Ethnographic Photography Research Articles

Ritmos de cambio en la vestimenta y ornamentos de la sociedad Yagán de Tierra del Fuego (siglos XIX y XX)

En este trabajo indagaremos en los diferentes ritmos que tuvo la adopción de cultura material occidental por parte de la sociedad Yagán de Tierra de Fuego desde fines del siglo XIX hasta mediados del siglo XX. Para ello, centraremos el análisis en un corpus de 428 fotografías etnográficas de este pueblo originario, obtenidas entre 1881 y 1987 en Tierra del Fuego, a fin de analizar de manera diacrónica la adopción desigual de cultura material occidental, específicamente respecto de la vestimenta y los adornos. De esta manera, esperamos discutir los distintos procesos desarrollados respecto de esta cultura material a partir del contacto con los europeos: adopción plena, adopción parcial (ciclaje), reciclaje y resiliencia. Así, encontramos que los yaganes fueron agentes activos de su propio cambio cultural, que tuvo distintos ritmos vinculados a procesos de negociación y resiliencia, que permitieron la supervivencia física y cultural de este Pueblo Originario.

Ethnographic photobomb: The materiality of decolonial image manipulation

Indigenous photobomb memes emerged on social networks as a media practice alongside contemporary activist campaigns, where artists insert pop culture content into digitized ethnographic photographs already in use as mainstream meme fodder. This article takes a materialist approach to such memes to explore how the technical processes of digital image editing function ideologically. Meme series by Kiowa-Choctaw artist Steven Paul Judd and others illustrate how compositing methods like cloning and healing tools may disrupt ethnographic photographs’ claims to history, interrogating the aesthetic systems that underwrite settler-colonial media. As these algorithmic processes remediate the digitized image and re-situate it relative to other photoshopping practices, they bear a trace of settler digitality that allows such memes to intervene in current cultural debates and aesthetic trends. Circulation via social media generates a web of twice-remediated memes, which always refer back to their prior analog and digital iterations.

Out of the box, onto the web: Digitizing images in the Tuzin Archive for Melanesian Anthropology

How are ethnographic photographs from the twentieth century accessed and represented in the twenty-first century? This report from the Tuzin Archive for Melanesian Anthropology at the University of California San Diego Library provides an overview of the photographic materials, arrangements and types of documentation in the archive, followed by summaries of specific digitization projects of the photographs from physician Sylvester Lambert and anthropologists Roger Keesing and Harold Scheffler, among others. Through the process of digitization and online access, ethnographic photographs are transformed and may be discovered and contextualized in new ways. Utilizing new technologies and forming broad collaborations, these digitization projects incorporate both anthropological and archival practices and also raise ethical questions. This is an in-depth look at what is digitized and how it is described to re/create meaning and context and to bring new life to these images.

Made Visible: Contemporary South African Fashion and Identity curated by Kathryn Gunsch

Made Visible: Contemporary South African Fashion and Identity curated by Kathryn Gunsch

Pastoral nomadic parents’ beliefs and practices about child safety: an ethnographic study

ABSTRACT Although there are many findings about settled parents’ beliefs and practices regarding child safety, little is known about those of nomadic parents. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the child safety beliefs and practice of pastoral nomadic parents. Participants consisted of eight parents who lived as nomads on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. The data were gathered through observations and interviews from parents. Additionally, research’s diary and ethnographic photography were used as data collection tools. The findings indicated that nomadic parents considered their camping area and its surroundings as safe for children, while they evaluated the places that were close to settled life and had traffic as insecure areas. Moreover, depending on the physical conditions of the context that they live in, nomadic parents had developed several strategies and had took measures to ensure the safety of their children, especially in care practices such as resting, sheltering and feeding.

Source to Subject: Fiona Foley’s Evolving Use of Archives

Since the 1980s, multidisciplinary artist Fiona Foley has created compelling art referencing her history, Aboriginal art, and her Badtjala heritage. In this brief essay, the author discusses an early series of Foley’s work in relation to ethnographic photography. This series connects to the wider trend of Indigenous artists creating art out of 19th century photographs intended for distribution to non-Indigenous audiences. By considering this earlier series of her work, this text considers Foley’s growth as a truly contemporary artist who uses the past as inspiration, invoking complicated moments of encounter between Europeans and Aboriginal Australians and their afterimages.

Entre a Igreja e a escola: o catolicismo e a escola do campo no Marajó em conexão

O texto aborda a relação da educação escolar e o catolicismo no espaço rural, especialmente, no rio Mapuá, no município de Breves, arquipélago de Marajó, estado do Pará. Tem-se por objetivo identificar a presença do catolicismo na escola do campo e a relação com a formação dos alunos ribeirinhos. Especificamente, a perspectiva é discutir a influência dos rituais religiosos e artefatos sagrados no processo educativo e na cultura escolar do campo. É uma investigação de natureza qualitativa, fundamentada na incursão bibliográfica e pesquisa de campo, cujos dados empíricos foram coletados por meio de observações etnográficas, entrevistas semiestruturadas e fotografias. Em termos teóricos o estudo busca amparo em escritos de autores do campo da Antropologia, Ciência da Religião e da Educação, tendo como recorte o ensino religioso. Os resultados indicam que a educação escolar e o catolicismo no rio Mapuá entrelaçam-se por meio de rituais e artefatos sagrados que narram saberes, tradições, afetos, significados e simbologias que na percepção dos depoentes ajudam a forjar a formação escolar dos sujeitos e, por conseguinte, à cultura escolar.

The caregiving practices of nomadic Yuruk Turkmen families for their children in terms of developmental well-being: an ecocultural perspective

ABSTRACT This study was conducted in order to investigate the caregiving practices of nomadic Yuruk Turkmen (NYT) families for their children for developmental well-being in view of ecocultural theory perspective. The ethnography method was used in order to investigate the caregiving practices of NYT families in physical and social environment in detail. The sample consists of four NYT children and their family members who take part and responsibility in caregiving practices. As data collection tools observation, interview, ethnographic photographs, and the researcher’s diary were used. The findings indicate that the practices of sheltering, nutrition, sleeping, cleanliness, and health are shaped by factors such as nomadic life style, physical and social environment and livelihood sources. Children participate in production activities from an early age. They also take some responsibilities in the care of their siblings. Within environmental possibilities, care givers possess false caregiving practices although they carry out practical and effective ones.

Ainu Photographic Collection of the Hungarian Researcher Barathosi Balogh Benedek: Historical and Cultural Studies Analysis

The paper is focused on the History and Cultural Studies considering the Ainu photographic collection of the Hungarian explorer Barathosi Balogh Benedek (1870–1945), which was formed during his travel to Japan (Hokkaido) in the beginning of the XXth century. The historical and scientific context of this collection’s origin is analysed. Using the photographic materials of Barathosi Balogh Benedek, the authors examine particular characteristics of the ethnographic photography of the XIX–XX centuries as a valuable visual and anthropological source.

British Museum Ethnographic Photography at the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition

As part of the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition held at the New Burlington Galleries in London, ethnographic photographs of non-Western objects were taken at the British Museum and interspersed amongst Surrealist artwork. Ten photographs in total were used, spanning Solomon Island Fish Coffins to Congolese Nail Fetishes. The article analyses these photographs as sculptures and in terms of their significance to the 1936 exhibition display and their wider impact upon the Surrealist movement. It reveals that Paul Nash and Hugh Sykes Davies were responsible for the selection of the non-Western objects to be photographed. At the exhibition opening André Breton gave a transformative lecture, ‘Limites Non-Frontières du Surréalisme [Borderless limits of Surrealism]’ which conjoined notions of cosmopolitanism and the spirit. The inclusion of the British Museum photographs was clearly intended to aesthetically mirror the content of Breton’s speech. This article thus postulates that the Surrealists intended to propagate a cosmopolitan method of curation through a transcendence of taxonomic display mechanisms common to ethnographic museum environments, such as the very one the photographs were taken in. Moreover, the British Museum photographs chosen by the Surrealists all have religious and spiritual connotations. Such embodied manifestations are a particular brand of border crossing that should also be considered an element of a burgeoning discourse surrounding international Surrealism. Consequently, the oft-cited impact of Freud’s Totem and Taboo (1913) upon Surrealist ethnography, which denounces the totem as a precursor to religious belief and madness, is marginalised.

Hermeneutic analysis of the San Isidro Pahiyas Festival as a development communication medium in Lucban, Quezon, Philippines

PurposeOnly few festival studies in the Philippines attempted to examine the capability of festivals as folk media to communicate development. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the development-oriented activities and messages in the San Isidro Pahiyas Festival in Lucban, Quezon.Design/methodology/approachThe researcher conducted participant observation, ethnographic photography, key informant interview and record review. A historical analysis of the festival’s background, thematic analysis of its list of programs, visual analysis of the photographs guided by Barthes’ (1964) semiology and hermeneutics were employed.FindingsFormerly a native ritual before the Hispanic rule in the country, the San Isidro Pahiyas Festival is currently held by the Local Government of Lucban, Quezon, primarily for touristic purposes. The festival’s activities in 2015 reflected the municipality’s dependence on agriculture and the residents’ religiosity, skills and creativity. The adornments during the said celebration likewise gave a glimpse of the residents’ social status, livelihood sources and reverence to Saint Isidore. Through hermeneutics, the researcher also found issues on the residents’ idolatry and their motivation to display their produce during the festival.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings of this study can only hold true for the 2015 celebration of the San Isidro Pahiyas Festival. Despite this, the study finds hermeneutics and Barthes’ (1964) semiology useful for festival studies. It also appeals to folk media studies and postcolonial theories.Originality/valueThis research provides an unconventional methodology for festival studies, which contributes to the very limited hermeneutic tourism studies abroad and folk media studies in the Philippines.

More than Corpses, Less than Ghosts: A Visual Theory of Culture in Early Ethnographic Photography

In its intent to make “culture” visible through the objective depiction of specific scenes of indigenous life, ethnographic photography at the turn of the twentieth century could be understood against two other scientific uses of the camera at that time: the anatomic photographs of physical anthropologists, on the one hand, and the ghost photographs of spiritualist circles, on the other. Indeed, while capturing “culture” involved having more than still bodies appear on the picture, which implied elaborate apparatuses meant to make it happen in front of the camera lens, early ethnographers were anxious not to let too much appear either, as “culture” was supposed to manifest itself more subtly than the ghosts revealed through spirit photography. This article thus argues that photographing “culture” at the turn of the twentieth century meant getting its invisibility right; it describes some of the devices and operations early ethnographers used to make it appear objectively.

Presence and absence: shops as traces of hopes in apartheid Namibia

This photo essay shows images of closed-down shops in rural northern Namibia, businesses that flourished in the context of an apartheid homeland but had to shut down when democracy opened up the area to competition and urbanisation. The photographs are of buildings that bear the traces of the people who built and owned them — people who are present in the images only through their absence. The narrative gives a background on the history of local traders in (post-)apartheid Namibia. More critically, it reflects on presences and absences in ethnographic photography. How can we show what we want to show without using people’s faces as our instruments? How do we avoid a photographic presence that overwhelms or becomes too iconic, whilst keeping precision and expression in the image? How is the absent present in photographs?

Análisis del álbum fotográfico de la Montaña Palentina: las lagunas literarias de Piedad Isla

El objeto de estudio de este artículo es analizar de forma cuantitativa y cualitativa el Álbum fotográfico de la Montaña Palentina. Álbum que recoge parte de las fotografías que fueron exhibidas en una exposición que lleva el mismo título, y que tuvo lugar en la Casa Regional de Palencia de Madrid en 1957. En dicha exposición intervinieron numerosos fotógrafos palentinos, destacando notablemente la participación de la fotógrafa y etnóloga Piedad Isla (1926-2009), siendo esta la única mujer en la muestra. El objetivo de este artículo, por un lado es reivindicar la figura de Piedad Isla, y por otro, reivindicar el papel de la fotografía etnográfica como estudio y reconocimiento de la cultura propia.

Making sense: Experiential engagements with ethnographic photographs

This article examines the role of embodied and performative knowledge in the museum environment, with a particular focus on ethnographic photographs. The study is based on the return of several hundred ethnographic photographs from the Sarawak Museum to Indigenous communities in rural Malaysia, where they had been taken by museum photographers from the early 1950s onwards. Aside from the oral narratives that emerged during the discussions and interviews, contextual knowledge was provided in embodied form. The return of the photographs to people in the source communities prompted the re-enactment of activities, re-telling of stories and production of cultural heritage to which the photographs referred. Such embodied knowledge, defined as knowledge preserved through performance and embodied activities, relates to the multi-vocal narratives about objects that museums are increasingly trying to include in their exhibitions. In this article I argue for a greater and more experimental use of sensory means to convey information about artifacts to museum audiences. Keywords:Ethnographic photographs, Photography, Embodied knowledge, museum archives, Sarawak, Southeast Asia

Retrospective and reinterpretation. Ethnographic photographs from the turn of the 19th and 20th century

The text deals with ethnographic photographs from Moravia and Slovakia, from 1880 andlater, and is based on the photographs´ collection of the Ethnographic Institute of MoravianMuseum, Brno (Czech Republic). This rich database contents visual documentation of manyaspects of material and spiritual folk life. Through icons of ethnographic photographs, thepaper tries: to unite at first sight fragmented effort of photographers, to find paths tosynthesis, and to show possibilities and potential of these images for present and futureethnologic studies. Key words: folk culture, photography, Moravia, Slovakia, document, art, studio photographs

Ethno-Iconographic Vogue’s Editorials (1948-2016): An approach to cultural diplomacies.

This article offers an overview of a seminal research that has laid its foundations in a systematization of the messages emerging from the interface between different cultures through fashion communication and image making. It delves into a semantic study on the variety of compositions related to ethno-iconography that have been developed by western editions of Vogue since 1948. In parallel, it examines the continuity of their visual discourses by recent non-western editions. It explores the relation between the functions of the fashion magazines per se, and those of the travel magazines, ethnographic photography and even documentary photojournalism. From this interpretative framework, the study assess the potential of fashion magazine as an instrument that provides visibility to social realities and that acts as triggers of critical reflection and agents capable of establishing inter-cultural relations.

Moving pictures: Memory and photography among the Arhuaco of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia

ABSTRACTThis article traces the changing uses and meanings of a set of ethnographic photographs that represent a contentious period in the history of the Arhuaco, an indigenous group that inhabits the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in Northern Colombia. Based on archival sources and fieldwork, I explore their role in the 1910s when they were created by Swedish anthropologist Gustaf Bolinder, and also analyse indigenous re-significations and contests over the meaning of the photographs in 2010s as a process that is intertwined with their present struggles. I study their use by an Arhuaco media-maker who incorporated them into a historical documentary film and debates among community members around possible interpretations of the pictures. Through this case study I seek to contribute to the expanding scholarship on the history of anthropological photography, and in particular to recent efforts to move beyond vertical colonial readings and emphasize indigenous agency. I argue for the need of a more nuanced understanding of indigenous and non-indigenous uses of photography that takes into account a shared history and does not naturalize differences. Furthermore, I trace the changing meanings of photographs in order to illuminate the historicity implied in the process of attributing meaning to the past.

The Adventure of Individuality. Visual Representation of the Post-War Soviet Village and the Ambivalences of Ethnographic Photography during Late Stalinism and the “Thaw”

The photographic inventory of the collectivized Soviet village during the Stalinist period mainly consisted of images of progress based on examples of technological modernization such as tractors and depictions of the villagers made happy by it. In the context of this “poverty of images”, a photo album with pictures taken during an ethnographic expedition under the aegis of the Moscow Academy of Science to the Russian Central Black Earth Region in 1952 provides a unique insight into everyday kolkhoz life and its hardships during the lean postwar years. Of course, the Moscow Institute of Ethnography’s research project was framed by the norms and values of the late Stalinist period. The ethnographers were expected to reveal obstacles to socialist progress and thereby help overcome them. Therefore, they had to study a ‘typical’ (yet carefully chosen) village with an ordinary kolkhoz and all its real problems. The young amateur photographer Vladimir Gorlenko’s photographs of this ‘typical’ kolkhoz life did not correspond to the published visual norms of “socialist realism”. At the same time, they did not comply with the standards of ethnographic photography as a mere means of documenting “material culture” such as clothing or housing. In the end, the research in Voronezh was dropped in favour of a more promising village in the neighbouring region of Tambov, which was presented in the famous monograph The Village of Viriatino. The article examines visual patterns in the depiction of kolkhoz life in a larger context, both within and beyond ethnographic photography and discusses the permissible visual narratives during late Stalinism and the “Thaw”. It shows how Gorlenko to a certain extent stretched the framework of ethnographic photography towards social documentary photography.

Daneš the Collector: Pacific Journeys of J. V. Daneš and his Collection in the Náprstek Museum

J. V. Daneš (1880–1928) was not only an outstanding figure of his time in the international scientific community, but also a diplomat and a traveller. Two of his overseas trips led him to Australia and the Pacific region, where he assembled a remarkable collection of ethnographic objects and photographs. This collection, now kept in the National Museum – Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures in Prague, has been mostly neglected and unpublished for decades. This paper provides a basis for its further study by introducing Daneš’s journeys around the region and comparing them to the proveniences of the ethnographic objects.