Presentation created in Presentation, Design and Delivery. January 25, 2011

1. VISUAL
ETHNOGRAPHY analyzing human behavior through the lens of a camera
PRESENTATION : DESIGN & DELIVERY | SPRING 2011 | JOSH RITENOUR

2. Visual anthropology logically proceeds from the
belief that culture is manifested through visible
symbols embedded in gestures,
ceremonies, rituals, and artifacts situated in
constructed and natural environments.

3. VISUAL
EXPLORATION
PRESENTATION : DESIGN & DELIVERY | SPRING 2011 | JOSH RITENOUR

4. Culture is conceived of as manifesting itself in
scripts with plots involving actors and actresses
with lines, costumes, props, and settings.
The cultural self is the sum of the scenarios in
which one participates.

5. VISUAL
EXPLORATION

6. Ethnographers employ photographs in the field to
induce responses in an interview. The primary
function of photographs taken in the field is as an
aide-de-memoire, to help reconstitute events in the
mind of the ethnographer.

7. VISUAL
EXPLORATION

8. On a formal level, photographs taken by
anthropologists are indistinguishable from the
snapshots or artistically intended images taken by
tourists-that is, there is no discernible
anthropological photographic style

9. VISUAL
EXPLORATION

10. If one can see culture, then researchers should be
able to employ audiovisual technologies to record
it as data amenable to analysis and presentation.

11. VISUAL
EXPLORATION

12. In order to use photographs either as data or
as data generators we need to have some
notion of how viewers treat and understand
photographic images, whether those viewers
are informants or researchers.