The Visual Ethnographic Narrative

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The visual ethnographic narrativeDouglas Harpera

a Associate Professor of Sociology, State University of New York, Potsdam, New York

Online publication date: 17 May 2010

To cite this Article Harper, Douglas(1987) 'The visual ethnographic narrative', Visual Anthropology, 1: 1, 1 — 19To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/08949468.1987.9966457URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08949468.1987.9966457

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The Visual Ethnographic Narrative1

Douglas Harper

This paper is a brief overview of narrative, reflexive, phenomenological and scientificapproaches to visual ethnography, and an examination, in more depth, of the visualethnographic narrative. To illustrate the visual narrative I draw on photographs madeas part of an ethnography of tramp life in America. The narrative in this paper isincomplete and suggests the basic form for a comprehensive visual ethnography orfilm.

Although social scientists have used photographs since the beginning ofanthropology2 and sociology3, little attention has been paid to the kinds ofknowledge these photographs produce. In this paper I outline a typology ofapproaches to visual ethnography and I examine one element of this typol-ogy, which I have called the visual ethnographic narrative.

Approaches to visual ethnography should not be thought of as specificparadigms with dearly defined attributes and boundaries. I argue for apluralism of approaches that overlap and, at times, draw their characteris-tics from their context. While placing ideas into specific locations on anintellectual map is common enough in social science, I am tentative aboutsuch a task because I realize the dimensions along which visual ethnogra-phy is defined are complex and often context-specific. Levine's view(1986:272) that there is "no single diacritical marker for science," that ". . .adherence to a single criterion of the genetically scientific is to commitoneself to a polemical position that invalidates the legitimate claims of otherkinds of knowledge" and Marcus and Fischer's (1985:8) similar suggestionthat contemporary anthropological theory (and scholarly theory in general)is characterized by "the loosening of the hold over fragmented scholarlycommunities of either specific totalizing visions or a general paradigmaticstyle of organizing research" lend credence to the view of a visual socialscience with complimentary and interdependent approaches and features.

I have labelled the visual ethnographic types as scientific, narrative,reflexive, and phenomenological. It is important to realize, however, that the

DOUGLAS HARPER, Associate Professor of Sociology, State University of New York at Potsdam,Potsdam, New York 13676-2294, has published ethnographies on tramp life and rural work, and has co-directed a film on a rural sawyer. He is Editor of the Visual Sociology Review, a publication of theInternational Visual Sociology Association, and edits a book series "Visual Studies" at TempleUniversity Press. He is currently working on a monograph entitled Forms of Visual Knowing and abook on agriculture in the St. Lawrence Valley.

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2 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY

same visual information may be placed into nearly any of these categories,depending on how it is interpreted and organized. Thus, while I explore thevisual ethnographic narrative in this essay, I will also suggest how the samephotographs, with different treatment, could function in other categories ofthe typology. This is not different from other social scientific data. Observa-tions (the event through which data is constructed) of a particular socialinteraction may lead to any number of representations: a graph, a narrative,a formula, or an account.

THE TYPOLOGY

To do visual social science is to adress two concerns. The first involves whatwe photograph, and the second concerns how we organize the photographsto represent the photographed object. These issues must be faced with theunderstanding that photographs are both constructed by human action (aninterpretation of the world) and of the world (an objective record of a specificmoment). These qualities of subjectivity and objectivity mix in differentways in various approaches to social science photography.4

For example, those who use the camera to record visual information thatwill then be classified, organized, counted, and compared, stress the "ob-jective" capability of the camera. In this case "objectivity" means that thephotographic information is considered reliable and valid. In the sociologicalsense, this means that a second photographer could return to the photo-graphed phenomenon and largely duplicate the photographs of the first,and, secondly, that the photograph possesses basic correspondence to thephotographed object. Photographers working from such a perspective havedone inventories of vernacular architecture (Rusted 1985), spatial arrange-ments of houses, buildings, fields, streets, irrigation systems (Beresford,1954; Beresford and St. Joseph, 1958; Collier and Van Vogt, 1965), and studiesof cultural behavior (Danforth and Tsiaras 1982, Mead and Bateson, 1942). Iam currently working on a community study of a farm neighborhood inwhich I am using aerial photographs to construct and compare farm histo-ries. In this case I think of the camera primarily as a recording device,although another photographer, to duplicate my images, would have toknow the time of year my photos were taken, the lighting conditions,altitude, lens length, film type and development procedures, and othertechnological considerations that influence the final image. The attempt toachieve reliability would be affected, of course, by the passage of timebetween the two photographic events. Still, while this sounds complicated,it is no less complicated than what is faced by a survey researcher whoattempts to measure the same attitudes over a period of time or in a differentpopulation. This use of the camera, which utilizes its fullest potential to


The Visual Ethnographic Narrative 3

make a visual record consistent with the viewer's visual perception of theobject, can be labeled the "scientific" mode.

Another photographer may question the process through which meaningis created even in the standard cataloguing function of photography. In theexamples cited above, the photographic image contains information that isnot thought to be ambiguous. Margaret Mead makes a photograph of anindividual in a frozen posture possessing a look of beatitude and calls it a"trance." I make photographs of buildings and call one a "bain," another a"silo," and a third a "house." Presumably the words we use to describewhat we see in the photographs have been pretty much agreed upon.Virtually anyone from the same general cultural background would acceptthe definitions/But if we look more closely we may find that the photo-graphs, even of simple and easily recognized phenomena, have differentmeanings for different viewers. The person photographed in a trance mayview the reality of the image quite differently than will the photographer oranother viewer. If the subject comments upon and interprets the image, wehave a way to understand how the cultural activity is viewed from withinthe cultural setting. This transport across the barriers of culture has beendone in the film Jero on Jew (1980) and the accompanying book (Asch, Asch,and Connor 1986). While the farmer whose buildings I have photographedwill agree with my simple definitions of house, barn and silo, the subject'sanalysis will provide details of the history of the setting and the valuesassociated with the decisions to build, tear down, expand or contract a farmoperation. The interview process used to uncover the subject's meaning hasbeen called "photo elicitation."5 Several social scientists have used themethod in cross-cultural research. Sprague, for example (1978) used bothhis and cultural members' photos to study how Yoruba of western Nigeriasee themselves and their cultural values. Ximena Bunster B. (1978) used thephoto elicitation interview in her study of the self-perception of proletarianmothers in Peru. Barndt (1980), in one of the only book-length studies whichrelies heavily on the photo-elicitation technique, used photos to study acommunity of rural migrants in Lima, Peru, and to implement throughliteracy campaigns the radical pedagogy of Paulo Freire. Victor Caldarola(1985) used the photo elicitation interview in his and his wife's study of duckegg farming in an Indonesian village. Curry (1986) applied the photoelicitation method to a study of college wrestlers to understand how ath-letes see their sports role. In 1925 Margaret Mead is reported to have usedstill photographs made during the filming of Robert Flaherty's dramatizeddocumentary Moana to elicit responses from Samoan children (de Brigard1974:31). I have used this method (Harper 1987) in a study of the work of arural mechanic. In this project I interviewed my subject with photographs Imade of his work to understand his mixture of modern and folk methods aswell as the way the work fits into the community. Using photographs in thisway, to elicit the subjects' definitions, is called the "reflexive" method.


4 VISUAL AWHROPOLOGY

A third category in my typology most closely relates to a phenomenologi-cal social science. Photographs are well suited to explore the most subjec-tive approaches to and aspects of our research. Psathas (1986) has combinedphotographic slides (using multiple projectors) and a sound tract to explorethe subjectivity of an architectual space and to question the empiricalnature of experiments in a physics laboratory. Silvers (n.d.) uses photo-graphs to escape the typical interpretative structure of texts. The photo-graphs and text are constructed to create the experience of process, to evokea feeling of tone and texture of entering another culture. Sociologists such asSudnow (1976,1980) have broken the conventions of sociological presenta-tion to explore the subjectivity of jazz and narrative composition, but hisexperiments have struggled with the limitations of language and the "typ-icalness" of social science presentation. The few examples cited show howphotographs can creatively leap these boundaries.

A fourth approach to visual social science, that I will illustrate with anexample, is to organize visual data narratively. Photographs, as "frozenmoments," can be organized sequentially to provide an account of events.The photographic narrative follows familiar narrative conventions. Narra-tives rely on time as part of their structure. The time sense may be linear—representing natural experience—or it may utilize flashbacks or even re-verse time progression. Characters are seen to change or develop in relationto events or circumstances. Thus, a key issue in the narrative approach is theorganization of the images. The meaning may derive as much from theorganization as it does from the images themselves.

The narrative derives from commonplace assumptions about what eventsnaturally proceed from others. In the sequencing of events there is anassumption that earlier events have caused later events.

Larry Gross writes that the interpretation of narrative films is a part of ourtaken-for-granted cultural knowledge:

At the simplest level, we merely recognize the existence of persons, objects, and events in thefilm and make attributions about them based on our stereotypic knowledge of such things inreal life. With somewhat more sophistication, we can see relationships between objects andevents that are contiguous in time or space: they go together. The crucial step, next, is to seethis contiguity as the result of an intention to tell us something—to see it as a sequence orpattern that is ordered for the purpose of implying meaning rather than contiguity to morethan one sign-event and having the property of conveying meaning through the order itselfas well as through elements in that order (1985:3).

We expect the narrative form in fiction, poetry, and in fiction film (despitepostmodern movements which have challenged the conventions of narra-tive in all of these forms of expression), but narrative photography in socialscience, just as the narrative form in more conventional social research, isless usual. There are, however, several ways in which the narrative form hasbeen and can be used in visual anthropology and sociology. I will begin



with a discussion of narrative ethnographic film, which shows directionsand potentials for still photographs used in a narrative form.

Visual ethnographic narratives began with the films of Robert Flaherty.Nanook of the North (1922), for example, is constructed like a conventionalshort story. The film consists of the principal characters, Nanook and hisfamily, performing their typical family activities. Behind these activities,however, is the larger story of human adaption and struggle in a hostilenatural environment. The film ends with Nanook having found a desertedigloo in which to save his family from a raging blizzard. Evidence of thetruth of the story is in the sad fact that Nanook (just as he was unknowinglybecoming an international film "star" through the success of Flaherty's film)starved to death on a hunt, two years after the film was completed.

In the case of Nanook, and other narrative ethnographic films, the viewerassumes he or she is seeing a story that would naturally appear in theculture being filmed. This, however, cannot be taken for granted. Flahertyhimself was guilty of misrepresenting the behavior of his subjects when itsuited his narrative purpose.6

Robert Gardner's Dead Birds (1963) is a typical example of a modernnarrative anthropological film. In this film of a largely ritualistic war be-tween two tribes in New Guinea, there are many scenes where an individ-ual is crying or seems to be thinking deeply; a voice interprets theseexpressions and tells us what (the narrator believes) is going through theminds of those on film. This leads to a film that is almost indistinguishablefrom filmed fiction. In the case of non-fiction narrative film, the viewer mustaccept that the director had sufficient ethnographic understanding to sup-ply "correct" speeches to speakers and to structure events in ways theywould occur in real life.

Narrative non-fiction films include, with a little stretching of the imagina-tion, the neo-realist film movement in post-war Italy, in which non-actorsplayed roles they would naturally live in a story written to reflect the socialconditions of the times. The narrative ethnographic tradition continues inseveral forms of the modern ethnographic film. These include the directaddress films of the British documentary tradition, such as Elton andAnstey's Housing Problem's (1935), the French tradition dominated by JeanRouch in such films as Les Maitres Fous (1953) or any of the theoreticallyeclectic modern anthropological narratives such as Perrault, Brault andCarriere's The Moontrap (1963).

Narrative still photographic ethnography is less common, but examplesfollow the contours of narrative ethnographic film. One expects film tofollow a narrative form partly from visual habit: we are used to film as anembodiment of events structured into a story. The continuous flow ofimages lends itself to the appearance of the movement of time and theunfolding of events. Still photographs, however, as discrete "slices of time"



have also been used to communicate both simple and more complex narra-tive lines. Narrative still photography consists of either a sequence ofphotographs taken over a short period of time showing the flow of interac-tion or events. This type of visual narrative most closely resembles anethnographic film. In fact, it would be possible to print individual frames ofan ethnographic film to create such visual narratives. Modern 35mm cam-eras, which automatically advance the film at rates up to several frames persecond, are well suited to these purposes.

The second form of narrative still photography uses time more experi-mentally. Here, individual photographs may represent moments along anunfolding social drama, perhaps years long. This more literary form ofnarrative is more abstractly ethnographic.

Relatively simple visual narratives are found in "photo essays," partic-ularly those compiled during the thirty years of the "big picture" magazinessuch as Life and Look. The photo essay is a series of generally ten to thirtyphotographs which tell, in the jargon of the journalist, a "human-interest"story. W. Eugene Smith, generally considered a master of the genre, madeseveral photo essays for Life magazine, eventually leaving the magazine toconcentrate on a visual narrative that would have the depth and seriousnesshe felt impossible to achieve in magazine publishing. The result (Smith andSmith, 1975), told the story of mercury poisoning in a Japanese fishingvillage and the social movement which arose to confront the corporationresponsible for the pollution. While the book is largely photographic, itmoves like a narrative non-fiction account. The account is sociologicalbecause the photographs identify social groups and present the behavior ofpeople in particular institutions and social movements. Although not iden-tified as such, the book is a detailed visual ethnography, and a very movingone at that.

Berger and Mohr (1982) experimented with the narrative photographicform in a series of one hundred and fifty-one photographs depicting theexperiences of a European peasant in the twentieth century. While thephotographic sequence is organized as a story, the meaning is not obvious.Berger writes:

. . . it is impossible for us to give a verbal key or storyline to this sequence of photographs. Todo so would be to impose a single verbal meaning upon appearances and thus to inhibit ordeny their own language . . . (182:113).

The photographic sequence portrays events that are true in terms of eachimage, but fictive as a specific narrative. In a short paragraph whichprecedes the uninterrupted photo sequence, Berger and Mohr suggest howthey see the meaning of the photos. The photographs connect images ofbirth, growth, aging and death; migration to and from a European city; andtwo wars. When you view the images you begin to think narratively. Themeaning of the images is in the structure and organization of the whole.



I think this and other (see, for example, Adelman and Hall 1970, andClark 1971) photographic narratives are essentially ethnographies. Mostfundamentally, these accounts must tell a story that would normally appearin the culture. Realizing that social life is culturally defined, you must,either through research or through immersion in another way of life, makethe leap from your knowledge of the world to the knowledge of those youstudy. If, as a researcher, you are a participant in another culture's typicalevents, you can use your own experience as a part of the study. While thevisual narratives I have cited have not been done by academics for anacademic audience, the depth of the author/photographers' knowledge andtheir ability to communicate across cultural barriers make them models formore typically defined academic work.

Only three photographic studies by sociologists or anthropologists (tomy knowledge) realize the narrative potential of photographs. Mead andBateson's study, Balinese Character (1942), includes several short visual narra-tives, which appear like segments of a filmed ethnography. For example,the first five photographs in a sequence called "Body Products" (1942:118)show how a small child learns to "repudiate" his feces; passages on stimula-tion and frustration (1942:148) show how the mother and suckling child playa game in which the child stimulates but does not arouse the mother. Otherphotographic sequences on rituals, play, and sibling rivalry are photo-graphic narratives which the authors explain in accompanying text. Sim-ilarly, Danforth and Tsiaras (1982) use a visual narrative structure in theirstudy of Greek death rituals. Photographs of several funerals, periods ofgrieving, and exhumations are arranged to represent a typical death experi-ence in rural Greece. Explanations accompany the photographs, whichhave been introduced with a lengthy anthropological essay. Finally, Gard-ner and Heider's Gardens of War (1968) is a book of photographs and textwhich include narratives showing agricultural practices, a funeral, themimicry of war in play, and the largely ritualistic war between two tribes.The book closely follows Gardner and Heider's film Dead Birds, with resem-blances to Karl Heider's more typically anthropological films such as DaniSweet Potatoes.

THE VISUAL ETHNOGRAPHIC NARRATIVE: AN EXAMPLE

I will return to a study I finished some years ago (Harper 1976, 1982) toconstruct a limited visual ethnographic narrative. Rather than illustratingthe micro-interaction of specific events in tramp life, I have chosen imageswhich represent typical moments in the routine of tramp life.

To complete the research from which I draw these photographs I livedwith homeless and migrant men who folow a cyclic pattern of working,drinking, and riding freights. This field work included several trips on



freight trains from the northern Midwest to apple harvests in WashingtonState, as well field work in Eastern skid rows. My field work, formed alongthe events of the migration to the harvest, combined the narratives ofentering, participating in, and leaving the culture with the narrative of atypical tramp journey. My anthropological story was not an implausibleaccount of many of those who migrated to the harvest. While I made severaltrips on the freights, I eventually wrote about one companion, whom Icalled Carl in my text. In my preliminary fieldwork I gained the culturalknowledge to interpret both what Carl did and how he defined his activity.Thus, the narrative structure of my information is rooted in my culturalunderstanding; my confidence is that the "story" is typical of those living inthe world of the tramp.

I could have used the photographs I made during my fieldwork in any ofthe ways I have discussed in this paper. I could have made photos todocument types of tramps (making visual correspondences to "rubbertramps," "bindle-stiffs," "airdales," "mission stiffs," and the like), or tomake an inventory of tramp environments such as freight trains, jungles,missions and skid rows. I could have systematically pictured the interac-tions among tramps or between tramps and their various "publics." To usethe photographs reflexively I could have interviewed tramps (assumingthey would be interested in such activity) using photos from earlier fieldtrips to elicit their cultural definitions. To achieve a phehomenological text Icould construct photographic passages to communicate my own experien-tial transitions in and out of the tramp life, or how I learned (in an incom-plete way) how tramps experience the psychological vicissitudes of theirexistence. Finally, I could have narratively structured the photographs tocommunicate the typical rhythms and events of tramp life. When I pub-lished a book from my data, however, I did not organize the photographs toachieve any single ethnographic purpose. Like many ethnographers, I hadconcentrated on the written text (which, as a narrative first-person of onetrip on the rails and a study of one tramp, was itself an experiment), andwhile I valued the photos and considered them an important part of mywork, I chose and organized the images for the book to achieve a number ofcompeting ends. The publisher's art director and I organized the images in afew hours (a process potentially as complex, although I did not realize it atthe time, as placing words to images in a film), on the basis of technicalconsiderations (such as which images would show through the paper if runback to back) or aesthetic considerations (which images would look goodfacing each other on opposing pages). The photographs were printed inthree sections, separated from the text to which they corresponded. I wroteshort legends for the photographs that did not relate them to specific partsof the text. When I now look at the book I see both evidence of our carefullyconsidered aesthetic decisions but an unrealized opportunity to present theimages in a sequence that would communicate the full cycles of tramp life.



I chose images for the book (fifty-two from over three thousand) ongrounds that were also only partly sociological. I studied each image to seeif they fulfilled two criteria: they had to communicate an important aspect oftramp life, and they had to be aesthetically "successful" (meaning they hadto have interesting composition, visual clarity and metaphorical as well asconcrete meaning). This is quite different from saying that the photographsshould document all the important sociological features of tramp life. Therewere many aspects of tramp life that I had not photographed, and therewere photographs I did not use in the book which were ethnographicallyimportant but technically or aesthetically flawed.

I have returned to this work to construct a partial visual ethnographicnarrative. To really present a photo narrative of tramp life, I would have toreturn to the life with camera in hand.

SEQUENCES IN A TRAMP'S LIFE

The photos that follow show some of the characteristic periods and transi-tions in a tramp's life, particularly getting drunk on skid row, drying out ona freight trip, migrating with other tramps to a job, waiting in the harvesttown for the work to begin, and, finally, working in an orchard. A morecomplete visual narrative of tramp life would include the transitions out ofwork life into a binge of drinking followed (or preceeded) by a trip on freighttrains, stopovers in missions, jungles, or jail, or trips to "winter" in thesouth. A comprehensive visual narrative of tramp life could easily requireseveral hundred images. In the excerpt that follows, the individual imagesindicate major transitions; significant breaks in the cycle of tramp life.. As I was leaving Minneapolis on a freight train, I met a tramp who hadbeen drinking on skid row for three weeks but was also travelling to theapple harvest, two thousand miles away. We eventually "buddied up" (inthe parlance of the road), travelled and worked together in the orchards innorthern Washington State. I witnessed his change from drinker to travellerto worker, a regular sequence of events in his life.



2. The tramp as a derelict. 1 met Carl in a boxcar in aMinneapolis freight yard, coming down from a three week drunk. Idid not photograph Carl drunk on skid row; this photograph standsfor the period in Carl's life such as just before we met.



Figure 2. The tramp in a boxcar, a day and a thousand miles fromMinneapolis, at the last stages of his hangover, eating food 1 offered.We had "buddied up" in a Montana freight yard, finding a cartogether on a train heading toward the apple harvest in WashingtonState.



Figure 3. The tramp's life was a cycle of drinking, migrating (usually on freights), and working inseasonal jobs. As we travelled together toward the apple harvest he dried out from his three week drunk.

Figured. The tramp on abinge is a skid rowman: dirty, unshaved and smelly. To find work the trampmust take on the appearance of a worker. The tramp had planned for this by packing, in his meagerpossessions, a mirror, soap, and a razor. We had been travelling together for four days when I took thisphotograph. Near the harvest, we had left the through freight and were looking for a local freight trainto the harvest area near the Canadian border. The tramp shaved and cleaned up and after he'd finished hehanded the gear to me, saying "Either clean up or go up the river alone."



Figure 5. We had arrived at a jungle in the Wenatchee freight yard,and our first camp fire, after four days on the freights. This photoshows something about "buddying up." We felt the euphoria of nearlyfinishing a difficult trip and we believed that work was just aroundthecomer. We were dirty and tired of freight cars. When I complainedabout eating squashed bread for breakfast, the tramp made a holderout of a green saplingand toasted the last slices, moreor less as a joke,but partly because I had become good company for him.


U VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Figure 6. The cycles of the day, like the cycles oftheyear, are filled with a lot of slow transitions. Muchof the life of the tramp is waiting—waiting for trains, jobs, or rides on the highway. Much of this time isspent with other tramps, telling stories or getting drunk in jungles, and a lot of it is spent alone. Herewe wait for the bull local up the Okanagan River to the apple country in northern Washington.

Figure 7. On the bull local travelling to the harvest towns along the Okanagan River. As the trainapproached the harvest towns, the cars filled with and disgorged their illegal passengers. At one pointin the afternoon there were thirty-eight men in the car and later Carl told me how to tell the tramps fromthe riff raff and the jackrollers who all had ridden with us that day.



Figure 8. Waiting for the harvest, wejungled with other tramps who were also waiting to be hired outon a job. During the day we would wait to be hired at the employment trailer, and at night we would trekback to our camp outside town to eat a communal dinner made with what each tramp had been able toscavenge during the day. At night we made our way across the tracks, into the orchard, to sleep beneathan apple tree.

Figure 9. We hired out on a job and lived together in an orchard cabin. On this day we waited in thecabin for the rain to stop. Near the end of our month together, the tramp had gotten tired of my questionsand my photographing and our relationship, like all those on the road, was about to end. When I left tohitchhike to Spokane and get a freight back to Minnesota (to resume my life as a student), Carl barelynodded. There were no goodbyes.



As I suggested earlier, these photos are slices of time from a typical se-quence of tramp life. They are a cultural narrative informed by my knowl-edge of tramp life. The tramp life, because of its repeating cycles, is partic-ularly well-suited to a narrative portrayal. It is important to remember thatthis brief selection of photographs tells a tiny part of a full cultural narrative.At best it begs for fleshing out in the form of several hundred photos or afilm.

Notes

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meetings of the InternationalVisual Sociology Association, University of Bielefeld, ER.G., June 1986.

2. See de Brigard (1974), Heider (1976), and Collier (1986) for partial histories of visualanthropology.

3. There is no systematic history or overview of visual sociology. Stasz (1979) has shown howphotographs were integrated into early articles in the American Journal of Sociology andBecker (1974) has suggested intersections and overlaps between documentary photogra-phy and sociology and anthropology that cover most of the important work up to thatdate.

4. See Becker (1978) for further elaboration of this issue.5. Collier 1986:101-109 (originally 1967), was the first to coin the phrase and discuss some of

the ways photo elicitation can be done.6. Rotha and Wight (1980) explore several aspects of Flaherty's cinematic mis-representa-

tions in Nanook. Most of these, such as making the igloo larger to make the filming easier,or cutting half of the igloo away to get enough light to film inside (which obviouslyinfluenced what the Eskimos wore while inside!) were presented as reasonable compro-mises made necessary by the technology of early cinema cameras.



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1980 Nanook and the North. Studies in Visual Communication, 6(2):33-60.Rusted, Brian

1985 Visual Aspects of Vernacular Housing. Paper presented at the International Confer-ence on Visual Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Silvers, Ronaldn.d A Pause Along the Path. Unpublished manuscript.

Smith, Eugene and Aileen1975 Minamata. New York: Rinehart and Winston.

Sprague, Stephen1978 How I See the Yoruba See Themselves. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communi-

cation, 5(1):9-29.Stasz, Clarice

1979 The Early History of Visual Sociology. In Images of Information: Still Photography in theSocial Sciences. Jon Wagner, ed. Beverly Hills: Sage Publishing.

Sudnow, David1976 Ways of the Hand: The Organization of Improvised Conduct. New York: Harper and Row.1980 Talk's Body: A Meditation Between Two Keyboards. New York: Warner.



Films

Asch, Tim, Patsy Asch and Linda Connor1980 Jero on Jero: A Balinese Trance Seance Observed. University of California Extension

Media Service.Elton, Arthur and Edgar Anstey

1935 Housing Problems. British Commercial Gas Association.Flaherty, Robert

1922 Nanook of the North. Museum of Modern Art.Gardner, Robert

1963 Dead Birds. Peabody Museum, Harvard University.Heider, Karl

1974 Dani Sweet Potatoes. University of California Extension Media Service.Perrault, Pierre, Michael Brault and Marcel Carriere

1963 The Moontrap. Continental/McGraw-Hill.Rouch, Jean

1953 Les Maîtres Fous. Continental/McGraw-Hill.


The Visual Ethnographic Narrative

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Transcript of The Visual Ethnographic Narrative