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Teaching Visual Anthropology. Notes from the Field
Abstract
When I joined the Granada Centre in 1991 I was concerned to explore the field of visual anthropology by means of an intellectually coherent approach that encompassed research, teaching and filmmaking practices. At the centre of this approach was an interest in the relationship between vision and knowledge in ethnographic enquiry. My recent book, 'The Ethnographer's Eye', was an attempt to establish a broader intellectual context for the examination of vision within anthropology. In this essay I use an ethnographer's eye to look at the set of teaching techniques through which this understanding was gained. The reflections I offer here arise from a desire to understand better the relationship between teaching practice and academic writing, visual anthropology and television documentary. A critical appraisal of the Granada Centre as a fieldwork site makes possible the re-imagining of anthropology as a visual project.
... 5 Apesar de baseados numa reconstituição de práticas culturais -com encenação -e no âmbito de uma salvage anthropology atenta aos mundos em desaparecimento e aos aspetos materiais e folclóricos, os filmes e o projeto de Haddon são devedores de uma 5 Também são pioneiros, embora mais esquecidos nas histórias da antropologia (visual), os trabalhos fotográficos e fílmicos de Baldwin Spencer entre as comunidades aborígenes na Austrália e as tentativas de Haddon e de Spencer na captação do som (Griffiths 2002). antropologia de contacto e contexto -que tem em W. H. Rivers um dos seus principais intérpretes -, isto é, uma antropologia que, por um lado, queria ter acesso em primeira mão ao ponto de vista nativo tal como produzido em contexto (Grimshaw 2001a(Grimshaw e 2001b e, por outro, não queria deixar de registar mundos humanos (naturais e culturais) em "eventual" extinção. Neste sentido, é interessante verificar como parece ser constante esta ideia de mundos em desaparecimento para uma antropologia que precisa de recorrer ao visual. ...
... Sobre este assunto, Grimshaw (2001aGrimshaw ( e 2001b fez semelhante reflexão para o Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology (GCVA) da Universidade de Manchester, constatando a crescente dificuldade de afirmação e prova da "antropologicidade" dos documentários produzidos pelos estudantes do MA in Visual Anthropology daquele centro, por razão não só dos objetos e sujeitos filmados, mas, igualmente, pelos próprios acessos metodológicos e fracas "pontes" teóricas com a antropologia mais em geral. Uma das críticas apontadas, e discutida por Grimshaw (2001aGrimshaw ( e 2001b, sugeria que os filmes produzidos seriam cada vez menos etnográficos, seguindo convenções televisivas do género docusoap. ...
... Sobre este assunto, Grimshaw (2001aGrimshaw ( e 2001b fez semelhante reflexão para o Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology (GCVA) da Universidade de Manchester, constatando a crescente dificuldade de afirmação e prova da "antropologicidade" dos documentários produzidos pelos estudantes do MA in Visual Anthropology daquele centro, por razão não só dos objetos e sujeitos filmados, mas, igualmente, pelos próprios acessos metodológicos e fracas "pontes" teóricas com a antropologia mais em geral. Uma das críticas apontadas, e discutida por Grimshaw (2001aGrimshaw ( e 2001b, sugeria que os filmes produzidos seriam cada vez menos etnográficos, seguindo convenções televisivas do género docusoap. Isto é, os filmes seguiriam indivíduos excêntricos do ponto de vista social, criando narrativas culturais sujeitas ao ritmo das exigências televisivas e não respeitando aquilo que Rouch (1975) designou por integralidade da realidade observada, com base num envolvimento demorado e sujeito a um processo de estranhamento, que, justamente, justifica a sua continuada descoberta. ...
Neste artigo discuto o lugar e os usos das imagens na antropologia social. Identificando insuficiências nos diálogos entre antropólogos visuais e não visuais, apelo à intensificação do uso das imagens (audiovisuais) como ferramentas de investigação (metodologia) e de análise (teoria) na antropologia. Esta reivindicação faz reconhecer não só o facto de os objetos (sujeitos) de estudo da antropologia serem hoje mais visíveis e visualizáveis na forma como podem, devem e querem ser abordados (ligando a correntes teóricas, epistemológicas, políticas e ideológicas emergentes na disciplina), mas também uma atitude mais reflexiva da parte dos antropólogos nas suas investigações, servindo as imagens como reveladoras dos encontros entre observados e observadores e dos processos de construção negociada, continuada e circunstancial do conhecimento e das representações produzidas durante e após o trabalho de campo. O argumento tem em atenção, por um lado, a crescente acessibilidade e difusão dos meios e produtos audiovisuais e, por outro, a necessidade do seu maior reconhecimento para efeitos dos currículos académico-científicos dos antropólogos.
... Visual anthropology focusing on the relationship between vision and cognition in anthropological inquiry. It uses an anthropologist's eye to examine the relationship between teaching techniques and academic writing, visual anthropology and television documentaries (Grimshaw, 2001). Engagement theory, employed in electronic and distance learning environments, emphasizes meaningful student engagement in learning activities through interaction and meaningful work. ...
... The application of new media to extend the visual style, not only brings a new visual experience, but also on people's mental state, value orientation, aesthetic awareness, space and time feeling. Digital technology has now reached another peak, such as the use of graphics workstations and some well-known graphics software, modeling and rendering technology can be used to create a very realistic particle, digital film will fundamentally change the characteristics of this form of media to digital cinema The form will no longer be a reflection of reality, but create a virtual space [1] . ...
... We also used these sessions to start to explore personal and shared emotional responses to images and intended meanings in portrayal and choice of image, shot, scene and sequence. These processes of formative feedback have for a long time been part of the practice-based filmmaking pedagogy of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology 45 and are meant to develop a critical understanding of the possibilities and constraints of different visual and sensory media instead of providing fixed rules or abstract general principles. ...
This article concerns deaf children and young people living in South Africa who are South African Sign Language users and who participated in an interdisciplinary research project using the medium of teaching film and photography with the goal of enhancing resilience. Specifically, this paper explores three questions that emerged from the deaf young people’s experience and involvement with the project: (i) What is disclosed about deaf young people’s worldmaking through the filmic and photographic modality? (ii) What specific impacts do deaf young people’s ontologically visual habitations of the world have on the production of their film/photographic works? (iii) How does deaf young people’s visual, embodied praxis through film and photography enable resilience? The presentation of findings and related theoretical discussion is organised around three key themes: (i) ‘writing’ into reality through photographic practice, (ii) filmmaking as embodied emotional praxis and (iii) enhancing resilience through visual methodologies. The discussion is interspersed with examples of the young people’s own work.
Young people entering college today have grown up in a multimedia environment, yet the classroom they most often encounter reflects nineteenth-century pedagogy. This paper explores the paradigm shift that is making documentaries more widely accessible for use in the classroom; describes a pedagogical strategy for connecting a critical media literacy 'reading' of documentaries with more traditional reading of written texts; investigates the effectiveness of this method to engage students through critical media literacy in ways that encourage transformation. Effectiveness was measured in a voluntary, self-reported questionnaire, emailed to students after the semester they took Introductory Sociology. Students in the sample favored the use of documentary films in the classroom, reported seeing connections between assigned readings and films, and said that because of the films they were more able to grasp core sociological concepts. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute.
Eighteen months ago as part of an MA in Visual Anthropology at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology I made a documentary with a Kosovan family about their experiences as refugees. More recently I directed a short documentary about ‘separated’ refugee teenagers who fled to the UK from Afghanistan. Though both pieces concerned similar experiences and issues, they were made in very different production contexts. In this essay I reflect on the contrasting approaches to film-making that I was encouraged to adopt in a university and a broadcast context. I will examine how these approaches determined the kinds of relationships I was able to make with the film's subjects and address certain ethical questions that were raised. In this way I hope to reach an understanding of why the approach I was encouraged to take up in a university environment resulted in a more interesting and engaging documentary than that produced within a broadcast context.
As a member of staff at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, I have seen it emerge over the last decade as a critical site for anthropological film-making. The primary focus of the Centre's operations is its Masters course that offers training in documentary film-making techniques to anthropology graduates. There is, however, considerable confusion among both anthropologists and film-makers about the status of anthropological documentary. This essay explores what is distinctive about anthropological film-making practice. I will argue that it is no longer about the exotic or about the documentation of disappearing worlds; it also makes no claims for science and objectivity. Instead it is distinguished by a unique sensibility rooted in experiential knowledge. The cultivation of an anthropological way of seeing also offers an unusual perspective on other visual forms. I believe that the Granada Centre has much to gain from developing collaborations with those working in adjacent sites.
The anthropologist James Clifford has argued that the term ethnography refers to more than the research technique associated with anthropology. Ethnography is a term for a cultural predisposition shared by twentieth-century social science, writing and arts. In this expanded form, ethnography suggests ‘a characteristic attitude of participant observation among the artefacts of a de-familiarised cultural reality'. Having trained first as an artist and subsequently as an anthropologist and filmmaker, my practice has been shaped by a concern with visual ethnography. Although visual ethnography cuts across a number of disciplinary boundaries, those whose work comes under its broad reach typically pursue their practice under the influence of separate specialist fields. This raises questions about what is distinctive in each field and what is shared. Taking Clifford's idea of modernist ethnography as an attitude that seeks to make the familiar strange, I use autobiographical narrative as a way of looking at art and anthropology's approaches to the play of the familiar and the strange through the use of visual means.
This essay is about the process of making an installation for an exhibition about ritual commissioned by the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester. The video piece was to work alongside an exhibition of objects from around the world associated with rites of passage, birth, marriage, and death. The commission was a new initiative for the Gallery as they had never before commissioned a film-maker to make a work. The aims of the project were firstly, to animate the space, bring the objects to life through juxtaposition with ‘real people’ talking about their lives and shared experiences; and secondly it was intended to encourage new audiences into the gallery. This paper will address the question of making an object, how I used the materials and the space; and how the different forms of collaboration influenced the development of the installation.
Commercial filming of patients in the hospital and now the prehospital environment is becoming increasingly common. Television programmes that focus on medical emergencies with real footage of events remain highly successful and can make compelling viewing for both medical professionals and the general public alike. Recently several commentators have questioned the ethical aspects of filming in hospital emergency departments, and noted the lack of available evidence. This article reviews commercial filming and its impact in the prehospital environment and examines the ethical implications and current guidance in this unique setting.
This paper surveys ethnographic film as it has been presented over the years on British television, particularly in the Disappearing World series. A detailed criticism leads to the conclusion that anthropologists should not place too much faith in the kind of films that are presented for the general public on television. The involvement of anthropologists in these productions has often amounted to a less‐than‐happy marriage.
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