ANT3143 | Visual Anthropology

The work presented here was produced for ANT 3143 Visual Anthropology, taught by Professor Meg Stalcup at the University of Ottawa. The question we posed was how an anthropologist works with still and moving images to understand the world. What techniques, forms, and styles both generate and convey such knowledge? And what are the politics and ethics of these practices? 

Visual anthropology explores the use of visual technologies and media in the production of anthropological knowledge, and is also the field of inquiry into visual arts and representations. In the course, we study influential and more recent films and texts, toward understanding how cinema and diverse domains of image-making have shaped each other. Ultimately we ask how these practices can serve as ways of knowing in the world today.

David MacDougall has observed that the ethnographic film is always a record of a meeting, and we underscore that in anthropology today, this meeting need not be with another society, or with ‘society’ per se. Readings, photographs, and films serve as the material for exploring anthropology's visual methods over the history of the discipline, and familiarize students with significant approaches to anthropological filmmaking. Watching and writing about films from a range of practitioners, they gain practice in critically analyzing visual media, while developing their own voices and perspectives in the short films and photo essays linked to below.