A woman, a camera and the world of bullfighting: Visual culture as the production of anthropological knowledge

Abstract

This article draws from my experiences of photographing the bullfight and other aspects of “bullfighting culture and society” during fieldwork in Andalusia, Southern Spain. My own photography, appropriated by local people as part of their own material culture, became integrated into the visual culture that my research was about. This raises questions concerning the participation of anthropologists in local cultural production and the representation of these ethnographic experiences as anthropological knowledge. I consider the implications of an ethnographer's gendered identity as photographer and cultural producer in relation to recent work on ethnographic fieldwork, experience and the production of knowledge.