Anthropologist with a movie camera: between the moving image and the text Cover Image

Antropologas su kino kamera: tarp judančio vaizdo ir teksto
Anthropologist with a movie camera: between the moving image and the text

Author(s): Narius Kairys
Subject(s): Aesthetics, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure , Film / Cinema / Cinematography
Published by: Visuomeninė organizacija »LOGOS«
Keywords: ethnographic film; iconophobia; visual anthropology; cinema; aesthetics;

Summary/Abstract: Ethnographic films have been produced along with fiction films since the beginning of cinema in the nineteenth century. For a very long-time anthropologists have been sceptical about the scientific rigidity and objectivity of visual inquiries, especially ethnographic films. Instead they regarded anthropological research as exclusively linguistic. Moreover, afraid to discredit their scientific authority, anthropologists who used movie cameras in their work tried to evade anything that could be considered as art in their films. The phenomenon that treats anthropology and film as fundamentally incompatible disciplines is called, as suggested by anthropologist Lucien Taylor, iconophobia. In my paper I argue that the possible way out of iconophobia could be a different approach to ethnographic film’s aesthetical and ontological aspects.

  • Issue Year: 2021
  • Issue No: 109
  • Page Range: 195-201
  • Page Count: 7
  • Language: Lithuanian