Film versus Photography:
Visual Anthropologists Engaging Visual Media

Regarding their engagement in anthropology, film and photography are not so disparate. Both mediums are created by amateurs, utilized as methods for documentation in fieldwork, applied to supplement monographs, and are more widely distributed for consumption. Still, visual anthropologists seem to be struggling to determine (especially with some kind of consensus) what role is most appropriate for these visual media. In analyzing the meaning given to film and photography by consumers, as well as the meaning derived from them by researchers and other spectators, there seem to be inherent differences. Visual anthropologists now treat film and photography as rather diverse media due to intrinsic qualities such as their spatial and temporal ranges and the types of information they proffer. Visual anthropologists critique both visual mediums created by others and likewise create their own; the divergence lies in the theoretical and methodological approaches to both.

Kirsten Hastrup claims that in order to avoid garbling meaning and to be “truly ethnographic” films must adhere to chronological limitations that lack perspective (Hastrup 1992:15). The implication is that to be true, filmic content must unfold in real time and, in doing so, it evades the jumps in time which are necessary to provide context (Hastrup 1992). The notion that text can jump in time where visual media cannot is, however, outdated. Techniques using sequencing and overlapping in photo-essays or montage in film demonstrate that visual data too can be provided in non-sequential, nonlinear fashion. Pinney cites a more convincing argument made by Metz regarding temporality in film and photography. He proposes that the temporal lexis (“unit of reading”) is more flexible in photography than in film (Pinney 1992:27). When watching a film, the viewer is provided a chronological structure in which the images unfold; when observing photography, the viewer decides how long they will spend looking at the image (Pinney 1992:27). It is true that a film imposes a certain temporal agenda and, if it is not paused, it allows less freedom in time than does observation of photography. However, film and photography both trap the content of the image in a single moment in time that cannot be revisited or altered. This is an aspect of time that is shared by both visual media and which is a cause of the image being imbued with a great deal of contextual, cultural meaning. It necessitates the interpretation of the image through the “why” and “how” of the existence of the image. Hastrup's view that the lack of temporal continuity in visual media takes away from the veracity of what is being presented requires the assumption that a documentary approach is preferable to an interpretive one.

Weinberger, just as critical of visual ethnography as Hastrup, departs from Hastrup's fidelity to the documentary approach and seems to favor a more interpretive one. He appears to prefer metaphorical, surrealist film that “does not pretend to be a mirror” (Weinberger 1992:44). For Weinberger, these avant-garde, experimental interpretations of culture form an understanding of human experiences and attempt to translate them. This is done in contrast to the documentation approach which constructs identities from the filmmaker's point of view and through the filmmaker's assumptions without an acknowledgement that it too is in some way interpretive. The controversy over films that take an experimental form demonstrates a declination of practices which process the information in the film before the viewer can do so. This leads to a central question regarding visual ethnography: is it art or a scientific research tool? Jay Ruby considers this a dichotomy which is “simplistic and represents an outmoded view of both art and science” (Ruby 2000:45). He also believes this a large reason that exploration of visual methods has been held back (Ruby 2000). Though the discipline exists because visual anthropologists see film and photography as useful in some part of the research process if not on their own, they have yet to agree on the aesthetic question. To comprehend the value visual media offer to research, visual anthropologists try to see what meaning can be gained from each.

Hastrup claims that photographs (in comparison with text) can only portray place, the configurations of content forming a photo, but not space, the textured reality that relates a perpetually transforming meaning (Hastrup 1992:11). What is notable about this idea is that it stems from her own photographic research in Iceland at a ram exhibition. Hastrup's visual documentation recorded the place but was unable to recreate the textured atmosphere of male sexuality that filled and constantly changed the space (Hastrup 1992). However, she concedes that she was uncomfortable, in a place where she did not feel she belonged, and embarrassed enough to leave quickly. Though the photographs do not, in her opinion, reflect the rich sensory experience of the room, perhaps they do reflect her experience. “Ill-focused, badly lit, lopsided and showing nothing but the completely uninteresting backs of men and rams,” the photographs provide a different meaning than the one she intends (Hastrup 1992:9). In a Foulcauldian analysis, Sarah Pink claims that there is no fixed meaning in a photograph until it is examined through a wider discourse based on their audiences, and spatial, historical, and cultural settings (Pink 2001:51). To understand the photos, one must discover who took it, when, and why, what the image consists of, who the audience is and what they are doing with it (Banks 2001:7). Perhaps Hastrup's photos are not particularly good because she lacks technical skill or perhaps they are not reflective of the male sexuality because they are busy reflecting the experience she had in the room. What is clear is that her perspective is woven into the photograph - she sees the backs of men in a lopsided, awkward manner because she feels uneasy and lacks the confidence to fully enter the room. This stresses the interpretation of the photograph in deriving meaning from it.

Films must also be interpreted within the framework of this kind of contextual information. However, film is fundamentally different from photography because it cannot be reduced to parts but is a functioning whole that takes on meaning as a whole. It is “not a sequence of still images, or even scenes, to be read individually” (Banks 2001:22). This dissimilarity necessitates different treatment of the two mediums and perhaps different uses. When creating or consuming a film, the producer and spectator must both understand that the entire body of the film works together and continuously to convey some specific kind of understanding. Because the interpretation of it is key, so the reception of the visual media matters as well. When anthropology took on reception theory studies, the field focused mostly on ethnographic film (Banks 2001: 140). Perhaps this indicates a slightly higher focus on consumption and the importance of the audience with regard to film over photography. Banks shows that in the analysis of Robert Gardner's Forest of Bliss, three social anthropologists interpreted the film in diverse manners depending on their perspective and approach in reading the film (Banks 2001:20). The co-producer, Ákos Östör, analyzes the film without using his external knowledge of it and criticizes the other two for their attempts to contextualize the film rather than to perceive and understand it on its own, through its own rich metaphor (Banks 2001:21). This point illustrates several things about visual anthropology. Firstly, it emphasizes again the need to understand who the audience is, why they have access to this film, and how they are using it. It stresses interpretation in deriving meaning from the film, just as with photography. Finally it demonstrates the diversity of perspective among visual anthropologists attempting to decide how visual media holds meaning.

The image above, when deconstructed, is a beautiful illustration of the questions surrounding visual media as ethnography (Pinney 1992: 30). It is a still from a wedding video from central India. The caption for this photo and three others reads “Stills from Venus Studio wedding video filmed in Nagda, central India, 1989. Courtesy of Venus Studios” (Pinney 1992:30). The lines here are blurred; it is a photograph frozen in time from a video which is in a sense also a stretch of time that is captured, frozen. However, it belongs to a whole that is temporally very different than that of the photograph. What meaning does it give? Pinney, understanding the background of the procession, wishes to discuss the “fetishism” of the “female spectacle” - the surveillance of the bride (Pinney 1992:30). But what of a spectator who sees this photograph outside the context of the film or the descriptive language Pinney affixes to it? The meaning is transformed by this external information. The photograph is linked to the monograph both through caption and textual description. Spatially, the photograph is also complex. Why was this still used, which shows so much motion? It is pulled from the context of the film where the motion likely has a different interpreted meaning. The film is used in this case differently than the photograph; it is a referent of the photograph. The film creates a bit of the narrative, but the photograph does as well.

It would be unfair to say that visual anthropologists look at the photography of others, but make their own films. They look at both, critique both, attempt to place both within research and products of research, and to some degree create both for consumption. However, visual anthropologists are still not sure who their audiences are or who they should be and because of this they have not committed to a specific methodology or theoretical approach to either film or photography. Understanding the motivations of the discipline and of the researcher is key as is understanding the audience and what a particular kind of reception means for the visual media. Loizos argues that film is (and should be) “an intentional communication medium,” understood and broken down in its differing modalities (Pinney 1992: 63). The same should be held as true for photography as it is for film. Whether it can stand alone or not is not the primary difference between the two mediums, however. It is the reception and the way people affix meaning differently due to their inherent differences that is still deciding how visual anthropologists will treat film and photography.

References

Banks, M. 2001. Visual Methods in Social Research. Sage Publications Ltd.
Hastrup, K. 1992. Anthropological Visions: some notes on visual and textual authority in P. Crawford & D. Turton Film as Ethnography. Manchester University Press.
Loizos, P. 1992. Admissible Evidence? Film in Anthropology in P. Crawford & D. Turton Film as Ethnography. Manchester University Press.
Pinney, C. 1992. The lexical spaces of eye-spy in P. Crawford & D. Turton Film as Ethnography. Manchester University Press.
Pink, S. Doing Visual Ethnography. SAGE Publications.
Ruby, J. 2000. Picturing Culture. The University of Chicago Press.
Weinberger, E. 1994. The Camera People In Taylor, L (ed.) Visualizing Theory.