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

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

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

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

Published in Visual Anthropology (Vol. 35, No. 3, 2022)

Published in Visual Anthropology (Vol. 35, No. 3, 2022)

Published in Visual Anthropology (Vol. 35, No. 3, 2022)

In March of 2014, I attended the first screening of Euromaidan: Rough Cut—a collective documentary chronicle of Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution. Quite unexpectedly the event ended with an improvized mourning ritual for deceased Maidan protesters. Observed in the film, this ritual then transcended the screen and spread through the audience, stimulating an experience similar to a “collective catharsis.”

For almost a century ethnographic filmmakers liked to think of their work as the radical alternative to a hidebound textual anthropology. Such claims are now increasingly challenged. On the one hand, the rise of “experimental’ or “multimodal” scholarship has changed the existing terms of debate about alternative modes of anthropological practice. On the other hand, debates about the decolonization

Expanding on the nexus of art and ethnography in contemporary Thailand, I take a case study approach in this paper to apprehend the film Din Rai Dan (Soil Without Land) through an ethnographic framework. Completed in 2019 by Nontawat Numbenchapol, Din Rai Dan was shot at the Shan State Army camp, at the border between Thailand and Myanmar. Straddling compelling visual aesthetics and thorough, on-site

By examining the Western strain of the Horror genre, I explore the dynamics that define its central character as an ontological xenophobia that must be perpetually cleansed. Beyond a sociological account I suggest we take what it contains seriously as ontological explorations. With a focus on predation as case study, I analyze the genre as conforming to the gazing relation of the Naturalistic West

Published in Visual Anthropology (Vol. 35, No. 2, 2022)

Published in Visual Anthropology (Vol. 35, No. 2, 2022)

Published in Visual Anthropology (Vol. 35, No. 2, 2022)

Published in Visual Anthropology (Vol. 35, No. 2, 2022)

Published in Visual Anthropology (Vol. 35, No. 2, 2022)

Published in Visual Anthropology (Vol. 35, No. 2, 2022)

Published in Visual Anthropology (Vol. 35, No. 2, 2022)

Published in Visual Anthropology (Vol. 35, No. 2, 2022)

(2022). Editorial. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 1-4.

This article presents a qualitative analysis of photographs taken of Syrian refugees by the the Turkish photojournalist, Kemal Vural. There is an exceptional situation at the Turkish border. I will describe how these people cross the border, the dangers they face in walking through minefields, and the emotions that they experience then. The article concludes that refugees are portrayed as being displaced

This article was prompted by a plate published in the foundational text, Principles of Visual Anthropology, which purports to show a film being made by Thomas Edison of the Snake Dance as performed in the Hopi village of Orayvi, Arizona, in August 1898. This footage is now lost but could still have been one of the first ethnographic films ever made—depending on how one defines “ethnographic.” Here

(2022). How Does an Image Relate to What It Shows?—The Uses of Photography among the Badagas of South India. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 80-92.

(2022). Call for Papers. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 93-93.

In modern social theory, mass media have been seen as providing ideological support for the reproduction of class inequalities, and structures of exploitation and domination, in industrialized economies. Similarly, cultural anthropologists saw American stratification as contributing no less direct support of the status quo. However, selected Hollywood movies depict an actor-based and inclusive vision

Using visual and oral approaches, this article presents new findings on the social construction of place and belonging in the aftermath of the UK’s Brexit Referendum. Photographs by our British and non-British participants depict everyday life in a seaside town, with rare references to political aspects of migration. In their oral narratives, by contrast, the same participants emphasize the contested

(2021). The Looking Machine. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 34, No. 5, pp. 454-464.

(2021). Volume 34—Author Index. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 34, No. 5, pp. 465-466.

(2021). Volume 34—Title Index. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 34, No. 5, pp. 467-468.

(2021). Call for Papers. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 34, No. 5, pp. 469-469.

This special issue of Visual Anthropology takes a close look at (un)sighted migratory archives and archives of migration. Acknowledging migration as part of social practice and collective memory, it highlights the relevance of migratory archives for individual and collective subjectivities. With a transversal perspective across the fields of art, anthropology and social activism, the contributions

This article explores the installation Documentation by the artist Parastou Forouhar as an (un)sighted migratory archive of memory and forgetting. Operating in the liminal zone between a personal archive and a resourceful public space of memory and resistance, Documentation records in numerous post-produced letters, documents and reports the assassination of the artist’s parents and her efforts to

This article explores portrait images, wedding albums and Facebook images as personal migrant archives. Examining the particular temporalities and the analog–digital materialities of the images, we unfold their significance for the construction of transnational sociality among Senegalese in Berlin and Dakar, from the perspective of women. By addressing distinct audiences the archives of migration are

The essay focuses on an unsighted archive of migration that preserves numerous discarded objects from undocumented migration into Europe. This “trash” was recovered and stored by the artists Massimo Ricciardo and Thomas Kilpper, for whom the objects signify one of the most urgent societal challenges of our time. In the installation “Objects of Migration—Photo Objects of Art History,” Ricciardo introduced

Globalized cities, like Basel with its pharmaceutical industry, are shaped by migration. At the same time migration, one of the driving forces of urbanization, scarcely surfaces in public discourse. Due to a dominant codified remembrance politics that unfolds along the lines of national discourse, official archives and museums fail to integrate evidence and objects testifying to migration into their

The article considers different archives of migration from various terminological and conceptual aspects, such as the distinction between archive and collection. Moreover, an attempt is undertaken to distinguish between objects of flight and objects of migration, examining their varying representations in the institutions as well as their specific relationship to authorship and ownership. Focus is

The Surrealist journals Documents (1929–1930) and Minotaure (1933–1939) sought to overturn the eurocentric hegemony of art history, especially the notion that Greece had formed the original cradle of civilization. Due to close-knit linkages with anthropologists in these periodicals, the Surrealists’ understanding of indigenous art was far from superficial; nor was it limited to mere aesthetic borrowings

Based on ethnographic research in Cameroon, this article discusses recent developments in the field of African studio photography. It focuses first on how technical innovations have changed photographic practice and how this has affected studio photography in Cameroon. While new image-making professionals have emerged, most of the studios going back to the black-and-white era had closed down at the

“Visual Expression,” understood here as the purposeful application of formal parameters of a medium to produce meaning, constitutes a crucial element of a (more) visual social science that seeks not only to produce visual records of culture and society, but also strives to communicate disciplinary informed/grounded findings, insights and arguments in a partly visual and multimodal manner. This article

In this article de Bromhead describes how breaking the “rules” of a method through necessity may then be justified and made acceptable by that methodology itself. This occurred when making The Olive Pickers, a film that de Bromhead shot in western Sicily, which reveals the substandard living conditions of migrant workers (mostly from Africa), people who survive by harvesting produce throughout southern

(2021). Anuradha and Anupama: Gender Issues through Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 257-263.

(2021). Beyond Observation. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 264-267.

(2021). Muddied Waters. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 268-270.

(2021). Instagram. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 271-273.

(2021). Photography and Decolonial Imagination. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 274-275.

(2021). Art, Anthropology, and Contested Heritages. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 276-282.

A reassessment of the Marshall family expeditions in the 1950s and the films in the Kalahari is offered. What was learned by the Marshalls, as pioneers of visual anthropology, is examined through the investigations of several later scholars, filmmakers and archivists. This article draws on the semiotics of C. S. Peirce in light of his discussion of how things appear (phaneroscopy), backgrounded research

A feminist critical gaze in analyses of images in popular media found that a patriarchal gaze in androcentric visual reconstructions of early biosocial hominin evolution persists despite some recent modifications in response to feminist critiques. Academic patriarchal reconstructions of hominin evolution and feminist critiques and research disproving them must first be outlined in order to be able

(2021). The Eye of Africa. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 178-180.

(2021). The Adventure of the Reel. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 181-184.

(2021). Editorial. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 1-2.

This article argues that imprisonment is a liminal experience and that recognition is needed to establish a new social status to enable parity of participation after one’s release. The article builds on photographic action research done with four former political prisoners in Myanmar, and analyzes three of the photos from the project and the process of creating and exhibiting photos. The article shows

Photojournalism has been an important aspect of reporting social trauma since at least the American Civil War (1861–65), bringing the horrors of conflict “into the living-rooms” of homes across the world. Based on the photographs of two Syrian refugee children, Aylan Kurdi (“the boy on the beach”) and Omran Daqneesh (“the Aleppo boy in the ambulance”) the present research suggests that photographs

This article is about art practice that aims at researching and recreating the condition of living with a particular sensory disability, and this through an interactive installation. The two artists whose work I investigate research the visual and aural experiences of themselves and others and attempt to recreate those experiences using computer-generated images and sounds: it is a process of sensory

This article aims to situate the work of the Beninese artist Georges AdÅagbo within the specific cultural field that defines its legitimacy in the art system. In particular, the article focuses on how the artistic quality of his work is constructed by actants (people, things, words, places and images) that mediate the relationships between the artist and his audience, allowing his site-specific displays

Subtitling has become a standard feature of ethnographic film across the world, yet many neophyte filmmakers underestimate the amount of time to dedicate in post-production to resolving the many issues this process poses. These relate in part to technical matters of form and timing, and in part to more editorial questions arising from the need to offer effective translations within the strict time

(2020). Volume 33—Author Index. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 33, No. 5, pp. 474-475.

(2020). Volume 33—Title Index. Visual Anthropology: Vol. 33, No. 5, pp. 476-477.

Following the trail of an urban waste canal in Cambodia, we engage with the sensory impressions of discarded material imprints as entangled within the daily lives of the city’s inhabitants. The term “liquid midden,” introduced here, implies the smooth movement and flow of discarded materials in the canal, and is used to explore the entangled visual relationships between discarded supermarket packaging

This article reflects on the Azentún Photography Workshop’s visual and ethnographic practices. The workshop took place in the city of Santiago de Chile, to explore the identity construction of young Mapuche people through historical and contemporary photograph readings. The teenagers created new visual representations to offer multiple meanings relating to their identity. The resultant visual documents