| A common introduction to anthropology is through ethnographic
film. Readers may well be familiar with television series such as
Disappearing World and Under the Sun. These films are made by anthropologists
or professional filmmakers and show life in non-European societies.
They are valuable in revealing a more rounded representation of the
issues that anthropologists normally investigate particularly with
respect to ritual, music, dance and other areas where a purely written
description cannot convey the richness of the experience. Teachers
of anthropology have also found film to be valuable for conveying
a sense of the work that anthropologists actually do in the field.
However, visual anthropology is much more than ethnographic film.
It encompasses a much wider study of visual systems. Most anthropologists
produce visual representations in the course of their work (often
photographs, but also videos, maps, drawings and diagrams) and all
societies make visible aspects of their social life and their cultural
understandings. Visual anthropology is concerned with understanding
the production and consumption of all these forms. Visual anthropology
clearly overlaps with the anthropology.
Editor:
Marcus Banks University of Oxford
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