Visual Research and Representation in Ethnography
Edited by Ana Isabel Alfonso, Laszlo Kurti, Sarah Pink
Routledge – 2004 – 252 pages
Visual methods such as drawing, painting, video, photography and hypermedia offer increasingly accessible and popular resources for ethnographic research. In Working Images, prominent visual anthropologists and artists explore how old and new visual media can be integrated into contemporary forms of research and representation. Drawing upon projects undertaken both 'at home' in their native countries and abroad in locations such as Ethopia and Venezuela, the book's contributors demonstrate how visual methods are used in the field, and how these methods can produce and communicate knowledge about our own and other cultures. As well as focusing on key issues such as ethics and the relationship between word and image, they emphasize the huge range of visual methods currently opening up new possibilities for field research, from cartoons and graphic art to new media such as digital video and online technologies.
1. Introduction: Situating Visual Research Section 1: Visual Fieldwork Methods 2. Video and Ethnographic Knowledge: Skilled Vision in the Practice of Breeding 3. Photography in the Field: Word and Image in Ethnographic Research 4. Picture Perfect: Community and Commemoration in Photographs 5. New Graphics for Old Stories Representation of Local Memories Through Drawings 6. Imagework in Ethnographic Research Section 2: Representing Visual Knowledge 7. Putting Film to Work: Observational Cinema as Practical Ethnography 8. Revealing the Hidden: Making Anthropological Documentaries 9. Drawing the Lines: The Limitations of Intercultural Ekphrasis 10. In the Net: Ethnographic Photography 11. Conversing with Anthropology: Words, Images and Hypermedia Text 12. The Representation of Cultures in Digital Media Epilogue 13. Working Images