D P Race

An Excess of Description: Ethnography, Race, and Visual Technologies
Author(s): Deborah Poole

Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 34 (2005), pp. 159-179
Published by: Annual Reviews
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An Excess
of Description:
Race, and
Ethnography,
Visual Technologies
Deborah
Poole
Department of Anthropology,
email: dpoole@jhu.edu
Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

2005. 34:159-79
The Annual Review of
Anthropology is online at
anthro.annualreviews.org
doi: 10.1146/
annurev.anthro. 3 3.070203.144034
2005 by
Copyright
Annual Reviews. All rights
reserved
0084-6570/05/1021
0159$20.00
Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore, Maryland
21218;
Key Words
visual
photography,
anthropology,
archive,
temporality,
ethnography
Abstract
This
essay
provides
an overview
of recent
on
work
anthropological
the relationship between racial thought and the visual technologies

of photography and film. I argue that anthropologists have moved
away from
a concern
with
representation
per
se in favor
of
the more
complex discursive and political landscapes opened up by the con

cepts
of media
and
the archive.
My
review
of this work
focuses
on
the
affective register of suspicion that has surrounded both visual meth

ods and the idea of race in anthropology. Whereas
this suspicion
has
led
some
to dismiss
ing or objectifying,
as a
productive
site
visual
technologies
as
inherently
racializ
I argue that it is possible to reclaim suspicion

for rethinking
the particular
forms
of presence,
uncertainty, and contingency that characterize both ethnographic

and visual accounts of the world. I begin by discussing recent work
on the photographic archive, early fieldwork photography, and the
subsequent move in the 1960s and 1970s from still photography to
film and video within the emergent subfield of visual anthropology.
Finally, I consider how more recent work on the problem of race in
favor
of descriptive
accounts
of mediascapes.
159

of
posed
Contents
from
165
grapher
168
perceptual
and, in so doing,
as a reasoned,
claims
these
though
171
many
thus
ethnographic
is distressing
what
race
on
work
and vision
in recent
in conversation
proliferated
has
a yet broader visual turn in the fields

of critical theory and philosophy (Brennan &
Jay 1996; Crary 1990;Debord 1987; Foucault
1980, 1986;
1973, 1977; Jay 1994; Mitchell
of
1979). Theories
and
representation
ter
disciplines
tion
traditional
these
to
scholars
have
or
to
led
talk
identities
biologized
boundaries
Michaels
1995; Said 1978, 1993). Yet others
from within the discipline itself leveled the
more
inclusive
to
herent
and writing
and
that
charge
modes
temporal
distancing
the
as well
histories,
parallel
between
sumed
homology,
as
interpretive
thropology
in Enlightenment
about
finding
ing
face
of the world,
was
about
worlds
16o
(or within)
then
the discovery
behaviors
through
and
served
surface
similarly
of
In both
the world
is
sur
visible
ethnography
other,
vision,
technology,
of
of
vision,
as well
recent
on
work
relation
the
and
photography,
exploring
race has
this
I ask
literature,
the
shaped
with
suspicion
as a start
dilemma
some
which
tended
to greet
visual
technologies.
affec
anthro
photography,
By focus
away
from
race has
how
the usual
conclusions
the way
shaped
we
see
the
in
have,
technologies
race.
notion
of
turn, shaped
Although
the recent prolifer
and important,
interesting
on
ation of anthropological
writing
questions
and film
of race, representation,
photography,
familiar
these
that
are,
now,
argu
suggests
by
how
and
visual
As
the ostensibly
such,
critical
account
would
provide
in that they du
or norma
the same sort of descriptive
plicate
to
tive force we have so convincingly
assigned
as a
is produc
that
technology
photography
of
these
studies
seem
to have
anthropology
run its course
and moral
tive of racial ideas and orders. This descriptive
of
embodied
plentitude
cases,
the
of cultural
the observation
beliefs.
the
and
and mean
order
idea
criticism
ments.
grounded
reasoned,
classificatory
an
if race
alter
the very
pre
and
projects
it was
underneath
the
ideals of description
Thus,
discovery.
as
racialism
left
they
about
ing on suspicion, I hope to shift the burden
world,
whom
anthropologists
study (Clifford & Marcus
Fabian
1986,
1983). This charge was fueled
by
race,
In
register
about
racialization,
the people
by
the
the directional di
this
revisiting
so recent
have
pologists
and
other
film,
of
of description
ethnographic
led to the reification,
of
in
the visualism
of
confin
metaphysics,
takes
between
the
tive
(e.g.,
some
is that,
thinking
in which
review
ethnography.
how
essentialized
about
and
ship
social dif
of these languages for theorizing

ference
at least
1999).
ing point
as some not
both
ethno
the
and difference might be differently related

(Benjamin 1999; Buck-Morss 1989; Connolly
2002; Deleuze 1985, 1994; Jay 1988; Levin
for
ques
as
insofar
for
object
Al
subject.
thinking
at
were
leveled
easily
endeavors
of the past,
critique,
scenarios
This
sis
distinctions
anthropological
race
and
culture
between
in
developed
room
discourse,
language,
led many
of
little
native
years
with
Rorty
constituted
a Cartesian
alectic
as
emanated
that both
ing visuality itself within
INTRODUCTION
Anthropological
task
constituted
act
about
post-Orientalist
within
of meaning,
to reveal.
order
ethnographer's
was
was
behaviors
if concealed
abstract
the
native
The
through
DIFFERENCE.
NOTICING
was
which
161
163
at a Distance.
Culture
more
it, another,
160
as
to contain,
presumed
INTRODUCTION.
THE ARCHIVE.
EXCESS AND CONTEXT.
164
Contingency.
IN THE FIELD.
PHOTOGRAPHY
or ritual
colors
skin
whether
ob
com
comes
at the
of
expense
silencing
the capacity of both ethnography and photog

raphy
to unsettle
our
Poole

accounts
of
the world.
Rather
fects
than
the
ef
of visual
in this
in visual
ordering
then,
representations,
at the
I look more
productive
closely
review
the
reclaiming
the world.
and
uncertainty
contingency
accounts
of
anthropological
is
unleashed
pre
potential
characterize
This
cisely because of the ambiguous role played

by visual images in the disciplinary struggle
first to identify, and then later to avoid, the
idea of race
work
no
in recent
of
images
content
as
their
or
studies
"others"
that
that
or vi
of
of ethnographic
our own
sequence,
inquiry,
and
early
representa
with
rec
centuries
onciled disciplinary norms of evidence and

models
evolutionary
of race with
the peculiar
temporality of the photograph. The

ence
of
these
experi
revealing in that it coincides with a period

in which
thusiastic
most
anthropology
of
pursuit
equally
of race. The
phy
the
was
gamut
deception
fervent
suspicion
greeted
from
(i.e.,
moved
racial
from
order
with
the
to
an
of the very
rejection
en
al
idea
which
photogra
thus ran
by anthropologists
an
concern
with
empiricist
a concern
for the accuracy
with which photographs represented a "racial

fact") to worries about the inability of pho
tography to capture the intangibles of culture
and
social
organization.
I then
of
histories
can
offer
for
and
reflec
of visual
rethink
in
difference
ethnography.
THE ARCHIVE
explore
like their nineteenth-century

who
anthropologists
or
der,
mous
counter.
work
that falls self-consciously within the subfield

of visual anthropology that emerged in the
1960s and 1970s in reaction to this concern
with the distinctive dangers and promises
to
returned
some
finding
within
logic,
and
predeces
have
archive have been largely
with
concerned
diverse
richly
sort
enor
collections
collections
or
of
sometimes
the
Institutional
such
en
they
as those
held by the Smithsonian (Scherer 1973),

Institute (Pinney
the Royal Anthropological
The
American Mu
1992, Poignant 1992),
seum of Natural History (Jacknis 1992), or
(Banta& Hinsley
Harvard's Peabody Museum

have
1986)
is particularly
anthropologists
some
with
recent
encounter,
visuality,
the photographic
experience,
and, as a con
twentieth
I close
race
and
technologies
sors,
ethnographic method and description.

I first consider how anthropologists who
both collected and made photographs in the
nineteenth
discussion
displaces
Finally,
on what
these
ing
an
theories of ethnicity and identity
formation.
tions
vi
expropriation
recent work
racializing
more
media
indigenous
con
constituted
subject,
indigenous
race with
Much
engagement
ongoing
on
par
my
the
evidence,
limits
the
the forms
tions and race have shaped anthropological

understandings
exploitative
explicitly
the notion
that
necessarily
and/or
work
early
address
stereo
how
anthropology
about
countering
sual representations
of
Although
was
not
in terms
Rather,
visual
surround
the
I have
exclusively
misrepresentations.
is to understand
suspicion
all
representations,
interest
ticular
and de
race
either
In particular,
years.
of
types,
on
done
seen
to review
the numerous
considered
visual
can be
attempt
been
that has
suality
of
as that which
I make
scribed.
technologies.
cerned
that visual technologies offer for
possibilities
that
on
dwelling
visual
of
uncover
been
the theoretical
terests
of
them.
Other
for
the
in an attempt
to
(and political)
in
examined
who
collected
anthropologists
much
less studied
collections
the George
example,
Eastman
in
House
Rochester, New York, the Royal Geographic

ings
at France's
over
together
less
or
in London,
Society
longer
personnel
on
much
of
time,
put
with
and with
agendas,
often
that were
very
budgets
the margins
hold
were
Library
periods
coherent
academically
and
the magnificent
National
of
the
anthropologi
cal academy. Although less revealing of the

specific ways in which early anthropologists
looked at photography, these collections offer
insight into the importance of photography
and
other
versations
pological,
visual
that
technologies
took
place
administrative,
www.annualreviews.org
in
between
the
con
anthro
governmental,
and
An Excess ofDescription

161
ideas
"popular"
race
of
2002, Graham-Brown
A
on
focus
the
the analytics
of
own
images
differ
through
sites.
and cultural
regional,
on
nineteenth-century
institutional,
In my
of
practices
of race away
and the anal

"meanings"
in favor
of a focus
content,
of image
ysis
on the movement
ent
and
for
search
work
An
dean photography (Poole 1997), for example,

I looked at the circulation of anthropologi
cal photographs as part of a broader visual
economy inwhich images of Andean peoples
were produced and circulated internationally.
By broadening the social fields through which
accrue
and
circulate
photographs
"meaning"
I argued for the privileged role

played by photography in the crafting of a
common
racial
ular"
as in the Grams
sense which,
of
understanding
and "scientific"
the
unites
term,
of
understandings
"pop
em
bodied difference (Poole 1997, 2004).

Whereas
used
more
my
to argue
circulation
the anthropological
argues
that
down"
the
and
approach
an
for
on
"into
"breaks
more
smaller,
dif
acts of
anthropolog
complex
ical intention" (2001, p. 29). She concludes

the
that
informal
networks
and
such
as
and Balfour
Haddon,
Tylor,
ing of
over
content
of anthropological
a
of the
product
in the
production
of race. As
interpretations
comparative
form.
produced
technological
the
ogy
takes
in which
graphic
flection,
as
archive
us
long
of race
by
itself
the
as
archive
a visual
from
p.
re
to
technol
early
studies
the "meaning" of particular photo

as
was
interpreted
images
being
or
of
racial
and
"expression,"
we
where
de
ques
the politics
locate
of colonialism in the study of racial photogra

question for
phy. An initial andmotivating
much of this photographic history concerned
the political involvements of anthropologists
in the colonial
gies
of
and
project
the racial
Not
colonialism.
technolo
in these
surprising,
studies we find thatVictorian anthropologists

to concentrate
tended
their
on
efforts
collect
ing photographs from India and other British

colonies (Gordon 1997, Pinney 1992); French
accumulated
of Algeri
images
ans (Prochaska 1990); andU.S.-based anthro

pologists sought images that could complete
their inventory of Native American "types"
(Bernardin & Graulich 2003, Blackman 1981,
Bush & Mitchell
1994, Faris 1996, Gidley
is that
clear
becomes
between
the
in the anthropological
subject
this
corre
matter
found
archive and the impe

states
of particular
rial politics
nation
as much
to the contemporary
owed
methodolo
gies of anthropological research as it did to

the overtly colonialist sympathies of these
early practitioners of anthropology. With few
gists
practiced
anthropolo
nineteenth-century
an
"epistolary
tained
not
rather
through
ernment
had
ethnography"
a re
colo
direct
through
officials,
with
and
missionaries,
of commerce
and
to
the occasion
but
observation,
correspondence
colonialism
sundry
had
who
firsthand
acquire
the gov
knowl
edge (or at least scattered observations) of na

tives
emerges
a move
Such
way
as "data"
rendered
the concept
frame
I 2
were
photographs
in anthropology,
as an abstraction
concerning
agents
methodologies
and exchange practices (or "flows") through

which
tions
rather
of a "universalizing
7) also raises
important
(Stocking 1995, p. 16) in which data was ob
exchanged
led to a "privileg
form"
(2001,
of "microintentions"
reflection
exceptions,
"collecting
clubs" through which British anthropologists

and shared photographs
sire"
spondence
of
expansion
movement
as the
2003). What
archive, Edwards (2001)
a focus
archive
ferentiated
Foucauldian
than
ethnologists
or value,
cian
as a series
archive
1988).
archive
displaces
collecting
from
the
approach to the photographic
Edwards'
et al.
Alvarado
(e.g.,
in
pologists,
the
space
For
places.
far-flung
technology
photographic
site
the
between
these
of
anthro
"closed
observation
on the colonial periphery and the site of

metropolitan interpretation" (Edwards 2001,
pp. 31-32).
At the same time, asEdwards (2001, pp. 38,
133), Poignant
nial ideologies formed elsewhere, outside the
and
archive.
not
others
naively
(1992), Pinney
point
out,
accepting
Poole

(1992, 1997),
anthropologists
of
were
the much-lauded
or
"transparency"
of
"objectivity"
pho
tographs. Indeed, the value they assigned to

as
photographs
mately
mulation,
scientific
above
and,
produce
ities
all, comparison,
systemic
and
tionary,
ticular
statistical
of
predictions
to
here
or
context,
time,
place,
hu
individual
man being portrayed in each photograph, but

as
rather
self-contained
of
exemplars
ideal
ized racial categories with no single referent in

the world.
not
In other
read
by
words,
photographs
as evidence
anthropologists
were
facts that could be independently observed.

as
Rather,
awareness
man
in
if
of
behaviors
and
to
of anthropology
1992).
an
infinite
appearances,
came
themselves
to
response
the almost
increasing
of hu
variety
the
facts
(Edwards 2001, Poignant
almost
who
everyone
to
quick
century
point
photography has
romance
anthropological
with
pho
tography was fueled in important ways by a

desire
for
tion.
It was
from
the
coherence,
also,
accuracy,
however,
by
beginning
and
comple
almost
plagued
a certain
nervous
ness about both the excessive detail and the

temporal contingencies of the photographic
prints
pologist's
that began
once
as
look,
needy.
to
pile
up around
comfortably
it were,
the
During
thropologists
new
the RAI's
of
collec
RAI:
common
such
artistic
through
vignette,
more
human
1880s,
however,
and more
endeavor
became
an
the
sense of
charged with making
increasingly
to discipline the sorts of poses,

and
framings,
settings inwhich subjects were
photographed. During the 1880s, the even
more
standardization
rigorous
demanded
by
Adolphe Bertillon's and Arthur Chervin's an

trie methods
thropom
between
cemented
"racial"
and
the distinc
pho
"ethnological"
tographs (Poole 1997, pp. 132-40; Sekula

1989). By specifying uniform focal lengths,
and backdrops,
sought
anthropologists
out
the distracting
"noise"
of con
countenance
and
the human
culture,
poses,
to
edit
1992,
& MacKenzie
2001, Macintyre
(Edward
1992).
Spencer
an
In yet other
cases,
on the surface
of
worked
distant
the anthro
armchair.
In her study of the photographic archives

at the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI),
Poignant charts the subtle faultlines through
which British anthropologists came to tem
per their initial fascination with the evidential
(for
tattoos)
example,
from
the
rest
the
of
the individual's body (Wright 2003).Whereas

such
gestures
betray
a felt
"need
some
for
kind of intervention to make things [like

race and culture] fully visible" (Wright 2003,
p.
cion
149),
they
about
also
an
betray
"the frustratingly
suspi
underlying
... m
tonymie
nature of the photograph" (Poignant 1992,

p. 42).
Edwards' (2001, pp. 131-55) study of the
Darwinian biologist, Thomas Huxley's "well
considered plan" to produce a photographic
inventory of the races of the British Empire,
provides
one
example
of how
"the
intrusion
of humanizing, cultural detail" (2001, p. 144)

disrupted the scientific ambitions of anthro
pology. Not only were colonial officials reluc
tant
to
jeopardize
relations
with
the
natives

Royal
Anthropological
Institute
concerned
data
the
studied
the mid-nineteenth
out,
basis
photographic print to inscribe interior frames

thatwould isolate bits of ethnological or racial
has
history of anthropological
been
to
on
relied
as the
portrait
thropologists
EXCESS AND CONTEXT

As
the
the "native" subject could be made
text,
photographs
constitute
often
which
tion
of
on
founded
conventions
"type" photograph studied by Edwards (1990,

2001), Pinney (1992, 1997), Poignant (1992),
Poole (1997), and others. The classificatory
conceit of type allowed images of individ
ual bodies to be read not in reference to
the
was
archive
tions from the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines'

Protection Societies (Pinney 1992, Poignant
1992). Photographs collected for these early
societies
regular
evolu
Of
par
"theory."
was
the genre
of the
ethnological
importance
through
could be made
laws,
general
the
and
inti
accu
of exchange,
which mute photographs

the
was
evidence
to the forms
related
power of the photographic image as "facts in

themselves" (Poignant 1992, p. 44). The RAI
i6$
the
imposing
by
anthropom
stances
where
strictures
absurd
trie poses,
even
but
of
in
taken,
the
were
photographs
constituted
space
"intersubjective
nude
in those
by
in the
Contingency
even
more
gaze,
expression,
was
read by Hux
beauty.
as an "excess"
ley and his fellow
systematizers
to purge
of visual
their
detail. Yet
attempts
An
it ultimately led to failure in that the tech

nology of photography was, in the final anal
ysis, not capable of matching the totalizing
ity of the photograph. Both the evidentiary

power and the allure of the photograph are
due to our knowledge that it captures (or
the
images
and
form
of
content
Such
ambitions
a result,
As
of the project.
the
colonial
comments,
wryly
of this project
about
race
Edwards
office's
contains
archive
more
many
than of people or
of buildings
photographs
From
its
visible
making
the
underneath
the messy
race
beginnings,
or
revealing
den
visual
was
about
what
untidy
excess
of
lay hid
surface
details
had
example,
context
that
instructed
expeditions
of gesture,
accompanied
ersome
details
or
from
their
the underlying
"race" might
and
the promise
who
artists
the
to eliminate
both
culture,
expression,
so
of natives
portraits
details
be more
of facilitating
or
"noise,"
be
freezes)
and its political ef
in the unique
located
moment
particular
in time.
This
of the photograph
dimension
temporal
temporal
intro
duced awhole other layer of distracting detail

into
the anthropological
it possible
plete
menace
transparency
of race. Con
science
of
imagine
intimacy
with them, the possibility

the
acknowledging
utopia
this
reason
that
(however remote)
and,
thus,
be
gan by 1874 (with the publication o Notes and

Queries) to express an interest in regulating the
types and amount of visual information they
would receive through photographs. By the
1890s, although photography continued to
be used
in anthropometry,
there
was
a gen
eral decline in interest in the collection and

use of photographs as ethnological evidence
con
urgency
corresponding
to collect
what
scrambled
anthropologists
they imagined to be the last vestiges of ev

idence
on
earlier
some
of
available
of
forms
human
life.
graph
at
least
in their
carried
hands,
a latent
example,
those
graphic
who
held
the
however,
threat
for
photo
Im Thurm,
cautioned
anthropologists
famously
the dangers
of erasing
in favor
portraiture
the
anthropol
ethnologist
thetic, and individualizing
and
anthropologists
acquired
of com
the humanity of their racial subjects. It is per

for
as
ogy. The Dutch
twin
were
descendants)
against
contingency
coevalness
(like many of their
that had
the
introduced
and
encounters
readily
anthropologi
nineteenth
progress,
evolutionary
vinced that the primitives they studied were

on the verge of disappearing. Ethnological
For
of
century anthropologists
camera
this
also
ability
revealed
same machine
the
to
made
haps
can
fects
structure
cal quest for order through the elimination of
of
important
slippage
or
am
stabilizing
classificatory
bitions of photography
of cranial
photography held out
1910).Whereas
(Herv
detail
the
twentieth-century
cul
the human,
tural body (Spencer 1992,Wallis 2003).Well

before the invention of photography, Cuvier,
for
arguably
between
vinced of both the inevitability and desire
races.
164
2002, Poignant
act
the
(p. 145) left its mark on
of photographing"
(Edwards 2001, Griffiths

1992, Pinney 1992).
for
aes
the human,
excess of photo
of a too
rigorous
preference for "types" (Thurm 1893, Tayler

1992).
he
Anthropometry,
added,
was
proba
bly better practiced on dead bodies than on

the human beings he sought to capture in his
portrait photography from Guyana. At the
same time, however, Thurm (1893) himself
often blocked out the distracting backgrounds
and contexts surrounding his photographic
subjects.
His
focus
was
on
the
"human,"
but
his anthropological perception of photogra

phy excluded, as did the racial photography
he opposed,
the "off-frame."
the
"visual
Thurm's
Poole

excess"
of context
cautious
embrace
and
of
photography
speaks
to its suspect
clearly
sta
tus at a time when all fieldwork was if not di

rectly animated by a concern for finding racial
at the very
then
types,
least
out
carried
under
the shadow of the idea of race.

In other
cases,
aesthetic
conventions
vignette
to transform
tinction
into
gia.
the
the
tragic
level, Curtis's
one
On
fa
made skillful use of

as soft
such
ile tribal
focus
inevitability
romance
of
and
ex
of
nostal
can
photographs
manifested
when
faced
commonly
as
vital caste society." He
further
a curato
sociates
the detective
with
paradigm
rial imperative
of inventory
and preservation,
and the salvage paradigm with a language of

urgency and "capture" (Pinney 1997, p. 45).
Although the particular mapping of the two
evitable, and unresisting victims of a divinely
sual
On
destiny.
another
level,
are
of
photographs
what
reveal
they
also
the
about
however,
interest
tem
distinctive
use
for their
of costume
and
tribal
attribution (Gidley 2003, Lyman 1982), their

and massive
power
popular
to do with theways inwhich he was able to dis

till contemporary fascination for a technology
that
one
allows
to
is about
Within
to gaze
anxieties
tographic
research.
thing,
that became
thropologist
of
the pho
of scientific
the sheer
available
number
to the
were
somehow
that
suggests
of
an
disappearing,
it was
in response
to
just such a dilemma that anthropologists at

the RAI came to favor studio portraits over
photographs taken in the field because the
clear visual displacement found in the studio
portrait between the primitive subject and the
world allowed the anthropologist "to impose
on
order
people
too numerous
to
disappear"
(1992, p. 54). Pinney suggests that this tension

between
out
in the
actuality
case of
and
India
graphic idioms. The
disappearance
through
played
two
vi
or at least
ten
the general
ideas of racial extinction,
the
was
in other
world
present
perceptual
clearly
colonial
and postcolonial
settings.
in this way,
When
viewed
the understand
that
from
emerges
of an
history
thropological photography is clearly asmuch

about the instability of the photograph as eth
and
the unshakeable
things
are not what
evidence
that perhaps
as a
racial
particular
have
photo
"salvage paradigm" was
if we
then,
were
type. Yet,
suspi
they
recent
far greater
paid
to the fixing. What
as evolutionary theory had led them to believe.

Poignant
goes
about
of photography,
and anx
temporal
actuality
nature
and
about
the
truthfulness
of the
iety
interventions
seemed to belie the notion that
people
even
ap
pear to be as it is about fixing the native subject
served only to in
the utility
as an instrument
is, in many
peculiar,
in India
marked,
nological
"tem
this
however,
about
image
For one
photographs
primitive
that which
disappear.
anthropology,
is somehow
evidence
sion between
cion
porality of the moment"

crease
on
forever
tribal and caste society

to India
and
peculiar
Pinney
so far as to
that uncertainty
suggest
race
ing of
had much
appeal
on
idioms
peculiarly
for
porality of the "racializing gaze." Although

Curtis's photographs have been criticized as
inauthentic
frag
"detective
amore
with
ways,
Curtis's
the
paradigm," premised on a faith in the eviden

tiary status of the photographic document,
be said to have harnessed the aesthetic of por

trait photography as part of a broader, political
framing of Native Americans as the sad, in
manifest
whereas
community,"
to be
perceived
"was more
most
photographers
mously, Edward Curtis
was
to "what
applied
critical
attention
would have to be done,
to
invert
the
question
that
is usually asked about stability and fixing and

instead ask how it is that photography simul
taneously
of "race"
sediments
and fractures
as a visual
and
somewhat
differently,
the
conceptual
can we
how
solidity
fact. Put
recapture
the productive forms of suspicion with which

early anthropologists greeted photography's
unique capacity to reveal the particularities of
moments,
encounters,
PHOTOGRAPHY
For
to
an answer
begin
by
and
individuals?
IN THE FIELD
to this
we
want
question,
might
at some
to
looking
early attempts
integrate photography into the ethnographic

toolkit. Recent studies of early fieldwork

165
stress
photography
On
pleasure.
to which
hand
than with
tions just discussed

to use photography
to an even
and
the
best
pho
a guilty
anthropologists
one
the
extent
greater
extent
the
tography offered
archival
collec
out the extra

of weeding
problem
contexts
and contingent
details
cap
was at once
tured by the camera. This
problem
an artifact
technical
of the unforgiving
"re
con
alism" of the
and
image
photographic
with
the
then
race,
tion)
culture
social
and
statistical
As
their
tive
abstractions.
and
documentation
such,
required
content
whose
tographs,
mute
and singular
jects,
events.
and
bodies,
interpre
of
only
the
the
uses
the pho
tographic act. In his Torres Straits fieldwork,

for example,
Haddon,
actment
use
wide
made
as ameans
and restaging
of reen
to document
rituals andmyths (Edwards 2001, pp. 157-80).

also suggests
Hockings
used mythical
allegories
that W.H.R.
drawn
Rivers
from
to
what
the
sought
natives
past,
mythical
to portray
photography
"saw" when
of
they talked
to use
Both produced photographs
mythology.
were
concerned
ment
at which
to erase
the
evidence
was
image
of
that
the mo
as
recognized
important
for the scientific project of data collection and

interpretation,
as documents
turn,
photographs
of encounter,
contained
munication,
to objectivity. The
aspects
166
of
encounter,
specter
and presence
exchange,
tors that
challenged
and
it the
within
also be read
could
the
ethnographer's
in
of com
practice
one
For
example,
in his published
for
strict
despite
seven
every
division
of
la
numer
taken
having
ous, elaborately posed photographs of him

self and other colonial officials, he seems to
have carefully edited out the presence of all
elements
nonindigenous
effect
tancing
was
further
erence
created
when
for
such
by
illustrat
dis
careful
editing
by Malinowski's
pref
to
in his own
long shot
reinforced
the middle
(Young 2001, p. 18). Studies of
photography
Evans-Pritchards'
field
preference
a careful
avoidance
long
aerial
shots,
of eye
reveal
photography
for
similar
contact
shots,
in what
(2001) interprets as an effort by the

to
ethnographer
erase
his
own
in
presence
the field, thereby establishing the physical or

distance"
required
"ecological
own
as
authority
ethnographer.
matter
No
how
distant
the
the very
ever,
tained
dex
medium
it an
within
the
presence
"strong
claims
raphers
ter of encounter,
is perhaps
the
the most
made
photo
the
replicate
all fac
tension between these two
ethnographic
to
Wolbert
taken.
the other hand, along with contin

gency, photography also brought the trou
bling specter of intimacy. Thus, although vi
was
of
in the ne
bor by which he separated affective and sci

entific description in his diaries and ethno
1967).
graphies (Clifford 1988, Malinowski
and
On
sual description
awareness
of photography
ing his books (Spyer 2001, p. 190). The
in a
natives
place
an
signal
Malinowski
averaging
such
Frazer's
The Golden Bough in his curious photographs

of Todas (Hockings 1992). Whereas Rivers
sought
Haddon
to
status
pages in his published ethnographies (Samain

1995). Yet his careful selection of photographs
seems
earliest
of
it, a
gotiation of this contradictory charge of be

ing simultaneously distant and close (Wright
1991, 1994; Young 1999). Among his British
work,
ob
moment
contingent
in
clearly
and, with
extensive use of photographs
of photography in fieldwork made every effort

to erase
seems
contemporaries,
of particular
Indeed,
participation
of presence
other.
problematic
that of pho
spoke
existence
ob
certain openness to the humanity of the (still
nowski
perception
a
temporality
that was quite different from
famous
Whereas
In his own fieldwork photography, Mali
organiza
or
themselves
onlooker,
the notion
racialized)
ceptual, in that the subjects of anthropology

were
"participant
vokes
neous
(first
observation."
servation appeals to the ideal of the distanced,

objective
anthropologists wishing
in the field were faced
now
in Malinowski's
captured
term
language"
to silence
Argonauts,
to
sustain
shot,

how
con
of photography
uncanny
of
ability
to
of
this
often
photographer.
race
helped
technological
with
great
in
The
the
for example, Malinowski
Poole
his
ethnog
regis
effect.
In
(1922,
pp.
on
comments
52-53)
the
"great
in
variety
of the Trobrianders.
the physical
appearance"
are men
and women
of tall stature,
"There
fine
open
and
bearing
and
erswith prognatic, Negroid

narrow
lipped mouths,
...
expression
intelligent
... with
features
delicate
an
and a coarse
expression." Through such language, itmight

be argued, Malinowski avoided physical de
of
scription
rare
mains
individuals
in
in favor
writing
ethnographic
re
that
something
of the distancing language of race. Similarly,

to support
the more
the women
"have
pleasant
genial,
that
observation
personal
a
approach"
(1922, p. 53), he again relies not on language

but on two photographs: One (taken by his
friend Hancock) he captions "a coarse but
fine looking unmarried woman" (plate XI in
Malinowski
1922), and the other (his own) is
a
shot
medium-long
of
a group
ing" towhich Malinowski gestures in his text,

in fact, very few ofMalinowski's photographs
conform
to
the
racial
standard
photograph
(Young 2001, pp. 101-2). Instead what seems

to be at stake
phy
of
is his inability
that moment
some
aspect
use
inMalinowski's
of
to engage
in which
the
people
of photogra
or make
sense
he first
perceived
he met.
Repeat
edly in his opening descriptions of both na

tives and landscapes,Malinowski speaks of the
to evade him
in the form
that seem
insights
or
Hori
of fleeting
impressions
glimpses.
zons
are "scanned
for glimpses
of natives"
(1961, p. 33); natives are "scanned for the

general impression" they create (1961, p. 52);
and the entire Southern Massim is experi
enced "as if the visions of a primeval, happy,
savage life were suddenly realized, even if
only in a fleeting impression" (1961, p. 35).
Malinowski is intrigued by such impressions,
however,
in which
not
they
for what
occur,
they
but
tell of the moment

rather
because
they
hold the promise that they may someday be

come
legible
as
"symptoms
of deeper,
socio
there
p. 51).
are
"One
he
suspects,"
hidden
"many
and mys
terious ethnographic phenomena behind the

aspect
one
the
On
of
hand,
(p. 51).
things"
the reservations
then,
expressed byMalinowski and others (Jacknis

1984,1992; Wright 2004; Young 2001) about
the use of photography in fieldwork speak to
the unsuitability of a visual medium that is
about
surface,
and
contingency,
the moment
for a discipline whose interpretive task was

to describe the hidden regularities, systemic
and
workings,
stituted
On
2001).
structural
"society"
the other
alist mode
that con
regularities
"culture"
and
hand,
(Grimshaw
as a re
however,
the photograph
of documentation,
also contained within it the possibility of au

thenticating the presence that constituted the
of the
basis
The
of Boyowan
girls (plate XII).

Although such a division of labor between
text and photo may well speak to the affinity
of photography for the sorts of racial "typ
(1961,
that
commonplace
[and] oth
faces, broad, thick
foreheads,
facts"
logical
writes,
scientific
ethnographer's
other
visual
method.
as
such
technologies
museum
displays (Edwards 2001, Haraway

1989, Karp & Levine 1990, Stocking 1985),
live exhibitions (Corbey 1993;Griffiths 2002,
pp. 46-84; Poignant 2003, Reed 2000, Ry
dell 1984), and film (Grimshaw 2001, Oksiloff
2001, Rony 1996) with which turn-of-the
century
even
sorts
opportunities
excess and detail
of visual
to undermine
tific
the distance
observation.
offered
experimented
to control
anthropologists
fewer
One
that
for
scien
for
required
instructive
particularly
set of debates discussed by Griffiths

pp.
3 45)
moral
the
concerned
the
threatened
visual
(2002,
even
and
effects of overly realistic habitat and
life groups
at the American
ural History.
Although
to attract museum
goers
Museum
some
of Nat
curators
sought
the hyperre
through
alism of wax life group displays that "blended

the uncanny
presence
of
the
human
double
the authority of the scientific artifact"

(Griffiths 2002, p. 20), others
including
Franz Boas (Jacknis 1985)- expressed con
cern that these hyperrealist technologies
with
would
remedy,
human
distract
Boas
figures
the gaze
sought
were
of museum
to create
intentionally
goers.
exhibits
As
whose
antirealist,
and to which
the spectator's gaze would first

be drawn by a central focal artifact and then

167
through a series of related
carefully guided
items
and
similar
worries
cases.
display
uncovers
Griffiths
the more
about
obvious
per
toward
pointed
the propagation
world's
as sites
fairs
of nineteenth-century
for
racial
ist anthropology
(Greenhalgh 1988,Maxwell
1999, Reed 2000, Rydell 1984), Griffiths'
(2002) emphasis on the professional suspicion
such
surrounding
to which,
contemporary
was with
the
concern
the
reveals
displays
for
extent
the
anthropologists,
disruptive
potential
of distraction (Benjamin 1968, Simmel 1971,

Crary 1999) as a form of affect that worked
against the focused visualism required for the
education
the museum
of
Such
goer.
to the
general
clearly
speak
worries
sur
nervousness
rounding the visual technologies of photogra

phy and film within anthropology and, along
it, the persistent
with
and perhaps
Utopian
belief that the aesthetic and affective appeal

of the visual could be somehow brought in
line with contemporary scientific ideals of
"observation."
objective
a human
require
ils that theMidway sideshows presented to the

scientific claims of ethnology. Whereas others
have
the ethnographer (AAA 2002). Thus, asmuch

as photographs entered as juridical evidence
to authenticate
voice
their
evidentiary status in court (Derrida 2002), the

"hard"
visual
of
evidence
ethnographic
pho
tography or film is intimately, even inextri

cably, bound up with the "soft" testimonial
voice (or "subjectivity") of the ethnographer
1985, Loizos 1993,
(Heider 1976, Hockings
1997, Stoller 1992). Like judi
MacDougall
ciary photographs as well, the dilemma in
ethnographic photography is in large part a
temporal one. The ethnographer (like the ju
dicial witness) must speak for the photograph
as someone
was
who
in the
in
shown
place
the photograph at the time when the photo

graph was taken and this privileged author
ity of the ethnographic witness seems to hold
no matter
true
what
the
role
to his
assigned
"native" subjects (Crawford & Turton 1992,

Hockings & Omori 1988, Worth & Adair
1997). It is thismove that affords decisive sta
as
tus to the
image
testimony
photographic
in a
time.
However,
nonrepeatable
not
is the photograph
the photographer
to
an event
it
that allows for the peculiar conflation of past

and
at a Distance
Culture
subfield of visual anthropology emerged
The
in the mid-1960s
concern
to this
in response
about the viability of visual technologies

work.
ethnographic
Ethnography,
a
of witnessing
deploys
language
as a means
to defend
observation
of
the world.
are
guage
Thus,
to
for
visual
lan
and
both
ethnography,
the
descriptive task and the authorizing method

of ethnography continue to rely in important
on
ways
the
in a particular site and her (normatively) visual

and
observations
there.
and
events,
people,
At
the
accounts
descriptive
same
practices
time,
and
she
of
the
encounters
as recent
work
clear,
not
considered
idence
unless
textualizing
i68
visual
documentation
to be
a sufficient
it is accompanied
and/or
interpretive
is generally
source
of ev
by
the
testimony
to the
limit
tion.
Rather
and
image
the
con
as we
of
than
aura
has
debilitating
interpreta
ethnographic
how
about
to
together
and distinctive
seen,
moment
passing,
to pose
thinking
create
voice
the
evi
of
temporality
as we
ethnographers,
photograph,
have
an off-frame
have
seen, have instead looked to photography as a

to
vation.
the visual
discipline
process
of obser
place
at the ori
an uneasy
Occupying
gins of the visual anthropology canon, the 759

photographs published in Bateson & Mead's
treme
Character
solution
ethnographic
(1942)
to
ends.
taming
one
represent
visual
Bateson
evidence
and Mead
ex
for
ini
tially began using photographs to supplement

their
of
task
work
dentiary
photograph
of
evocation
particular,
seen
been
often
the
however,
ethnography,
Balinese
on anthropological photography and film has

made
renders
evidence.
photograph's
context
and a
means
presence
physical
ethnographer's
In
most
course,
and
of material
the
its account
voice
although
crucial
of
that
present
form
notetaking
and observations
oncile their disparate writing
Poole

and
to rec
styles (Jacknis
1988, Sullivan 1999). As work progressed on

the
photographie
their written
ment
came
quickly
that was
index
fieldnotes,
to see
to
comple
however,
they
as an
first,
photographs,
independent control on the potential biases

of visual observation (Sullivan 1999, p. 16)
and
somewhat
then,
umentation
aspects
as a form
later,
through
which
of the culture
which
mental
character
to
tempt
of
of the supple
photography
precise
replicate
most
is perhaps
an
at
1951).
Mead's Balinese work is the lengths to which

she
to
goes
As
words.
transform
"objective"
sequences
of gestures,
embraces
that
like
into
photographs
traces of the
temporal
and
expressions,
to
something
poses,
add up
together
or
"character"
the pho
as a narra
"child-rearing,"
construct
their meaning
tographs
as "raw mate
tive.
thus remain
Photographs
rial" or "facts" whose
lies not in the
"meaning"
of
detail
but
reveal
encounters,
particular
they
in the narrative
rather
about
the
of many
That
lay
message
sequence
different
the
ideas
of narrative
at the heart
they
(and presumed
events
and
of
early
and
visions
in
founded
were
meant
guage,
photographs
the broader message
the
surface
an
con
practice
rendering
they
to commu
person,
or
a sort
of
perceptual
ious
authors
substitute
for
the
"our
the
culture"
im
1956). The
to visual
anthropol
one
this
or
system
have
for
the experience
to access,
and
describe,
var
As
"culture."
argued
subsequently
(e.g.,
1997, Edwards 1992,Taylor

to
approach
the
visual
is "racial
ized" both in the sense of a subject/object

divide and in the idea that there is an in
ner
hidden
"meaning"
beneath
the
surface
of
both culture and the image.What is lost in

such an approach is the immediacy of sight
as a sensory
that
experience
could
to
speak
the ethnographic intangibles of presence and

newness (Edwards 1997). Instead, images
gestures,
photographs,
for clues to the cultural
are scrutinized
films
configuration
they
ex
press.
Given
what
own
Mead's
work
Balinese
per
sonal experience of fieldwork. "The study of
affect
and
the
it is perhaps,
of
spontaneity
no
surprise
the mo
then,
that
the
field of visual anthropology had, by the late

1970s, come to be dominated by the study
and production of ethnographic film, whereas
still photographs had more or less disap
peared from "serious" ethnographic texts (de
Heusch 1962). In explicit contrast to photog
raphy (MacDougall 1998, pp. 64,68), film was
seen
yond
ive
portrayed.
InMead & Metraux's (1953) textbook, The

Study of Culture at a Distance, photography,
film, and imagery were held up as privileged
sites for communicating a feeling of cultural
immersion,
of
approach
allow
that
both
lurking behind
of the event,
to constitute
as a surrogate
and
society
ment,
As
in this early
that would
encounters.
tainers of information indexed through lan

nicate
information
1972.
work
had done to divorce still photography from
thropology is suggested by the fact that the

subfield's first professional organization was
the Society for the Anthropology of Visual
Communication,
analysis
upon
ogy, was imagined as both an expression of the

perceptual system shared by the members of
convey
outcome)
of visual
built
(Metraux 1953, p. 343;Mead
1994),
about
intriguing
comes
imagery
immediate
experience
Banks &Morphy
sequences
temporal
of practices (Mead & MacGregor

Wliat
a distance,
age,
in
per
imagery," in the study of culture from
with
to capture
"those
are least amenable
to verbal treatment and which can only be

properly documented by photographic meth
ods" (Bateson & Mead 1942, p. 122). In her
later work on child-rearing practices, Mead
cultural
"every
Although
or lesser extent
is to a greater
most
extended this understanding
"is an intensely
writes,
a culture."
doc
of
Metraux
imagery,"
sonal and yet a rigorously formal approach to
as a visual
"observation"
references
technology
to include
to
the
sorts
that
could
explicit,
of
go
be
reflex
intimate
rela
tionships and exchanges that bound the film

maker to his "subjects" (MacDougall 1985,
Rouch 2003). The affective power of film,
MacDougall notes, is due to both its imme
diacy and its nonverbal character in that (for
film unlike photography and
MacDougall)

169
the forms
ward
was
words,
affective
that was
as a "frozen"
tanced image. Animated

this view
manism,
to bear within
considered
transparency
photography
or
by analysis
and
dis
by a profound hu
as universal
of film
denied
hence
or "tran
scultural" (MacDougall 1998) seemed likely

to transcend the forms of racial objectification
and the objectifying "conventions of scientific
reason"
that many
considered
to the
inherent
stillness of photography.
This view of film provided
the grounds
for
has
emerged
the
ity with
discourses
racializing
un
largely
and
essen
In many
the resulting
cases,
to both history
sensitivity
and politics has
an activist
to establish
helped
agenda
to be seen
in which
has come
ethnography
as
and
critical,
collaborative,
simultaneously
also
interventionist.
More
specifically,
within
the
subfield of visual anthropology, it led to new

paradigms of collaborative media production
(Rouch 2003), an effective handing-over of
the
tools
of visual
to the
documentation
"na
tive" subject (Ginsburg 1992, Turner 1992,

Worth & Adair 1997), and a shift in anthro
pological focus from vision itself to the dis
channels
tributive
and
discursive
of
regimes
media and the archive (Ginsburg et al. 2002).

As the new disciplinary paradigm for vi
sual
dia
tions
anthropology,
tended
has
of
image
to
work
on
focus
on
production
indigenous
the
and
social
me
rela
consumption
(Ginsburg 1992, Himpele 1996) and the cul

tural idioms through which indigenous pro
ducers and artists appropriate filmic mediums
contents
of
"the
video
and
outlet
for
other
the
strengthening
of
that
identities
media
the media
an
provide
and
defense,
or
national,
cultural,
the
1996; Jackson
In this work,
communication,
nic
from
(Alexander
represented"
visual
insight
representa
countered
and
perceived
for
and
categories
1998;Ginsburg 1995;Himpele
2004; Turner 1992, 2002a,b).
preexist,
form
itself,
and
as
thus
eth
tran
are
they
si
multaneously shaped by it (Alexander 1998,

1996). Underlying
Ginsburg 1995, Himpele
much
disciplinary
racial
perspective
scend,
tializing dichotomies that characterized New

World slave societies and European colonial
rule.
of the in
the notion
video
reinterpreting
are
scathed from the charges of objectification,

racialism, and colonialism levied against it in
the 1980s. Few anthropologists today would
be at all surprised by the claim that the anthro
pological project has had a troubling complic
i jo
of race, however,
problem
tions
anthropology
identity
even rejecting (Faris 2003) the possibilities

of recuperating photography and film within
respect to the specific
anthropology. With
counter the anticolonial critique of the 1980s.

the surprise (and, perhaps, dismay) of
To
many,
of
concept
a
particu
the no
claim,
for
gloss
digenous has functioned primarily as a frame

set out
anthropologists
tion of the indigenous invokes ideals of local

ity, cultural specificity, and authenticity. For
some it has functioned as an effective form
for critically rethinking (Ginsberg 1992) or
how
visual
is the
however,
As
"indigenous."
lar form of subaltern
into
which
media,
indigenous
the
to
from
unites work on
(Turner 1992, 2002 a).What
for
put
1985, pp. 61-62). Film,
(MacDougall
in other
it an
communication"
is not mediated
by Mead
writing
to
of "visual
of
not
though
identity
through
all
of
scale
this
such
is a mapping
that "the mass
media" is said to "obliterate identity" while

the more portable forms of handheld "video
to rediscover
tends
it" (Dowmunt
Such
the premium
consolidate
1993, p. 11;Ginsburg
all the more
seem
claims
and
identity
placed
on
2002).
peculiar
authenticity
given
and
local
ism within neoliberal multicultural discourse

(Hale 2002, Povinelli 2002, Rose 1999). By
ignoring the broader political and discursive
landscape
within
emerge
indigenous"
the
which
literature
on
such as "the
categories
of
and take hold, much
indigenous
media
ends
up
defending an essentialist or primordial notion

of identity that comes perilously close to older
ideas
of racial
essences.
By introducing questions of voice and per

spective,
these
studies
of
indigenous
video
and film have effectively (and, I think, in

advertently) destabilized earlier assumptions
and hence
about the necessarily objectifying
Poole

racializing
technologies.
character
of
Thus,
recent
still
tography tends to emphasize

or
unstable
of
quality
the
the "slippery"
the
racial
referent
tographs
circulate
they
Kravitz
the
2002),
importance
1998,
(Howell
as a po
of gazes
tentially destabilizing site of encounter within

the photographic frame (Lutz & Collins
or
1993),
the creative
tographic
of
reworkings
in postcolonial
surface
the
trend
general
tions; e.g., Faris
pho
some
sort
of
some
(with
excep
1992, 2003) is to reclaim

or,
agency
autonomy
perhaps,
for the photograph in the form of either resis

tance, mobility, or the fluidity of photographic
still
If "race"
"meaning."
the
haunts
photo
graph, it does so in the form of an increasingly

presence.
ghostly
Other
anthropologists have extended the

paradigm of indigenous media to explore
how national identities are shaped by televi
sion, cinema, and the internet (Abu-Lughod
1993,2002; Mankekar 1999; Rajagopal 2001).
These
works
the
expand
effectively
scale
of
visual anthropology from the local to the na

tional
or even
shifts from
analysis
the
pass
relationships
tute the
production
mercial
and
as the focus
the transnational
the
televisualist
of
itself to encom
image
that inform
and consti
of com
and distribution
media.
One
troubling side effect of these devel

opments within the visual anthropology of
both photography and film as in the disci
pline
from
more
what
has
generally
we once
a move
away
of as "the
local."
been
thought
Yet as the terrain of anthropological inquiry

has expanded beyond the traditional village,
community,
or
tribe
to
embrace
the
study
of such allegedly "translocal" (Ferguson &

Gupta
2002)
dia, migration,
sites
as the modern
non-governmental
state,
me
organiza
or
discursive
regimes,
in ethno
collecting
domain
sensory
a more
toward
of description.
As
encounter
of
removed
and
synthetic
of tech
the handover
such,
and
mode
so much
as circumvent
address
the
charges
of (racial) essentialization and (visualist) dis

tancing leveled against anthropology by the
Orientalist critique.What has been sacrificed
forms
tography (Behrend 2003, Buckley 1999, Jhala

1993, Mirzoeff 2003, Pinney 1997, Sprague
1978). Although emphases in these works
differ and I cannot do justice to them all
here
evidence
graphic work has shifted away from the af
in this move
the pho
portrait
and
flows,
of
nologies and the shift to the translocal do not
different
through
cultural and social contexts
burden
fective
(Firstenberg 2003, Fusco 2003, Poole 1997),

the highly mobile meanings attached to pho
as
financial
tions,
photographic
on
work
pho
of
is an attention
to the
unsettling
that con
contingency
and
intimacy
stitute the subversive hallmarks (and hence

potential strengths, aswell as liabilities) of the
encounter.
ethnographic
NOTICING
DIFFERENCE
In "The Lived Experience of the Black,"

Fanon (2001) opens by recounting the ef
fects
an utterance,
of
on his
"Look,
labeling
to inhabit
the world.
struggle
recount
is extraordinary
about Fanon's
of
this very ordinary
is his em
ing
experience
on that
and very brief, mo
phasis
particular,
ment when
the onlooker's
gaze has not yet set
Negro"
What
tled on his body. Hope

moment
over
when
my
body
the
...
appears to him in that

gaze,
"liberating
me
gives
back
creeping
a
lightness
that I had thought lost and, by removing me

from
But
the world,
over
other
there,
gives
I stumble,
side,
attitudes
ments,
me
to the world.
back
I was
right when
and
and gaze,
the
reaching
his move
though
the other fixes me,
just like a dye is used to fix a chemical solu

tion" (Fanon 2001, p. 184).This brief moment
before "the fragments [of the self] are put to
by another"
gether
site of betrayal
for Fanon,
constitutes,
where
a chance
the
is so
encounter
quickly rendered into the paralyzing fixity

the certain
ars have
trayal
of race. Various
meanings
emphasized
reveals
about
what
Fanon's
theweight of history
particular
gesture
on
toward
this
sense
schol
of
be
of
understanding
and the colonial past in
the present.
the past,
In addition
however,
to this
Fanon
also
underscores the importance of placing history


iji
in the
the past
and
of an "active
service
inflec
tion of the now" (Bernasconi 2001, p. 178).

This is achieved through both "the endless
recreation
of himself
"the universal
a realization
and
end
is the
of
that
not
struggle,
that
which precedes it" (p. 179).

insistence
Fanon's
of
rality
the
gaze
on
the fleeting
as a site of ethical
more
perception
extent
the
sual
to which
(cinema,
technologies
in the
generally
and vi
perceptual
cre
in particular)
ate bodily habits of distancing (Alcoff 2001).

This
on distance
emphasis
and on
the phys
ical, chemical qualities through which photo

graphic
racial
like the racial gaze, "fix"

technologies,
resonates
in
their
skins
quite
subjects
clearly with the emphasis in somuch of visual

on
anthropology
the classificatory
of
impulses
racial and anthropological photography. On

the other hand, however, and along with this
on distance,
emphasis
Fanon
im
also provides
portant insight into the workings of the gaze.

For
is as much
the gaze
Fanon,
about
undo
ing the corporeal frame as it is about fixing

(Bernasconi 2001, Weate 2003). As such, his
sense
embodied,
mediacy
which
and
sensory,
encounter
of
this
in equal
is rooted
of the gaze
parts
in the
im
future-oriented
the
and
into
slips
opening
the
in these
visual
terms,
rapidity
the exclusion
Fanon's
on
offers
pro
the
encounter
ethnographic
and
the
ways inwhich photographic technologies may

need to be rethought in conversation with that
particular
As we
tieth
century,
like
seeing
the fleeting
pretation
strued
172
was
relegated
(and, with
to
the domain
whereas
it, description)
by which
the
is to reclaim
of course,
challenge,
encounter
without
abandoning
for interpretation and expla
nation.
The relationship of photography to this

task depends on how we think about its pe
culiar temporality. An anthropology focused
on defining horizontally differentiated forms
of life through the language of "race" (or
"culture") affords conflicting evidential (or
juridical) weight to the different temporali
ties involved in the fleeting immediacy of the
encounter
the
and
fact.
regard
and
the
with
cisely
because
of
deal
are seen
to
record
that
images
photographic
a
good
them
with
of
the
permanency
stabilizing
as a result,
tend
Ethnographers,
of
the
world
the surface
appearances
suspicion
pre
as
saturated
being
encounters.
In
of chance
they
the contingency
this respect, ethnography's relationship to the
can
only
of race,
really
be
to be haunted
continues
image
photographic
by the specter
in that
imagined
the photograph
as a form of evi
dence inwhich fixity (in the form of simplic

ity
or focus)
is favored
over
excess
(in the form
turns
anthropology
to forms
its attention
of racial and cultural hybridity, one wonders

how anthropologists will address this disci
anxiety
about
surface
appearances
and
like
the visible world, or whether hybridity
the native and Indian before it will come to
be
treated
as another
or
be uncovered
(Fusco
inwhich photography
and the contingent,
as a process
twen
worked
have
anthropologists
around a dichotomy
the
of
of
"fact"
(racial)
revealed,
as
if
that must
lying
under
neath the deceptive surface of the visible world
of encounter.
understanding
seen for much
have
The
plinary
ductive grounds for rethinking the temporal

ity of
opening
the possibilities
As
ad
insistence
race
of
underpinnings
transition
sense
bring with
inevitably
is perhaps
what
lost in
is the immediacy
of encounter
both newness
and "the
toward
perhaps,
of noise,
of contingency or confusion) (Edwards 1997).
with
ary distancing of which he speaks.When

dressed
this
this
possi
must,
it a reduction
other."
tempo
practice of ethnography. On the one hand,

Fanon insists (in this and other writings)
on
tive move
as an
bility offers several important leads for how

to rethink the place of visual technologies
and visual
detail or noise of vision was to be disciplined

and rendered intelligible. While an interpre
was
of
inter
con
extraneous
2003).
Perhaps
what
is needed
is a re
thinking of the notion of difference itself (e.g.,

Deleuze 1994, Connolly 2002), a questioning
of its stability as an object of inquiry and a
new way of thinking about the temporality of
encounter
as it
shapes
photography.
Poole

both
ethnography
and
the move
Fortunately,
and
ethnography
to
the ethical
reclaim
as the basis
of vision
of knowl
rejection
as a substantive
a
of how
rethinking
edge
account
not
in
is
that
descriptive
grounded
or
can
the idea of interpretation
discovery
both
of de
imperative
scription from the Orientalist critique has not

a
meant
to a "traditional"
return
simple
divi
sion of labor inwhich ethnography provided

the
observations
empirical
upon which
of
meanings
the hidden
orders,
and
cultures
specific
descriptions
rules,
tainty,
more
from
often
specific
forms
rality, uncertainty,
ize ethnography
and
the
to be
assumed
itivist
as a form
istics
tempo
character
of both
in
social
By
quiry and writing (e.g., Biehl 2005, Das 2003,

Ferme 2001, Nelson
1999, Pandolfo 1997,
At
stake
here is not so much
Taussig 1993).
ques
explicitly
in which
physical
as the visible,
and
science
are
cited
evidence of racial difference
inseparable
that
anthropologists.
tioning both the empirical language of pos
societies.
of encounter,
excess
as
study
or
Rather, the theoretical work of ethnography

is now
as
uncer
such
experience,
things
we
in the cultural worlds
and newness
to
speak
theory could
anthropological
to uncover
draw
and
character
irrefutable,
and the idealist
of Cartesian
this move
language
metaphysiscs,
to rethink
it possible
makes
the troublesome
move
of "race." This
also leaves us
visuality
to
the
and
open
sensory
aspects
anticipatory
encounter
of visual
and surprise
that animate
the very
notion
of participant
observation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Iwould
like to thankVeena Das, Sameena Mulla, Naveeda Khan, and Gabriela Zamorano
comments
their
and
on
criticisms
an earlier
version
of this
for
article.
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An Excess of Description: Ethnography, Race, and Visual Technologies

Author(s): Deborah Poole

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Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

Johns Hopkins University,

the relationship between racial thought and the visual technologies

complex discursive and political landscapes opened up by the con

affective register of suspicion that has surrounded both visual meth

I argue that it is possible to reclaim suspicion

uncertainty, and contingency that characterize both ethnographic

This content downloaded from 182.56.97.221 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 04:11:10 AM

a yet broader visual turn in the fields

tive of racial ideas and orders. This descriptive

ing on suspicion, I hope to shift the burden

of these languages for theorizing

and difference might be differently related

ing visuality itself within

the capacity of both ethnography and photog

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cisely because of the ambiguous role played

onciled disciplinary norms of evidence and

temporality of the photograph. The

revealing in that it coincides with a period

with which photographs represented a "racial

like their nineteenth-century

that falls self-consciously within the subfield

archive have been largely

held by the Smithsonian (Scherer 1973),

Harvard's Peabody Museum

ethnographic method and description.

theories of ethnicity and identity

tions and race have shaped anthropological

that visual technologies offer for

Rochester, New York, the Royal Geographic

cal academy. Although less revealing of the

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and the anal

dean photography (Poole 1997), for example,

I argued for the privileged role

bodied difference (Poole 1997, 2004).

ical intention" (2001, p. 29). She concludes

the "meaning" of particular photo

of colonialism in the study of racial photogra

studies we find thatVictorian anthropologists

ing photographs from India and other British

ans (Prochaska 1990); andU.S.-based anthro

archive and the impe

gies of anthropological research as it did to

edge (or at least scattered observations) of na

and exchange practices (or "flows") through

(Stocking 1995, p. 16) in which data was ob

clubs" through which British anthropologists

archive, Edwards (2001)

approach to the photographic

on the colonial periphery and the site of

nial ideologies formed elsewhere, outside the

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tographs. Indeed, the value they assigned to

man being portrayed in each photograph, but

ized racial categories with no single referent in

facts that could be independently observed.

(Edwards 2001, Poignant

tography was fueled in important ways by a

ness about both the excessive detail and the