VISUAL. %& ANTHROPOLOGY Photography as a Research Method a REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION John Collier, Jr, and Malcolm Collier Foreword by Edward T. HallChapter 1 The Challenge of Observation and the Nature of Photography This book is about observation. It explores ways to accomplish a whole vision in anthropology through the use of photography. The critical eye of the camera is an essential tool in gathering accurate visual information because we moderns are often poor observers. Its sharp focus might help us see more and with greater accuracy. The camera is not presented as a cure-all for our visual limitations, for it takes systematized and acute recognition to benefit from its mechanistic record of culture, behavior, and interactions. We explore photography as a research tool, with associated methodologies, that extends our perceptions if we make skilled and appropriate use of it. Photography is only a means to an end: holistic and accurate observation, for only human response can open the camera's eye to meaningful use in research. Hence, we first turn our attention to the phenomenon of modern observation There are problems in modern conception that must be recog- nized if we are to make reliable observations of culture. Only in specialized fields do we see with undisturbed accuracy. We are not generalists, and imagery beyond our professional area is apt to be peripheral and often projectively distorted. We see what we want to see, as we want to perceive it. Learning to see with visual accuracy, to see culture in all its complex detail, is therefore a challenge to the fieldworker whose training is literary rather than visual. Generally, the fragmentation of modern life makes it difficult to respond to the whole view. An observer's capacity for rounded vision is certainly related to the degree of involvement with environment. We have0 OESSSS'~=S 6«~-~-= ee drifted out of an embracing relationship with our surroundings, usually dealing only with portions of our environment. In contrast, the perceptions of many other peoples are related to their interaction with their total environment. People with limited technology necessarily have to live in harmony with surrounding nature. They have to be astute observers of all their world or perish! Natural forces surround them, and they are constantly struggling to survive with these forces. When an Eskimo leaves his home to 80 sealing, he must deal firsthand with every element of his sur. roundings and be master of every available technique to cope with it. Often he must make each life-and-death decision independently. These decisions determine whether he finds game or not, whether he makes it home through the ice flows or is swept away on the Arctic seas. Our cultural development, in contrast, has been oriented to commanding nature by super-technology, carried out collectively through super-organization and specialization, making it difficult for us to accomplish holistic understanding. Despite this environ. mental isolation, we believe we are masters of our world, and we no longer deal personally with its natural forces. This curtaining security has limited the range of phenomena that we, as individuals, have to deal with in order to survive, making us limited observers Only at a few points in our daily lives do we have to make survival decisions entirely by our own senses. We jam on the brakes when we see a red light, accelerate when the light goes green. Or we step unwarily out across the pedestrian lanes, confident that other specialists will guide their movements by the same signals Itis true that within select areas we too are keen visual analysts. In our own specialized fields we see with extreme Precision, though when we leave these areas we may be visually illiterate. The ra. diologist can diagnose tuberculosis from a lung shadow on an X ray; the bacteriologist can recognize bacilli in his microscope. Yet when these technicians leave their laboratories they find their way home efficiently guided by copious road signs. There is no reason to look up to the heavens to see whether they will be caught in the rain Their raincoats have been left behind, for the radio reports “Fair tonight and tomorrow with gentle westerly winds.” Other specialists made highly technical instrumental observations to reach these con, clusions for them. It is only by considering the collective sum of all of our specialized visions that we can consider ourselves the most acute observers in man's history. Unquestionably the personal blindness that obscures our view- ing is related to the detachment possible in our urban, mechanived society. We learn to see only what we Ppragmatically need to see. Chapter One