Drawing It Out

Abstract

The fieldwork sketches of Arthur Bernard Deacon, made in Vanuatu in 1926–27, give us insight into the early methodologies of social anthropology and into the role of images in anthropological ways of thinking. Here I develop a perspective on field sketches that explores them not only as visual mediations of the fieldworker's subjectivity, but also as genre pieces that indicate very particular forms of training in “how to see.” I draw out the visual conventions, ways of thinking and seeing, that underscore the different strategies that Deacon used in his drawing.