Visual anthropology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Visual anthropology is a subfield of cultural anthropology that developed out of the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and since the mid-1990s, new media. While the term is sometimes used interchangeably with ethnographic film, visual anthropology also encompasses the anthropological study of representation, including areas such as performance, museums, art, and the production and reception of mass media.

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Even before the emergence of anthropology as an academic discipline in the 1880s, ethnologists were using photography as a tool of research.[1] 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 Americanphotographyof Edward Curtis)[2]

Image:XylophoneBali1937.jpg
Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson used photography in the 1930s to demonstrate the socialization of body movements.

The history of anthropological filmmaking is intertwined with that of non-fiction and documentary filmmaking. Some of the first motion pictures of the ethnographic other were made with Lumière equipment (Promenades des Éléphants à Phnom Penh, 1901).[3] Robert Flaherty, 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” Eskimo ways of life, omitting to that end any 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, anthropologists such as Hortense Powdermaker [4], Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead (Trance and Dance in Bali, 1952) were bringing anthropological perspectives to bear on mass media and visual representation. The work of Bateson and Mead as well as that of anthropologically-minded filmmakers such as Tim Asch, Robert Gardner and John Marshall led to the realization there existed a need to systematically study, understand and produce ethnographic films in a scholarly manner. Visual anthropology first found purchase in an academic setting in 1958 with the creation of the Film Study Center at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.[5]

At present, the Society for Visual Anthropology (SVA) represents the subfield in the United States as a section of the American Anthropological Association.

Ethnographic films are shown each year at the Margaret Mead Film Festival.

A few well known anthropologically-minded films and filmmakers include:


  • Jean Rouch
    • Jaguar, 1954-1967
    • Les maîtres fous (The Mad Masters), 1954
    • Chronique d'un été (Chronicle of a Summer), 1961
  • Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson
    • First Contact, 1983
    • Joe Leahy's Neighbors, 1988
    • Black Harvest, 1991
  • Anne Zeller
    • Five Species (1997)
    • Images From the Field: Baboons (1997)
    • Lemurs of Madagascar (1997)
    • Primate-Human Interaction (1997)
    • Primate Patterns II (1997)
    • Sifakas of Madagascar (1997)
    • What Do Primatologists Do? (1997)
    • Chimpanzees Today (2001)
    • Hominid Evolution 1: The Early Stages (2001)
    • Hominid Evolution 2: The Genus Homo (2001)
    • New World Monkeys (2003)
  • John Bishop
    • YoYo Man (1978)
    • New England Fiddles (1983)
    • Last Window (1987)
    • Himalayan Herders (1997)
    • Hosay Trinidad (1999)
    • Oh What A Blow That Phantom Gave Me (2003, with Harald E.L. Prins)
  • Sarah Elder (films co-directed by Leonard Kamerling)
    • Tununeremiut (1972)
    • At the Time of Whaling (1974)
    • On the Spring Ice (1975)
    • From the First People (1977)
    • The Drums of Winter (1988)
    • In Iirgus Time (1988)
    • Joe Sun (1988)
    • Reindeer Thief (1988)
  • Jayasinhji Jahla
    • Forgotten Headhunters and Apatani Sacrifice (1978)
    • Tragada Bhavai: A Rural Theater Troupe of Gujarat (1981)
    • Journey with Ganapati (1982)
    • Bharvad Predicament (1987)
    • Morning With Asch (1995)
    • Whose Paintings? (1995)
    • Conversation with a Collector: Dialogue with a Docent (1997)
    • Letter to My Nieces (2000)
    • Close Encounters of No Kind (2002)
    • A Zenana: Scenes and Recollections (2005)
    • ShaktiMa no Veh (2006)
  • Chris Horner
    • The Disappearing of Tuvalu: Trouble In Paradise (2004)
  • Harald E.L. Prins
    • Our Lives in Our Hands (1985)
    • Oh, What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me! (2003, with John Bishop)


This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Visual anthropology (and ethnographic films made by anthropologists) have also influenced films in popular culture such as:

  1. ^ Jay Ruby. "Visual Anthropology." In Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, David Levinson and Melvin Ember, editors. New York: Henry Holt and Company, vol. 4:1345-1351, 1996 [1].
  2. ^ Harald E.L. Prins, "Visual Anthropology." Pp.506-525, In T.Biolsi. ed. A Companion to the Anthropology of American Indians. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing].
  3. ^ Erik Barnouw. Documentary: A history of the Non-Fiction Film. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
  4. ^ Hortense Powdermaker. Hollywood, the Dream Factory: An Anthropologist Studies the Movie Makers. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1950.
  5. ^ Jay Ruby. "The Professionalization of Visual Anthropology in the United States - The 1960s and 1970s." To be published in the selected proceedings of Origins of Visual Anthropology: Putting the Past Together Conference, June, 20 - 25 in Göttingen, Germany, 2001.

  • Barbash, Ilisa and Lucien Taylor. Cross-cultural Filmmaking: A Handbook for Making Documentary and Ethnographic Films and Videos. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
  • Ruby, Jay. Picturing Culture: Essays on Film and Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
  • 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 Jay Ruby, eds. "The Origins of Visual Anthropology." Visual Anthropology Review. Vol. 17 (2), 2001-2002.

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