanese House: Material Culture in the Modern Home. Oxford: Berg Publishers. *Coote, Jeremy and Anthony Shelton. 1994. Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics. Clarendon Press. *Edwards, Elisabeth (Hrsg.): ''Anthropology and Photography 1860–1920''. New Haven, London 1994, Nachdruck. *Engelbrecht, Beate (ed.). ''Memories of the Origins of Ethnographic Film.'' Frankfurt am Main et al.: Peter Lang Verlag, 2007. *Grimshaw, Anna. ''The Ethnographer's Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Harris, Claire
2012. The Museum on the Roof of the World: Art, Politics and the Representation of Tibet. University of Chicago Press.
Harris, Claire
and Michael O'Hanlon. 2013. 'The Future of the Ethnographic Museum,' ''Anthropology Today'', 29(1). pp. 8–12. *Heider, Karl G. ''Ethnographic Film (Revised Edition).'' Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. *Hockings, Paul (ed.). "Principles of Visual Anthropology." 3rd edn. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003. * MacDougall, David. ''Transcultural Cinema.'' Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. * Martinez, Wilton. 1992. “Who Constructs Anthropological Knowledge? Toward a Theory of Ethnographic Film Spectatorship.” In ''Film as Ethnography'', D. Turton and P. Crawford, (Eds.), pp. 130–161. Manchester: Manchester University Press. * Mead, Margaret: Anthropology and the camera. In: Morgan, Willard D. (Hg.): Encyclopedia of photography. New York 1963.
Morton, Chris
and Elizabeth Edwards (eds.) 2009. Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing
Peers, Laura
2003. Museums and Source Communities: A Routledge Reader, Routledge * Pink, Sarah: ''Doing Visual Ethnography: Images, Media and Representation in Research.'' London: Sage Publications Ltd. 2006. * Pinney, Christopher: ''Photography and Anthropology.'' London: Reaktion Books 2011. * Prins, Harald E.L. "Visual Anthropology." pp. 506–525. In ''A Companion to the Anthropology of American Indians.'' Ed. T. Biolsi. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. * Prins, Harald E.L., and Ruby, Jay eds. "The Origins of Visual Anthropology." ''Visual Anthropology Review''. Vol. 17 (2), 2001–2002. * Ruby, Jay. ''Picturing Culture: Essays on Film and Anthropology.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, . * Worth, Sol, Adair John. "

Through Navajo Eyes ''Navajos Film Themselves'' is a series of seven short documentary films which show scenes of life on the Navajo Nation. It was added to the United States National Film Registry in 2002. The films are: * ''Intrepid Shadows'' directed by Al Clah ...

". Indiana University Press; 1972.

External links