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 Mass media include the diverse arrays of media that reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit information electronically via media such as films, radio, recorded music, or television. Digital media comprises b ...

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

relief Relief is a sculpture, sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''wikt:relief, relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give ...

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 art, prehistoric origin. These paintings were often c ...

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

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR), also known as mixed reality (MR), is a technology that overlays real-time 3D computer graphics, 3D-rendered computer graphics onto a portion of the real world through a display, such as a handheld device or head-mounted ...

, 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 , meaning 'nation') is an academic field and discipline that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). Scien ...

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, 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 Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwe ...

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''). Flaherty is cited by Inuk photographers such as Peter Pitseolak as a key motivator for starting a photography practice. Pitseolak met Flaherty, and was inspired to document everyday Inuit life from his own perspective, at a time of immense societal change and government intrusion in the Canadian North. By the 1940s and early 1950s, anthropologists such as Hortense Powdermaker,

Gregory Bateson Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropology, anthropologist, social sciences, social scientist, linguistics, linguist, visual anthropology, visual anthropologist, semiotics, semiotician, and cybernetics, cybernetici ...

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

( 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 Filmmaking, 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 char ...

John Marshall John Marshall (September 24, 1755July 6, 1835) was an American statesman, jurist, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the fourth chief justice of the United States from 1801 until his death in 1835. He remai ...

, 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 John Adair (January 9, 1757 – May 19, 1840) was an American pioneer, slave trader, soldier, and politician. He was the List of Governors of Kentucky, eighth Governor of Kentucky and represented the state in both the United States House of Re ...

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 A virtual museum is a digital entity that draws on the characteristics of a museum, in order to complement, enhance, or augment the museum experience through personalization, interactivity, and richness of content. Virtual museums can perform as ...

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, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

'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. 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 – 25 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 popu ...

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

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). More broadly, visual anthropology recently involves a call to make visual culture central to the exploration of social and political experience; to give primacy to the visual, against a conventional approach in the social sciences that treats the visual as secondary to written sources and discourse (Pinney 2005; Kalantzis 2019). 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 American organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropo ...

, 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, Ethnocineca in Austria and Ethnofest in Greece. 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 pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto) is a graphical symbol that conveys meaning through its visual resemblance to a physical object. Pictograms are used in systems of writing and visual communication. A pictography is a wri ...

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 visual representations, is able to establish many principles and build theories about human visual representation in general.

List of visual anthropology academic programs

Appalachian State University offers a BA in Cultural Anthropology with a focus on Visual Anthropology *

Aarhus University Aarhus University (, abbreviated AU) is a public research university. Its main campus is located in Aarhus, Denmark. It is the second largest and second oldest university in Denmark. The university is part of the Coimbra Group, the Guild, and Ut ...

: Master in Visual Anthropology *

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

: 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 The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public university, public research university in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in West Berlin in 1948 with American support during the early Cold War period a ...

:
M.A. in Visual and Media Anthropology
*

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

: 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 New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

:''
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 (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...

Visual Anthropology program
an
Peter Biella
* Tallinn University
MA in audiovisual ethnography
* Towson University: Undergraduate track i
Anthropology-Sociology
an

*

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

: PhD program in anthropology offers a certificate in experimental ethnography through th
Center for Experimental Ethnography.
* Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana
Laboratorio de Antropología Visual (LAV)
* Universitat de Barcelona
Postgraduate and Master's programs in Visual Anthropology
*

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

The Ethnographic Film Unit at UBC
*

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

: 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 University of Kent (formerly the University of Kent at Canterbury, abbreviated as UKC) is a Collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom. The university was granted its roya ...

: 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''; ) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange as a Protestant institution, it holds the distinction of being the oldest university in the Neth ...

: 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 The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

: 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 (, until 2023 , 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 study in 15 departments, it is Germany's ...

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) is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was established in 1949. The university comprises seven faculties, through which it offers bachelor's, master's and docto ...

: offers
PhD in Visual Anthropology
*

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

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 The University of South Carolina (USC, SC, or Carolina) is a Public university, public research university in Columbia, South Carolina, United States. Founded in 1801 as South Carolina College, It is the flagship of the University of South Car ...

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 The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

- '' 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 offers a program i
Visual Culture Studies
*

Western Kentucky University Western Kentucky University (WKU) is a public university in Bowling Green, Kentucky, United States. It was founded by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1906, though its roots reach back a few decades earlier. It operates regional campuses in Glas ...

: 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. * Bassnet, Sarah and Sarah Parsons.
Photography in Canada, 1839-1989: An Illustrated History
'. 2023, Art Canada Institute: Toronto. * 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. *Kalantzis, Konstantinos. Tradition in the Frame: Photography, Power and Imagination in Sfakia, Crete. Bloomington: Indiana University Pres

* David MacDougall, 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