Editing Visual anthropology (section)

==History==
Even before the emergence of anthropology as an academic discipline in the 1880s, [[ethnologists]] used photography as a tool of research.<ref>Jay Ruby, Visual Anthropology. In ''Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology'', David Levinson and Melvin Ember, editors. New York: Henry Holt and Company, vol. 4:1345–1351, 1996.</ref> 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]])<ref>Harald E.L. Prins, "Visual Anthropology." Pp.&nbsp;506–525, In T.Biolsi. ed. ''A Companion to the Anthropology of American Indians.'' Oxford: Blackwell Publishing].</ref>

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 [[Louis Lumière|Lumière]] equipment (''Promenades des Éléphants à Phnom Penh'', 1901).<ref>Erik Barnouw. ''Documentary: A history of the Non-Fiction Film''. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.</ref> 

[[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]] 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 (1965 film)|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.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bassnett |first=Sarah |last2=Parsons |first2=Sarah |year=2023 |title=Photography in Canada, 1839-1989: An Illustrated History |url=https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/photography-in-canada-1839-1989/key-photographers/peter-pitseolak/ |website=Art Canada Institute |publisher=Art Canada Institute |publication-place=Toronto}}</ref>

<!--[[Image:Tim Asch.jpg|thumb|Filmmaker, anthropologist, and photographer [[Tim Asch]] {{Deletable image-caption|date=May 2012}}]]-->
By the 1940s and early 1950s, anthropologists such as [[Hortense Powdermaker]],<ref>[[Hortense Powdermaker]]. ''Hollywood, the Dream Factory: An Anthropologist Studies the Movie Makers.'' Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1950.</ref> [[Gregory Bateson]], [[Margaret Mead]] ([[Trance and Dance in Bali]], 1952) and Mead and [[Rhoda Metraux]], eds., (''The Study of Culture at a Distance'',<ref>[https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1980.82.2.02a00090 The Study of Culture at a Distance].</ref> 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]], [[John Marshall (filmmaker)|John Marshall]], [[Robert Gardner (anthropologist)|Robert Gardner]], and [[Timothy Asch|Tim Asch]]. By focusing on these four, we can see the shape of ethnographic film" (p.&nbsp;15). Many, including Peter Loizos,<ref>Loizos, Peter 1993.  Innovation in Ethnographic Film: From Innocence to Self-Consciousness, 1955-1985. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.</ref> would add the name of filmmaker/author [[David MacDougall]] to this select group.

In 1966, filmmaker [[Sol Worth]] and anthropologist [[John Adair (anthropologist)|John Adair]] 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.<ref>Darnell R. Through Navajo eyes: An exploration in film communication and anthropology. [[American Anthropologist]], Vol 76, pp 890, Oct. 1974</ref> 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.<ref>Turner, Terence 1992. Defiant images: the Kayapo appropriation of video. Anthropology Today 8:5-15.</ref><ref>Wang, C., & Burris, M. A. (1994). Empowerment through Photo Novella: Portraits of Participation. Health Education & Behavior, 21(2), 171-186.</ref><ref>Chalfen, Richard and Michael Rich 1999.  Showing and Telling Asthma: Children Teaching Physicians with Visual Narratives. Visual Sociology 14: 51-71.</ref><ref>Riddington, Amber and Kate Hennessy, Co-curators, Project Co-coordinators, 2007.</ref>

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 University|Harvard]]'s [[Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology]].<ref>Jay Ruby. The Professionalization of Visual Anthropology in the United States - The 1960s and 1970s."  2005	The Last Twenty Years of Visual anthropology – A Critical Review.  Visual Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, pgs.&nbsp;159–170.</ref> In the United Kingdom, The [http://granadacentre.co.uk/ 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 (anthropologist)|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]] for essential critical perspectives. Contributions to the history of Visual Anthropology include those of Emilie de Brigard (1967),<ref>de Brigard, Emilie 2003 [1967].  The History of Ethnographic Film.  In: Principles of Visual Anthropology (3rd ed.). Paul Hockings, editor. Pp. 13-44. The Hague: De Gruyter.</ref> [[Fadwa El Guindi]] (2004),<ref>el Guindi, Fadwa 2004. Visual Anthropology: Essential Method and Theory. Walnut Creek, California: Altamira Press.</ref> and Beate Engelbrecht, ed. (2007).<ref>Engelbrecht, Beate, ed. 2007.  The Origins of Visual Anthropology.  Bern and Berlin: Peter Lang Verlag.</ref> A more recent history that understands visual anthropology in a broader sense, edited by [[Marcus Banks (anthropologist)|Marcus Banks]] and [[Jay Ruby]], is ''Made To Be Seen: Historical Perspectives on Visual Anthropology''.<ref>Banks, Marcus and Jay Ruby 2011. Made To Be Seen: Historical Perspectives on Visual Anthropology Chicago: University of Chicago Press.</ref> Turning the anthropological lens on India provides a counterhistory of visual anthropology (Khanduri 2014).<ref>Ritu G. Khanduri. 2014. Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press</ref> 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).<ref>Kalantzis, Konstantinos 2019. Tradition in the Frame: Photography, Power and Imagination in Sfakia, Crete. Pinney, Christopher 2005. “Things Happen: Or, From Which Moment Does that Object Come?” In Materiality, edited by Daniel Miller, 256–272. Durham, NC: Duke University Press</ref>

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]] as well as at the AAA's annual Film and Media Festival.<ref>[http://societyforvisualanthropology.org/film-video-and-multimedia-festival/ The AAA's annual Film and Media Festival]</ref> 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 [NAFA]''.<ref>[http://isop.uib.no/nafa/?q=node/230 Newsletter of the Nordic Anthropological Film Association] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140529224212/http://isop.uib.no/nafa/?q=node%2F230 |date=2014-05-29 }}.</ref>