Pub Date : 2022-10-20DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2022.2129252
Paola Juan
This article explores gift exchange and valuation based on a fieldwork experience in Xlendi Bay, Malta, during which the author gave strangers portrait drawings of themselves for free. Participants systematically gave back more than what was expected (money, drinks, etc.). What does this case study say about the valuation and performativity of (portrait) gifts? By subjecting classic anthropological theories of valuation and gift exchange to an experimental methodology and ethnographic data, this short article shows that monetary value is constructed through a series of aspects specific to each social interaction. In this social setting, several components play a role: (1) the creation of intimacy through timing, corporeal positioning, the author's gaze and the act of giving itself; (2) the potential of identification in the portrait; (3) the visibility of the act of production and the subjective valuation of the gift receiver; (4) the blurred boundaries between commodity and gift; and (5) positionality.
{"title":"Portraits, Gifts and Exchange Valuation in Xlendi Bay, Malta","authors":"Paola Juan","doi":"10.1080/08949468.2022.2129252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2022.2129252","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores gift exchange and valuation based on a fieldwork experience in Xlendi Bay, Malta, during which the author gave strangers portrait drawings of themselves for free. Participants systematically gave back more than what was expected (money, drinks, etc.). What does this case study say about the valuation and performativity of (portrait) gifts? By subjecting classic anthropological theories of valuation and gift exchange to an experimental methodology and ethnographic data, this short article shows that monetary value is constructed through a series of aspects specific to each social interaction. In this social setting, several components play a role: (1) the creation of intimacy through timing, corporeal positioning, the author's gaze and the act of giving itself; (2) the potential of identification in the portrait; (3) the visibility of the act of production and the subjective valuation of the gift receiver; (4) the blurred boundaries between commodity and gift; and (5) positionality.","PeriodicalId":44055,"journal":{"name":"Visual Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":"344 - 357"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49332482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-20DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2022.2129256
D. Sutton
The “highbrow horror” film Midsommar was released in 2019 to an engaged critical and popular reception Featuring several anthropologists as main characters, this film explores the culture of the fictive Harga and their midsummer festival in Sweden. While critics have focused on the genre-bending aspects, the exploration of a cult, and the racial politics of the film, in this article I argue that they ignored a central tension in it: the relation between technologically-mediated communication and face-to-face, intense social interactions. I suggest that these oppositions are part of an ongoing debate about the relationship between technology and sociability in contemporary life, and that the exploration of this tension might explain some of the strong reactions provoked by the film.
{"title":"The Horror/Beauty of the Harga: Midsommar as Western Imaginary of a Screen-Free Life","authors":"D. Sutton","doi":"10.1080/08949468.2022.2129256","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2022.2129256","url":null,"abstract":"The “highbrow horror” film Midsommar was released in 2019 to an engaged critical and popular reception Featuring several anthropologists as main characters, this film explores the culture of the fictive Harga and their midsummer festival in Sweden. While critics have focused on the genre-bending aspects, the exploration of a cult, and the racial politics of the film, in this article I argue that they ignored a central tension in it: the relation between technologically-mediated communication and face-to-face, intense social interactions. I suggest that these oppositions are part of an ongoing debate about the relationship between technology and sociability in contemporary life, and that the exploration of this tension might explain some of the strong reactions provoked by the film.","PeriodicalId":44055,"journal":{"name":"Visual Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":"448 - 468"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47073109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-20DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2022.2129255
Artur Rega, Magdalena Gimbut
Using the example of Gejia village, the article concentrates on art-inspired activities used to revitalize rural areas in China. In particular, it analyzes the sociocultural context in which an art program was introduced. We try to answer also the question of whether art-led activities are a proper method to achieve civilizational and economic enhancement. The article describes how the program helped to revitalize relationships with the place, how the changes in material surroundings influenced the relations among people, and how they reshaped the bonds connecting people with their natural surroundings. We present practical results which might inspire other practitioners. The research is based on qualitative and detailed interviews and observations conducted in the village.
{"title":"“First—Mind Rich, Second—Pocket Rich”: Art as a Means to Revitalize Declining Community; The Case Study of Gejia Village","authors":"Artur Rega, Magdalena Gimbut","doi":"10.1080/08949468.2022.2129255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2022.2129255","url":null,"abstract":"Using the example of Gejia village, the article concentrates on art-inspired activities used to revitalize rural areas in China. In particular, it analyzes the sociocultural context in which an art program was introduced. We try to answer also the question of whether art-led activities are a proper method to achieve civilizational and economic enhancement. The article describes how the program helped to revitalize relationships with the place, how the changes in material surroundings influenced the relations among people, and how they reshaped the bonds connecting people with their natural surroundings. We present practical results which might inspire other practitioners. The research is based on qualitative and detailed interviews and observations conducted in the village.","PeriodicalId":44055,"journal":{"name":"Visual Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":"420 - 447"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41872759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2022.2094189
L. Stephen
{"title":"Mesoamerican Indigenous Youth in the United States","authors":"L. Stephen","doi":"10.1080/08949468.2022.2094189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2022.2094189","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44055,"journal":{"name":"Visual Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":"309 - 311"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47492401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2022.2094191
Navid Darvishzadeh
In Why Muslim Women and Smartphones, Karen Waltorp studies the use of Internet-enabled smartphones by her “informants” as sensory technologies with forms of presence and affordances. By doing so she transforms the online spaces from mere parallel worlds to integral parts of the milieu they inhabit. To achieve this goal she organizes the book into four twin chapters, including four major chapters—marked A, B, C, and D—and four mirror chapters— marked with the small letters a, b, c, and d. The major chapters focus on how the Muslim women, who live in the Blaagaarden social housing area of Copenhagen, use digital technologies to navigate their daily lives and maintain contact with their significant others, relatives, and friends across the globe. Waltorp leaves aside questions of methodology and epistemology, to study closely the issues raised in the major chapters and methodology and epistemology in their corresponding mirror chapters. At the center of her argument lies the notion of harakat. She explains that this Arabic term is used as slang by young Muslim people in Noerrebro to imply playing a trick on someone in a “cunning, smart, or charming way” (13). The smartphone, Waltorp argues, plays a crucial role here in offering sets of opportunities for her informants to constantly do harakat and negotiate “differing notions and practices of public, private, and intimate spheres and the complex interfaces between them” (14). The twin chapters “A” and “a” take Donna Haraway’s (1985) notion of cyborg and propose that the smartphones and their image-making and sharing technology change the affordances perceived in the environment—the environment not as the physical world, but rather as what is perceived or misperceived. Waltorp argues that the distinction made between public and private—based on things that have to be shown and things that have to be hidden—is blurred or even challenged by how her informants negotiate appropriate concealing and revealing in their everyday lives. For instance, they wear hijab in the photos taken in the private physical space of the living room—where they usually do not need to wear hijab—because of the plan to upload it to the semipublic online space of Facebook, while they often do not wear hijab in photos they take for the private online space of Snapchat.
{"title":"Why Muslim Women and Smartphones?","authors":"Navid Darvishzadeh","doi":"10.1080/08949468.2022.2094191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2022.2094191","url":null,"abstract":"In Why Muslim Women and Smartphones, Karen Waltorp studies the use of Internet-enabled smartphones by her “informants” as sensory technologies with forms of presence and affordances. By doing so she transforms the online spaces from mere parallel worlds to integral parts of the milieu they inhabit. To achieve this goal she organizes the book into four twin chapters, including four major chapters—marked A, B, C, and D—and four mirror chapters— marked with the small letters a, b, c, and d. The major chapters focus on how the Muslim women, who live in the Blaagaarden social housing area of Copenhagen, use digital technologies to navigate their daily lives and maintain contact with their significant others, relatives, and friends across the globe. Waltorp leaves aside questions of methodology and epistemology, to study closely the issues raised in the major chapters and methodology and epistemology in their corresponding mirror chapters. At the center of her argument lies the notion of harakat. She explains that this Arabic term is used as slang by young Muslim people in Noerrebro to imply playing a trick on someone in a “cunning, smart, or charming way” (13). The smartphone, Waltorp argues, plays a crucial role here in offering sets of opportunities for her informants to constantly do harakat and negotiate “differing notions and practices of public, private, and intimate spheres and the complex interfaces between them” (14). The twin chapters “A” and “a” take Donna Haraway’s (1985) notion of cyborg and propose that the smartphones and their image-making and sharing technology change the affordances perceived in the environment—the environment not as the physical world, but rather as what is perceived or misperceived. Waltorp argues that the distinction made between public and private—based on things that have to be shown and things that have to be hidden—is blurred or even challenged by how her informants negotiate appropriate concealing and revealing in their everyday lives. For instance, they wear hijab in the photos taken in the private physical space of the living room—where they usually do not need to wear hijab—because of the plan to upload it to the semipublic online space of Facebook, while they often do not wear hijab in photos they take for the private online space of Snapchat.","PeriodicalId":44055,"journal":{"name":"Visual Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":"314 - 317"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46854719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2022.2094185
A. Walter
Touristic advertisements, development reports and government sources in Pakistan readily use the natural beauty of Gilgit-Baltistan, above all lavish shots of mountain peaks, to promote the country’s hospitality and global appeal. Since the public sphere is full of promotional material for this region, local people have also started posing in front of newly discovered sights for photos. While men often upload these on Facebook and WhatsApp, young women do also take part in outings and photo shoots, but behind a digital veil that does not allow them to advertize their photos so openly. Through visual examples from media both on- and offline, I will show how consumption and engagement with social media feed back into people’s (self-)perception of their natural and cultural environment. Popular representations of the region’s landscape even serve as a form of self-othering: looking at Gilgit-Baltistan’s assets through the eyes of outsiders allows many young people to appreciate things they previously ignored or took for granted, even seeing them as obstacles to development. Moreover, by actively contributing to public discourse, locals reclaim the represented and disseminated imagination of their homeland.
{"title":"Images of the Mountains: Touristic Consumption and Gendered Representations of Landscape and Heritage in Gilgit-Baltistan","authors":"A. Walter","doi":"10.1080/08949468.2022.2094185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2022.2094185","url":null,"abstract":"Touristic advertisements, development reports and government sources in Pakistan readily use the natural beauty of Gilgit-Baltistan, above all lavish shots of mountain peaks, to promote the country’s hospitality and global appeal. Since the public sphere is full of promotional material for this region, local people have also started posing in front of newly discovered sights for photos. While men often upload these on Facebook and WhatsApp, young women do also take part in outings and photo shoots, but behind a digital veil that does not allow them to advertize their photos so openly. Through visual examples from media both on- and offline, I will show how consumption and engagement with social media feed back into people’s (self-)perception of their natural and cultural environment. Popular representations of the region’s landscape even serve as a form of self-othering: looking at Gilgit-Baltistan’s assets through the eyes of outsiders allows many young people to appreciate things they previously ignored or took for granted, even seeing them as obstacles to development. Moreover, by actively contributing to public discourse, locals reclaim the represented and disseminated imagination of their homeland.","PeriodicalId":44055,"journal":{"name":"Visual Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":"225 - 247"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46103378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2022.2094188
Prateeksha Pathak, Goutam Karmakar
Studies that prioritize verbal sources of information over other nonverbal sources to retrieve the past often overlook the entirety of what transpired. Documents do not encompass the lives of people, particularly those who were victims of traumatic events such as the insurgency of 1989 in the Kashmir valley. Minority communities from Kashmir were then forced to flee as a result of violence and brutal killings, and mute artifacts became their loyal companions and the last tangible connection to the lost homeland. In looking at the discourse of these silent artifacts, this article focuses on the objects that were carried by internally displaced Kashmiris, to show how these people have preserved their lost home, endangered culture, and identity by carefully carrying away such Kashmiri artifacts. We also examine how different generations of survivors perceive these objects and the memories held within them. By focusing on these tangible objects and the material memory they invoke, we highlight how alternate sources become reservoirs of untold histories and preserve fragments of the past that were not narrated earlier due to the marginalization of communities and the politics of publishing in India.
{"title":"Rooted in the Uprooted: Material Memories of Migration from Kashmir","authors":"Prateeksha Pathak, Goutam Karmakar","doi":"10.1080/08949468.2022.2094188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2022.2094188","url":null,"abstract":"Studies that prioritize verbal sources of information over other nonverbal sources to retrieve the past often overlook the entirety of what transpired. Documents do not encompass the lives of people, particularly those who were victims of traumatic events such as the insurgency of 1989 in the Kashmir valley. Minority communities from Kashmir were then forced to flee as a result of violence and brutal killings, and mute artifacts became their loyal companions and the last tangible connection to the lost homeland. In looking at the discourse of these silent artifacts, this article focuses on the objects that were carried by internally displaced Kashmiris, to show how these people have preserved their lost home, endangered culture, and identity by carefully carrying away such Kashmiri artifacts. We also examine how different generations of survivors perceive these objects and the memories held within them. By focusing on these tangible objects and the material memory they invoke, we highlight how alternate sources become reservoirs of untold histories and preserve fragments of the past that were not narrated earlier due to the marginalization of communities and the politics of publishing in India.","PeriodicalId":44055,"journal":{"name":"Visual Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":"287 - 308"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47643851","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2022.2094186
Sanjay Sharma
This article uses visual anthropology to bring forth the migration histories of Nepali women, especially those related to Gurkha soldiers. Using personal and archival photographs and videos of migrants and their families, this article uncovers mobility patterns and migration histories of some Nepali women. The article uses visuals to build a narrative that deals not just with migration histories and destinations that go beyond South Asia, but the larger meanings that individuals attach to the visuals. This article goes beyond the “factual data” that the visuals “reveal” by talking to the individuals in the photos or those possessing the photos about the contexts and experiences attached to those photos. The photos, taken mostly during the 20th century, help individuals not just to be reminiscent about the past, but also to reflect critically on their migration pathways and experiences retrospectively.
{"title":"The Visual Anthropology of Migration Histories: Discovering the Mobility of Nepali Women through Visuals","authors":"Sanjay Sharma","doi":"10.1080/08949468.2022.2094186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2022.2094186","url":null,"abstract":"This article uses visual anthropology to bring forth the migration histories of Nepali women, especially those related to Gurkha soldiers. Using personal and archival photographs and videos of migrants and their families, this article uncovers mobility patterns and migration histories of some Nepali women. The article uses visuals to build a narrative that deals not just with migration histories and destinations that go beyond South Asia, but the larger meanings that individuals attach to the visuals. This article goes beyond the “factual data” that the visuals “reveal” by talking to the individuals in the photos or those possessing the photos about the contexts and experiences attached to those photos. The photos, taken mostly during the 20th century, help individuals not just to be reminiscent about the past, but also to reflect critically on their migration pathways and experiences retrospectively.","PeriodicalId":44055,"journal":{"name":"Visual Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":"248 - 271"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44605641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2022.2094187
Jolynna Sinanan
Arguably Mount Everest has always been mediatized: its appeal as an idea has existed in part through technologies of visual cultures. Exploring the digital media practices of tourists and the tourism workers, this article considers how imaginaries of Mount Everest that appear through technologies of visual culture relate to experiences of Everest in Nepal. I argue for a composite visual ethnographic approach that entails examining experiences on site in relation to cumulative media and visual texts, both historically and on digital media platforms. The article contributes to an anthropology of mobility through its focus on how digital visual communication becomes constitutive of work and practices in tourism.
{"title":"Everest, Everestland, #Everest: A Case for a Composite Visual Ethnographic Approach","authors":"Jolynna Sinanan","doi":"10.1080/08949468.2022.2094187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2022.2094187","url":null,"abstract":"Arguably Mount Everest has always been mediatized: its appeal as an idea has existed in part through technologies of visual cultures. Exploring the digital media practices of tourists and the tourism workers, this article considers how imaginaries of Mount Everest that appear through technologies of visual culture relate to experiences of Everest in Nepal. I argue for a composite visual ethnographic approach that entails examining experiences on site in relation to cumulative media and visual texts, both historically and on digital media platforms. The article contributes to an anthropology of mobility through its focus on how digital visual communication becomes constitutive of work and practices in tourism.","PeriodicalId":44055,"journal":{"name":"Visual Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":"272 - 286"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43167902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2022.2094190
Christine Moderbacher
Doing the MA in Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester a decade ago trained my vision to look for appealing images, the perfect camera angle and beautiful light conditions. But that year at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology was not only an intense year of visual enskillment: it also changed my anthropological gaze toward the people and topics that I work with. Needless to say that given this history, I was extremely happy to learn that the person teaching documentary film practice at Manchester, Andy Lawrence, had finally transformed his many years of teaching experience into an illustrated handbook that integrates the practical, theoretical and technical sides of doing audiovisual research. If you are thinking about documentary filmmaking, whether ethnographic or not, this is the book you need on your desk, and with you in the field. But I would not only recommend it for practitioners and people curious about working with the camera, both in and outside academia. It should also be available in libraries for the teaching of (visual) anthropology. Despite a lingering assumption that visual anthropology lacks theory, this is exactly a practical handbook which teaches the core skills in camera use, sound recording and editing that were missing so far. Within anthropology, the act of image-making is still too often reduced to the technical aspect of pressing a button (p. x). Lawrence's focus on “exploration through practice” shows that there is much to learn. Divided into five sections, the book includes useful exercises for every stage of film production, starting from the very first considerations about the decision to make a film at all (which, thankfully, the author does not see as something to be set against writing but as a complementary practice), to preparation, recording images and sound, editing and finally distribution – an intrinsic part of film production that is too easily forgotten when launching a project. After all, it is giving research outcomes a life beyond the academy and on diverse screens that also renders visual anthropology so important. As the author himself writes, this handbook is not only for anthropologists but for anybody who wants to use ethnographic documentary for filmmaking projects. And indeed the detailed yet easily comprehensible explanations of technical principles show that the processes of making films and doing anthropological research are similar in many ways. Both start with an idea or
{"title":"Filmmaking for Fieldwork","authors":"Christine Moderbacher","doi":"10.1080/08949468.2022.2094190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2022.2094190","url":null,"abstract":"Doing the MA in Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester a decade ago trained my vision to look for appealing images, the perfect camera angle and beautiful light conditions. But that year at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology was not only an intense year of visual enskillment: it also changed my anthropological gaze toward the people and topics that I work with. Needless to say that given this history, I was extremely happy to learn that the person teaching documentary film practice at Manchester, Andy Lawrence, had finally transformed his many years of teaching experience into an illustrated handbook that integrates the practical, theoretical and technical sides of doing audiovisual research. If you are thinking about documentary filmmaking, whether ethnographic or not, this is the book you need on your desk, and with you in the field. But I would not only recommend it for practitioners and people curious about working with the camera, both in and outside academia. It should also be available in libraries for the teaching of (visual) anthropology. Despite a lingering assumption that visual anthropology lacks theory, this is exactly a practical handbook which teaches the core skills in camera use, sound recording and editing that were missing so far. Within anthropology, the act of image-making is still too often reduced to the technical aspect of pressing a button (p. x). Lawrence's focus on “exploration through practice” shows that there is much to learn. Divided into five sections, the book includes useful exercises for every stage of film production, starting from the very first considerations about the decision to make a film at all (which, thankfully, the author does not see as something to be set against writing but as a complementary practice), to preparation, recording images and sound, editing and finally distribution – an intrinsic part of film production that is too easily forgotten when launching a project. After all, it is giving research outcomes a life beyond the academy and on diverse screens that also renders visual anthropology so important. As the author himself writes, this handbook is not only for anthropologists but for anybody who wants to use ethnographic documentary for filmmaking projects. And indeed the detailed yet easily comprehensible explanations of technical principles show that the processes of making films and doing anthropological research are similar in many ways. Both start with an idea or","PeriodicalId":44055,"journal":{"name":"Visual Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":"312 - 313"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48045452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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