Photography, Text and Anthropology
The relation between text and the photographic image is as old as the inception of the medium. Differently from painting or the moving image (either digitally produced or not), the photographic image has always been under the impression that it says more than what it shows and, at the same time, somewhat less.. As such, a general idea that photographic images demand explanation, regardless of the field towards which they turn to, installed itself early on. In what come to ethnography, or better put, anthropology, photography has been an important medium for the consolidation of the discipline. As a research tool or a methodology, photography provided social sicentists with the records of the material reality of peoples, nations and ethnicities. The veracity-value of photographs allowed anthropologists to prove or dismiss theories ,at the same time problematizing the ethics of the researcher given the obvious possibilities of manipulating images themselves and, worse, subjects. Thus, conducting ethnographic research with the aid of photography became highly problematic. To what concerns the space of this blog, the relation between text and (photographic) image is a false problem, whereas the role of potography and text in the making of anthropology is central. I will further expand on that.
Text and Photograph: if we follow the paths of Walter Benjamin's historical materialism, photographs cannot be self-suficient, they demand a caption, or even a text. That has nothing to do with any disability inherent to the photographic image, but to the fact that such an image relates to a different nature since the nature that speaks to the camera is not the same one that speaks to the eye. By freezing time, the photographic image reaches far more details that the eye can, providing the viewer with a set of informations that can be reassembled differently at different moments. Besides that, text and photograph are not, in Benjamin's view, contrasting, but complementary, according to the manner in which they are assembled. Finally, the question for historical materialism would be, ultimately, about the nature of the image (regardless of its form) as an onotological category that embodies human culture, thus becoming material itself. In Benjamin's time, the philosopher saw the photographic image as the one better suited for analysing the question.
Text and Photography in Anthropology: tracing back the discussion of visual anthropology and the question of photography in the discipline reaches out too much for the scope of a blog post, nonetheless, as previosuly stated, the use of photographic image in anthropology ends up in ethical questions. As a methodology, it is in the field of research ethics that anthropoligsts face the higher challenge. To what extent and in which way are we able to portray, represent and be just to culture, even if we are looking at our own culture. Visual methdologies and theoretical criticism are there to help us and the issue is far from being sorted. The more technologies advance, the more we are confronted with ethics. Beyond ethics, nonetheless, I'd say we have to face the question of morality. Morality, as I see it, drawing from Kant, mostly, is the set of values that inform and pave the conduct of individuals within a specific context. In that track,anthropology is a highly moral and moralistic science, since it deals precisely with the encounter between different realities. The distinction between ethics and morality, thus, points out to the very paradigm of anthropology: how to understand, portray (as in describe and represent in a consistent manner), and work with and despite of cultural differences. Seen this way, relativistic and universalist views stem precisely from this paradigm. In no way do I see possible or even fit to attempt to sort this problem here, I want merely to point them out in order to explain my perspective on the relation between text, photographs and anthropology. If visual anthropology is a step further on ethnography, making the encounter between cultures even more complex (not necessarily more problematic, though), it is primal to, firstly, have a terse concept of anthropology with or through images. If the nature that speaks to the camera is not the same that speaks to the eye, it is necessary to understand that the nature of the anthropology that is done through/with images is no tthe same that the one doen purely through text, but that they will encounter one another. In that sense, the concept of image is central, for an image is a third. It is neither narrativity nor pure representation, but a synthesis between a sort of narrative drive and visual representation. Thus being, an image is nothing but itself; it communicates itself and, as such, it is language. Because it is non-verbal, the need for relating images to words, once acknowledging image as language, derives from metaphysics, which Benjamin was unable to admit. Nonetheless, this metaphysical relation can only find its expression in the level of the pure physical, that is, perception and, therefore, stands as an expression of sensuous experience. To relate image -each and every image but more specifically the image as a cultural expression - to text is, therefore, to begin, again and again the experience of culture. That can only be done historically.
