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Visual Anthrop~Logy Essential Method and Theory

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Visual Anthrop~Logy Essential Method and Theory Visual Anthrop~logy Essential Method and Theory Fadwa El Guindi c~~) ;ALTM'\IRA PRESS A Division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Walnut Creek • Lanham • New York • Toronto • Oxford ALTAMIRA PREss A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 1630 North Main Street, #367 Walnut Creek, California 94596 www.altamirapress.com Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary ofThe Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 PO Box317 Oxford OX29RU,UK Copyright © 2004 by AltaMira Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocop'ying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data El Guindi, Fadwa. Visual anthropology : essential method and theory I Fadwa El Guindi. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7591-0394-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)- ISBN 0-7591-0395-X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Visual anthropology-Philosophy. 2. Visual anthropology-Methodology. I. Title. G 347.£5 2004 301-dc22 2004008217 Printed in the United States of America §TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. This work is dedicated to ANTHROPOLOGY­ the four-field science of humankind. In homage to Jean Rouch (1918-2004) and his passion for ethnographic ft.lm CONTENTS Preface ................................ .... ............ ix Introduction . ................... ...... ..... ........ .. PART ONE ISSUES, ANCESTRY, AND GENEALOGY CHAPTER ONE History, Euro-Americanization, and New l!>irections . 23 CHAPTER TWO For God's Sake, Margaret . 61 PART TWO ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM CHAPTER THREE Filming Others . 89 CHAPTER FOUR Filming Selves .............. ~ . 121 PART THREE RESEARCH FILM CHAPTER FIVE Discovery . 153 CONTENTS Preface .................................................. ix Introduction ..................... .... ... ............... PART ONE ISSUES, ANCESTRY, AND GENEALOGY CHAPTER ONE History, Euro-Americanization, and New Directions . 23 \ CHAPTER TWO For God's Sake, Margaret . 61 PART TWO ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM CHAPTER THREE Filming Others . 89 CHAPTER FOUR Filming Selves .. , ........... ~ . • 121 PART THREE RESEARCH FILM CHAPTER FIVE Discovery . 153 vii CONTENTS PART FOUR VISUAL ETHNOGRAPHY CHAPTER SIX From Doing Cinema to Doing Anthropology . 185 CHAPTER SEVEN Parameters for Visual Ethnography . 217 Conclusion .............................................. 247 Appendix: Bibliography of Films on Primates, compiled by Julia Cody . 251 References . 255 Index .................................................. 287 About the Author . • . 293 Vlll PREFACE Our Human Past t is quite common in visual anthropology to trace the use of visual tools to the advent of modern photographic technology of still and I movie cameras and sound equipment. But I find it more true to the anthropological approach and to the history of human achievements to begin from the beginning. There are two beginnings. First, since about 30,000 years ago, humans pictorialized, and we have evidence of cave "art." In Paleollthic cave and rock art, humans used rudimentary tools to pro­ duce a vast pictorial record of life and ideas. It is assumed that pictorializ­ ing never ceased throughout human existence, paralleling the beginnings of culture itself Primatological research and experimental observations also point to the role primates play in pictorializing. According to Zeller (1997), "cave painting by apes may rival cave paintings by our ancestors in their poten­ tial to provide information about the act and product, shape and meaning, nature and mental foundations for nonlinguistic expression of nontangi­ ble ideas" (21). In Figure 1, Ann Zeller, in her capacity as visual primatol­ ogist, is trying to take a photo of an orangutan.1 Figure 2 is a collage showing a chimpanzee, Colleen, working on a wa­ tercolor. Zeller has been for some time now observing Colleen (now about four years old and owned by Monkey Jungle). The watercolor shown in the collage is by Colleen at one and a half years old. She has done a number of paintings that are now included in the database of primate paintings ix PREFACE Figure I. Visual anthropologist Anne Zeller trying to toke a picture o(Tut, adult female orangutan, who in turn is trying to take the anthropologist's camera while holding her two infants, Tom and Nancy. Pic­ ture taken at Camp Leakey Orangutan Research and Rehabilitation Centre, Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan, Borneo, in 1988 by Diana Schiffer. By permission from Anne Zeller. \ currently being set up by Zeller. According to Zeller (personal communi­ cation), the orangutans and gorillas at Monkey Jungle all paint and have contributed to the database in progress. I include a select bibliography of films on primates as the Appendix at the end of this book. 2 More primate studies can perhaps refine conclusions on the qualita­ tive difference in pictorially recorded activities between primates and hu­ mans, but we know that both pictorialized. As humankind pictorialized its universe, it memorialized itself and made its ideas part of the visible ma­ terial world to be learned, decoded, and studied. We do know that many ~illennia ago, humans have been pictorially keeping record and commu­ nicating their way oflife and achievements on walls and literally etched in stone (for example, the first record of written laws in the Hammurabi tablets ofMesopotarnia). That happened about 5,000 years ago, when pic­ torializing took a turn to a more systemic approach. The progressive de­ velopment of pictorialized expression led to the invention of the earliest X PREFACE system~ of representational symbols: the alphabet and systems of writing as seen in Sumerian cuneiform3 and Egyptian hieroglyphics.4 By systemic, I mean that humans began to organize pictorial representations in ways by which meaning is rendered from the relationship of pictures as elements in a system rather than as independent elements. This enabled them to communicate messages via what is known as an alphabet,5 which led to forms of writing decipherable across "borders" that marked, along with a cluster of other developments, the developmental stage known as civiliza­ tion. At this civilizational stage, humans relied on sophisticated visually based recording systems. Tools were harnessed to keep record of their ac­ complishments, to organize public labor and economic life, to express ab­ stract ideas, and to communicate messages internally and externally. For example, ancient Egyptian rulers would send written messages in hiero­ glyphics to rulers of Mesopotamia who would decipher them into cuneiform and respond in cuneiform to Egypt wherein the message is in turn deciphered into hieroglyphics. Pictorial-based global communication PREFACE started long before the advent of faxes, the Internet, and satellite commu­ nication. Taking this broader, longer look, back millennia ago, to the be­ ginning of human development reveals how pictorializing is as old as human culture itself, possibly older. This is one beginning. Theory ofVision and Technology Second, there is the theory of vision, itself pertinent to our contemporary understanding of visual theory and the notion of visible and invisible worlds, and at the same time there is experimentation with technical tools for research dynamics of the visual that revealed insights leading to the vi­ sual theory. Arabs of the eleventh century invented the tools and the the­ ory that paved the way for the development of modern visual technology. Both beginnings-the invention of the alphabet and writing and the eleventh-century formulation of a theory of vision-point to the Arab East. It is there that our journey, like civilization itself, begins. The theory of vision and visual perception that is being referred to is one formulated by Ibn ;u-Haytham (965-1041).6 His full name is Abu Ali al-Hasan (stress on the first syllable) Ibn al-Haytham. The Latin translit­ eration is Alhacen, presumably based on the mistaken assumption that the stress in t~ word al-Hasan is on the second syllable. Smith (2001 [1028]) notes that a variant of the name, A/hazen, was used in a sixteenth -century manuscript found in Paris. The correct Arabic last name is al-Haytham (stress on the first syllable). Born in Basra, Iraq, and establishing his career in Cairo, Egypt, he be­ came internationally renowned as the founder of the branch of physics known as the science of optics. He was extraordinarily prolific, with more than 180 tracts to his name. Smith (2001 [1028]) notes that most works were written in the relatively short interval between 1027 and his death (xvi). The scope of al-Haytham's work is broad, "ranging from pure math­ ematics and astronomy to medicine, logic, metaphysics, and even kalam, or speculative theology" (xvi). The primary focus of his research was on scien­ tific and mathematical rather than philosophical matters, with nineteen tracts relating one way or another to optics (for detail on al-Haytham's ex­ perimental science, see Omar 1977). I single out one work considered an original contribution to scientific theory of the visual process for its rele­ vance to visual anthropology. It is called
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