Visual anthropology is a subfield of social anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of

ethnographic Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject ...

photography, film and, since the mid-1990s,

new media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...

. More recently it has been used by historians of science and visual culture. Although sometimes wrongly conflated with

ethnographic film An ethnographic film is a non-fiction film, often similar to a documentary film, historically shot by Western filmmakers and dealing with non-Western people, and sometimes associated with anthropology. Definitions of the term are not definitive. ...

, 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 Reception is a noun form of ''receiving'', or ''to receive'' something, such as art, experience, information, people, products, or vehicles. It may refer to: Astrology * Reception (astrology), when a planet is located in a sign ruled by another ...

mass media Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets. Broadcast media transmit informati ...

. Histories and analyses of representations from many cultures are part of visual anthropology: research topics include

sandpainting Sandpainting is the art of pouring coloured sands, and powdered pigments from minerals or crystals, or pigments from other natural or synthetic sources onto a surface to make a fixed or unfixed sand painting. Unfixed sand paintings have a long es ...

s, tattoos, sculptures and

relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term '' relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...

s, cave paintings,

scrimshaw Scrimshaw is scrollwork, engravings, and carvings done in bone or ivory. Typically it refers to the artwork created by whalers, engraved on the byproducts of whales, such as bones or cartilage. It is most commonly made out of the bones and teeth ...

, 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 Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), e ...

, augmented reality, mobile apps, social networking, 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 Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...

used photography as a tool of research. Anthropologists and non-anthropologists conducted much of this work in the spirit of

salvage ethnography Salvage ethnography is the recording of the practices and folklore of cultures threatened with extinction, including as a result of modernization. It is generally associated with the American anthropologist Franz Boas; he and his students aimed t ...

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 Edward Sherriff Curtis (February 19, 1868 – October 19, 1952) was an American photographer and ethnologist whose work focused on the American West and on Native American people. Sometimes referred to as the "Shadow Catcher", Curtis traveled ...

) The history of anthropological filmmaking is intertwined with that of non-fiction and documentary filmmaking, although

ethnofiction Ethnofiction refers to a subfield of ethnography which produces works that introduces art, in the form of storytelling, "thick descriptions and conversational narratives", and even first-person autobiographical accounts, into peer-reviewed academi ...

may be considered as a genuine subgenre of

. Some of the first motion pictures of the ethnographic other were made with Lumière equipment (''Promenades des Éléphants à Phnom Penh'', 1901). Robert Flaherty, probably best known for his films chronicling the lives of Arctic peoples (''

Nanook of the North ''Nanook of the North'' is a 1922 American silent film which combines elements of documentary and docudrama, at a time when the concept of separating films into documentary and drama did not yet exist. In the tradition of what would later be c ...

'', 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 Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

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 Hortense Powdermaker (December 24, 1900 – June 16, 1970) was an American anthropologist best known for her ethnographic studies of African Americans in rural America and of Hollywood. Early life and education Born to a Jewish family, Powdermak ...

, Gregory Bateson,

Margaret Mead Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s. She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard C ...

( Trance and Dance in Bali, 1952) and Mead and Rhoda Metraux, eds., (''The Study of Culture at a Distance'', 1953) were bringing anthropological perspectives to bear on mass media and visual representation. Karl G. Heider 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 Jean Rouch (; 31 May 1917 – 18 February 2004) was a French filmmaker and anthropologist. He is considered one of the founders of cinéma vérité in France. Rouch's practice as a filmmaker, for over 60 years in Africa, was characterized b ...

, John Marshall, Robert Gardner, and

Tim Asch Timothy Asch (July 16, 1932 – October 3, 1994) was an American anthropologist, photographer, and ethnographic filmmaker. Along with John Marshall and Robert Gardner, Asch played an important role in the development of visual anthropology. He i ...

. 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 David MacDougall (born November 12, 1939) is an American-Australian visual anthropologist, academic, and documentary filmmaker, who is known for his ethnographic film work in Africa, Australia, Europe and India. For much of his career he co-pro ...

to this select group. In 1966, filmmaker Sol Worth and anthropologist

John Adair John Adair (January 9, 1757 – May 19, 1840) was an American pioneer, slave trader, soldier, and politician. He was the eighth Governor of Kentucky and represented the state in both the U.S. House and Senate. A native of South Carolina, Ada ...

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 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's

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, with ...

. 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. wrote the first standard textbook in the field in 1967, and many visual anthropologists of the 1970s relied on semiologists like

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popula ...

for essential critical perspectives. Contributions to the history of Visual Anthropology include those of Emilie de Brigard (1967),

Fadwa El Guindi Fadwa El Guindi (born 1941) is an Egyptian-American anthropologist and former professor of anthropology at Qatar University.

(2004), and Beate Engelbrecht, ed. (2007). A more recent history that understands visual anthropology in a broader sense, edited by

Marcus Banks Arthur Lemarcus "Marcus" Banks III (born November 19, 1981) is an American former professional basketball player. Banks is tall and . He played college basketball at the UNLV with the Runnin' Rebels, where he was Co-Defensive Player of the Year ...

and Jay Ruby, 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 AAA. In the United States, ethnographic films are shown each year at the

Margaret Mead Film Festival The Margaret Mead Film Festival is an annual film festival held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. It is the longest-running, premiere showcase for international documentaries in the United States, encompassing a broad spe ...

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

pictograph A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and g ...

s 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: Master in Visual Anthropology *

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies an ...

: The Research School of Humanities and the Art
Centre for Visual Anthropology
*

California State University, Chico California State University, Chico, or commonly, Chico State, is a public university in Chico, California. Founded in 1887, it is the second oldest campus in the California State University system. As of the fall 2020 semester, the university h ...

: 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 The Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences ( es, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, pt, Faculdade Latino-Americana de Ciências Sociais or FLACSO) is a graduate school, graduate-only university and inter-governmental autonomous org ...

Ecuador: offers
master program in visual anthropology
*

Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...

:
M.A. in Visual and Media Anthropology
*

Harvard University 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 high ...

: Harvard offers
PhD in Social Anthropology with Media
in conjunction with it
Sensory Ethnography Lab
*

Heidelberg University } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public university, public research university in Heidelberg, B ...

: The chair o
Visual and Media Anthropology
offers BA and MA courses in the field of visual and media anthropology. *

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

:''
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 San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different ...

Visual Anthropology program
an
Peter Biella
*

Tallinn University Tallinn University (TLU; et, Tallinna Ülikool, ''TLÜ'') is a public research university in Estonia. Located in the centre of Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, Tallinn University is one of the three largest institutions of higher education ...

MA in audiovisual ethnography
*

Towson University Towson University (TU or Towson) is a public university in Towson, Maryland. Founded in 1866 as Maryland's first training school for teachers, Towson University is a part of the University System of Maryland. Since its founding, the university h ...

: Undergraduate track i
Anthropology-Sociology
an

*

Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana The Metropolitan Autonomous University ( Spanish: ''Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana'') also known as UAM, is a Mexican public university. Founded in 1974 with the support of then-President Luis Echeverria Alvarez, the institution aims to be c ...

Laboratorio de Antropología Visual (LAV)
*

Universitat de Barcelona The University of Barcelona ( ca, Universitat de Barcelona, UB; ; es, link=no, Universidad de Barcelona) is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia, in Spain. With 63,000 students, it is one of the biggest universities i ...

Postgraduate and Master's programs in Visual Anthropology
*

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top thre ...

The Ethnographic Film Unit at UBC
*

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

: 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 , motto_lang = , mottoeng = Literal translation: 'Whom to serve is to reign'(Book of Common Prayer translation: 'whose service is perfect freedom')Graham Martin, ''From Vision to Reality: the Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury'' ...

: 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 Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city of Le ...

: 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 , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univ ...

: 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 The University of Münster (german: Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, WWU) is a public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. With more than 43,000 students and over 120 fields of stud ...

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 The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensiv ...

: offers
PhD in Visual Anthropology
*

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

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 , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8.1 ...

- '' USC Center for Visual Anthropology'': 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 – The Arctic University of Norway (Norwegian: ''Universitetet i Tromsø – Norges arktiske universitet''; Northern Sami: ''Romssa universitehta – Norgga árktalaš universitehta'') is a state university in Norway an ...

: The University of Tromsø offers a program i
Visual Culture Studies
*

Western Kentucky University Western Kentucky University is a public university in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It was founded by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1906, though its roots reach back a quarter-century earlier. It operates regional campuses in Glasgow, Elizabethtow ...

: 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 (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". Indiana University Press; 1972.

External links