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The visual ethnographic narrative
Douglas Harper
a
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 19
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/08949468.1987.9966457
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08949468.1987.9966457
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The Visual Ethnographic Narrative
1
Douglas Harper
This paper is a brief overview of narrative, reflexive, phenomenological and scientific
approaches to visual ethnography, and an examination, in more depth, of the visual
ethnographic narrative. To illustrate the visual narrative I draw on photographs made
as part of an ethnography of tramp life in America. The narrative in this paper is
incomplete and suggests the basic form for a comprehensive visual ethnography or
film.
Although social scientists have used photographs since the beginning of
anthropology
2
and sociology
3
, little attention has been paid to the kinds of
knowledge these photographs produce. In this paper I outline a typology of
approaches 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 specific
paradigms with dearly defined attributes and boundaries. I argue for a
pluralism of approaches that overlap and, at times, draw their characteris-
tics from their context. While placing ideas into specific locations on an
intellectual map is common enough in social science, I am tentative about
such 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 commit
oneself to a polemical position that invalidates the legitimate claims of other
kinds of knowledge" and Marcus and Fischer's (1985:8) similar suggestion
that contemporary anthropological theory (and scholarly theory in general)
is characterized by "the loosening of the hold over fragmented scholarly
communities of either specific totalizing visions or a general paradigmatic
style of organizing research" lend credence to the view of a visual social
science 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 HAR PE R , 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 R eview, a publication of the
International Visual Sociology Association, and edits a book series "Visual Studies" at Temple
University Press. He is currently working on a monograph entitled Forms of Visual Knowing and a
book on agriculture in the St. Lawrence Valley.
1
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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 the
visual ethnographic narrative in this essay, I will also suggest how the same
photographs, with different treatment, could function in other categories of
the typology. This is not different from other social scientific data. Observa-
tions (the event through which data is constructed) of a particular social
interaction 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 what
we photograph, and the second concerns how we organize the photographs
to represent the photographed object. These issues must be faced with the
understanding that photographs are both constructed by human action (an
interpretation of the world) and of the world (an objective record of a specific
moment). These qualities of subjectivity and objectivity mix in different
ways in various approaches to social science photography.
4
For example, those who use the camera to record visual information that
will then be classified, organized, counted, and compared, stress the "ob-
jective" capability of the camera. In this case "objectivity" means that the
photographic information is considered reliable and valid. In the sociological
sense, 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 the
photographed object. Photographers working from such a perspective have
done 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 studies
of cultural behavior (Danforth and Tsiaras 1982, Mead and Bateson, 1942). I
am currently working on a community study of a farm neighborhood in
which 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 to
know the time of year my photos were taken, the lighting conditions,
altitude, lens length, film type and development procedures, and other
technological considerations that influence the final image. The attempt to
achieve reliability would be affected, of course, by the passage of time
between the two photographic events. Still, while this sounds complicated,
it is no less complicated than what is faced by a survey researcher who
attempts to measure the same attitudes over a period of time or in a different
population. This use of the camera, which utilizes its fullest potential to
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The Visual Ethnographic Narrative 3
make a visual record consistent with the viewer's visual perception of the
object, can be labeled the "scientific" mode.
Another photographer may question the process through which meaning
is created even in the standard cataloguing function of photography. In the
examples cited above, the photographic image contains information that is
not thought to be ambiguous. Margaret Mead makes a photograph of an
individual 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 describe
what we see in the photographs have been pretty much agreed upon.
Virtually anyone from the same general cultural background would accept
the definitions/But if we look more closely we may find that the photo-
graphs, even of simple and easily recognized phenomena, have different
meanings for different viewers. The person photographed in a trance may
view the reality of the image quite differently than will the photographer or
another viewer. If the subject comments upon and interprets the image, we
have a way to understand how the cultural activity is viewed from within
the cultural setting. This transport across the barriers of culture has been
done in the film Jero on Jew (1980) and the accompanying book (Asch, Asch,
and Connor 1986). While the farmer whose buildings I have photographed
will agree with my simple definitions of house, barn and silo, the subject's
analysis will provide details of the history of the setting and the values
associated with the decisions to build, tear down, expand or contract a farm
operation. The interview process used to uncover the subject's meaning has
been called "photo elicitation."
5
Several social scientists have used the
method in cross-cultural research. Sprague, for example (1978) used both
his and cultural members' photos to study how Yoruba of western Nigeria
see themselves and their cultural values. Ximena Bunster B. (1978) used the
photo elicitation interview in her study of the self-perception of proletarian
mothers in Peru. Barndt (1980), in one of the only book-length studies which
relies heavily on the photo-elicitation technique, used photos to study a
community of rural migrants in Lima, Peru, and to implement through
literacy campaigns the radical pedagogy of Paulo Freire. Victor Caldarola
(1985) used the photo elicitation interview in his and his wife's study of duck
egg farming in an Indonesian village. Curry (1986) applied the photo
elicitation method to a study of college wrestlers to understand how ath-
letes see their sports role. In 1925 Margaret Mead is reported to have used
still photographs made during the filming of Robert Flaherty's dramatized
documentary Moana to elicit responses from Samoan children (de Brigard
1974:31). I have used this method (Harper 1987) in a study of the work of a
rural mechanic. In this project I interviewed my subject with photographs I
made of his work to understand his mixture of modern and folk methods as
well as the way the work fits into the community. Using photographs in this
way, to elicit the subjects' definitions, is called the "reflexive" method.
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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 combined
photographic slides (using multiple projectors) and a sound tract to explore
the subjectivity of an architectual space and to question the empirical
nature 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 evoke
a feeling of tone and texture of entering another culture. Sociologists such as
Sudnow (1976,1980) have broken the conventions of sociological presenta-
tion to explore the subjectivity of jazz and narrative composition, but his
experiments have struggled with the limitations of language and the "typ-
icalness" of social science presentation. The few examples cited show how
photographs can creatively leap these boundaries.
A fourth approach to visual social science, that I will illustrate with an
example, is to organize visual data narratively. Photographs, as "frozen
moments," 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 experienceor it may utilize flashbacks or even re-
verse time progression. Characters are seen to change or develop in relation
to events or circumstances. Thus, a key issue in the narrative approach is the
organization of the images. The meaning may derive as much from the
organization as it does from the images themselves.
The narrative derives from commonplace assumptions about what events
naturally proceed from others. In the sequencing of events there is an
assumption that earlier events have caused later events.
Larry Gross writes that the interpretation of narrative films is a part of our
taken-for-granted cultural knowledge:
At the simplest level, we merely recognize the existence of persons, objects, and events in the
film and make attributions about them based on our stereotypic knowledge of such things in
real life. With somewhat more sophistication, we can see relationships between objects and
events that are contiguous in time or space: they go together. The crucial step, next, is to see
this contiguity as the result of an intention to tell us somethingto see it as a sequence or
pattern that is ordered for the purpose of implying meaning rather than contiguity to more
than one sign-event and having the property of conveying meaning through the order itself
as well as through elements in that order (1985:3).
We expect the narrative form in fiction, poetry, and in fiction film (despite
postmodern movements which have challenged the conventions of narra-
tive in all of these forms of expression), but narrative photography in social
science, just as the narrative form in more conventional social research, is
less usual. There are, however, several ways in which the narrative form has
been and can be used in visual anthropology and sociology. I will begin
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The Visual Ethnographic Narrative 5
with a discussion of narrative ethnographic film, which shows directions
and 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 conventional
short story. The film consists of the principal characters, Nanook and his
family, performing their typical family activities. Behind these activities,
however, is the larger story of human adaption and struggle in a hostile
natural environment. The film ends with Nanook having found a deserted
igloo in which to save his family from a raging blizzard. Evidence of the
truth of the story is in the sad fact that Nanook (just as he was unknowingly
becoming 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 viewer
assumes he or she is seeing a story that would naturally appear in the
culture being filmed. This, however, cannot be taken for granted. Flaherty
himself was guilty of misrepresenting the behavior of his subjects when it
suited his narrative purpose.
6
Robert Gardner's Dead Birds (1963) is a typical example of a modern
narrative 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 these
expressions and tells us what (the narrator believes) is going through the
minds of those on film. This leads to a film that is almost indistinguishable
from filmed fiction. In the case of non-fiction narrative film, the viewer must
accept that the director had sufficient ethnographic understanding to sup-
ply "correct" speeches to speakers and to structure events in ways they
would 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-actors
played roles they would naturally live in a story written to reflect the social
conditions of the times. The narrative ethnographic tradition continues in
several forms of the modern ethnographic film. These include the direct
address films of the British documentary tradition, such as Elton and
Anstey's Housing Problem's (1935), the French tradition dominated by Jean
Rouch in such films as Les Maitres Fous (1953) or any of the theoretically
eclectic modern anthropological narratives such as Perrault, Brault and
Carriere's The Moontrap (1963).
Narrative still photographic ethnography is less common, but examples
follow the contours of narrative ethnographic film. O ne expects film to
follow a narrative form partly from visual habit: we are used to film as an
embodiment of events structured into a story. The continuous flow of
images lends itself to the appearance of the movement of time and the
unfolding of events. Still photographs, however, as discrete "slices of time"
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6 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY
have also been used to communicate both simple and more complex narra-
tive lines. Narrative still photography consists of either a sequence of
photographs taken over a short period of time showing the flow of interac-
tion or events. This type of visual narrative most closely resembles an
ethnographic film. In fact, it would be possible to print individual frames of
an ethnographic film to create such visual narratives. Modern 35mm cam-
eras, which automatically advance the film at rates up to several frames per
second, 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 an
unfolding social drama, perhaps years long. This more literary form of
narrative 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" magazines
such as Life and Look. The photo essay is a series of generally ten to thirty
photographs which tell, in the jargon of the journalist, a "human-interest"
story. W. Eugene Smith, generally considered a master of the genre, made
several photo essays for Life magazine, eventually leaving the magazine to
concentrate on a visual narrative that would have the depth and seriousness
he felt impossible to achieve in magazine publishing. The result (Smith and
Smith, 1975), told the story of mercury poisoning in a Japanese fishing
village and the social movement which arose to confront the corporation
responsible for the pollution. While the book is largely photographic, it
moves like a narrative non-fiction account. The account is sociological
because the photographs identify social groups and present the behavior of
people in particular institutions and social movements. Although not iden-
tified as such, the book is a detailed visual ethnography, and a very moving
one at that.
Berger and Mohr (1982) experimented with the narrative photographic
form in a series of one hundred and fifty-one photographs depicting the
experiences of a E uropean peasant in the twentieth century. While the
photographic 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. To
do so would be to impose a single verbal meaning upon appearances and thus to inhibit or
deny their own language . . . (182:113).
The photographic sequence portrays events that are true in terms of each
image, but fictive as a specific narrative. In a short paragraph which
precedes the uninterrupted photo sequence, Berger and Mohr suggest how
they see the meaning of the photos. The photographs connect images of
birth, growth, aging and death; migration to and from a European city; and
two wars. When you view the images you begin to think narratively. The
meaning of the images is in the structure and organization of the whole.
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The Visual Ethnographic Narrative 7
I think this and other (see, for example, Adelman and Hall 1970, and
Clark 1971) photographic narratives are essentially ethnographies. Most
fundamentally, these accounts must tell a story that would normally appear
in the culture. Realizing that social life is culturally defined, you must,
either through research or through immersion in another way of life, make
the leap from your knowledge of the world to the knowledge of those you
study. If, as a researcher, you are a participant in another culture's typical
events, you can use your own experience as a part of the study. While the
visual narratives I have cited have not been done by academics for an
academic audience, the depth of the author/photographers' knowledge and
their ability to communicate across cultural barriers make them models for
more typically defined academic work.
Only three photographic studies by sociologists or anthropologists (to
my knowledge) realize the narrative potential of photographs. Mead and
Bateson'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 play
a game in which the child stimulates but does not arouse the mother. Other
photographic 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 their
study of Greek death rituals. Photographs of several funerals, periods of
grieving, and exhumations are arranged to represent a typical death experi-
ence in rural Greece. Explanations accompany the photographs, which
have been introduced with a lengthy anthropological essay. Finally, Gard-
ner and Heider's Gardens of War (1968) is a book of photographs and text
which include narratives showing agricultural practices, a funeral, the
mimicry 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 Dani
Sweet Potatoes.
THE VISUAL ETHNOGRAPHIC NARRATIVE: AN EXAMPLE
I will return to a study I finished some years ago (Harper 1976, 1982) to
construct a limited visual ethnographic narrative. Rather than illustrating
the micro-interaction of specific events in tramp life, I have chosen images
which represent typical moments in the routine of tramp life.
To complete the research from which I draw these photographs I lived
with homeless and migrant men who folow a cyclic pattern of working,
drinking, and riding freights. This field work included several trips on
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8 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY
freight trains from the northern Midwest to apple harvests in Washington
State, as well field work in Eastern skid rows. My field work, formed along
the events of the migration to the harvest, combined the narratives of
entering, participating in, and leaving the culture with the narrative of a
typical tramp journey. My anthropological story was not an implausible
account of many of those who migrated to the harvest. While I made several
trips on the freights, I eventually wrote about one companion, whom I
called Carl in my text. In my preliminary fieldwork I gained the cultural
knowledge to interpret both what Carl did and how he defined his activity.
Thus, the narrative structure of my information is rooted in my cultural
understanding; my confidence is that the "story" is typical of those living in
the world of the tramp.
I could have used the photographs I made during my fieldwork in any of
the ways I have discussed in this paper. I could have made photos to
document types of tramps (making visual correspondences to "rubber
tramps," "bindle-stiffs," "airdales," "mission stiffs," and the like), or to
make 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 use
the photographs reflexively I could have interviewed tramps (assuming
they would be interested in such activity) using photos from earlier field
trips to elicit their cultural definitions. To achieve a phehomenological text I
could 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 their
existence. Finally, I could have narratively structured the photographs to
communicate the typical rhythms and events of tramp life. When I pub-
lished a book from my data, however, I did not organize the photographs to
achieve any single ethnographic purpose. Like many ethnographers, I had
concentrated on the written text (which, as a narrative first-person of one
trip on the rails and a study of one tramp, was itself an experiment), and
while I valued the photos and considered them an important part of my
work, I chose and organized the images for the book to achieve a number of
competing ends. The publisher's art director and I organized the images in a
few hours (a process potentially as complex, although I did not realize it at
the time, as placing words to images in a film), on the basis of technical
considerations (such as which images would show through the paper if run
back to back) or aesthetic considerations (which images would look good
facing each other on opposing pages). The photographs were printed in
three sections, separated from the text to which they corresponded. I wrote
short legends for the photographs that did not relate them to specific parts
of the text. When I now look at the book I see both evidence of our carefully
considered aesthetic decisions but an unrealized opportunity to present the
images in a sequence that would communicate the full cycles of tramp life.
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The Visual Ethnographic Narrative 9
I chose images for the book (fifty-two from over three thousand) on
grounds that were also only partly sociological. I studied each image to see
if they fulfilled two criteria: they had to communicate an important aspect of
tramp life, and they had to be aesthetically "successful" (meaning they had
to have interesting composition, visual clarity and metaphorical as well as
concrete meaning). This is quite different from saying that the photographs
should document all the important sociological features of tramp life. There
were many aspects of tramp life that I had not photographed, and there
were photographs I did not use in the book which were ethnographically
important but technically or aesthetically flawed.
I have returned to this work to construct a partial visual ethnographic
narrative. To really present a photo narrative of tramp life, I would have to
return 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 on
a freight trip, migrating with other tramps to a job, waiting in the harvest
town for the work to begin, and, finally, working in an orchard. A more
complete visual narrative of tramp life would include the transitions out of
work life into a binge of drinking followed (or preceeded) by a trip on freight
trains, stopovers in missions, jungles, or jail, or trips to "winter" in the
south. A comprehensive visual narrative of tramp life could easily require
several hundred images. In the excerpt that follows, the individual images
indicate major transitions; significant breaks in the cycle of tramp life.
. As I was leaving Minneapolis on a freight train, I met a tramp who had
been drinking on skid row for three weeks but was also travelling to the
apple harvest, two thousand miles away. We eventually "buddied up" (in
the parlance of the road), travelled and worked together in the orchards in
northern Washington State. I witnessed his change from drinker to traveller
to worker, a regular sequence of events in his life.
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10 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY
2. The tramp as a derelict. 1 met Carl in a boxcar in a
Minneapolis freight yard, coming down from a three week drunk. I
did not photograph Carl drunk on skid row; this photograph stands
for the period in Carl's life such as just before we met.
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The Visual Ethnographic Narrative 11
Figure 2. The tramp in a boxcar, a day and a thousand miles from
Minneapolis, at the last stages of his hangover, eating food 1 offered.
We had "buddied up" in a Montana freight yard, finding a car
together on a train heading toward the apple harvest in Washington
State.
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12 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Figure 3. The tramp's life was a cycle of drinking, migrating (usually on freights), and working in
seasonal 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 tramp
must take on the appearance of a worker. The tramp had planned for this by packing, in his meager
possessions, a mirror, soap, and a razor. We had been travelling together for four days when I took this
photograph. Near the harvest, we had left the through freight and were looking for a local freight train
to the harvest area near the Canadian border. The tramp shaved and cleaned up and after he'd finished he
handed the gear to me, saying "Either clean up or go up the river alone."
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The Visual Ethnographic Narrative 13
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 photo
shows something about "buddying up." We felt the euphoria of nearly
finishing a difficult trip and we believed that work was just around
thecomer. We were dirty and tired of freight cars. When I complained
about eating squashed bread for breakfast, the tramp made a holder
out of a green saplingand toasted the last slices, moreor less as a joke,
but partly because I had become good company for him.
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U VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Figure 6. The cycles of the day, like the cycles oftheyear, are filled with a lot of slow transitions. Much
of the life of the tramp is waitingwaiting for trains, jobs, or rides on the highway. Much of this time is
spent with other tramps, telling stories or getting drunk in jungles, and a lot of it is spent alone. Here
we 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 train
approached the harvest towns, the cars filled with and disgorged their illegal passengers. At one point
in the afternoon there were thirty-eight men in the car and later Carl told me how to tell the tramps from
the riff raff and the jackrollers who all had ridden with us that day.
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The Visual Ethnographic Narrative 15
Figure 8. Waiting for the harvest, wejungled with other tramps who were also waiting to be hired out
on a job. During the day we would wait to be hired at the employment trailer, and at night we would trek
back to our camp outside town to eat a communal dinner made with what each tramp had been able to
scavenge during the day. At night we made our way across the tracks, into the orchard, to sleep beneath
an apple tree.
Figure 9. We hired out on a job and lived together in an orchard cabin. On this day we waited in the
cabin for the rain to stop. Near the end of our month together, the tramp had gotten tired of my questions
and my photographing and our relationship, like all those on the road, was about to end. When I left to
hitchhike to Spokane and get a freight back to Minnesota (to resume my life as a student), Carl barely
nodded. There were no goodbyes.
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16 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY
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 that
this 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 a
film.
Notes
1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meetings of the International
Visual Sociology Association, University of Bielefeld, ER.G., June 1986.
2. See de Brigard (1974), Heider (1976), and Collier (1986) for partial histories of visual
anthropology.
3. There is no systematic history or overview of visual sociology. Stasz (1979) has shown how
photographs were integrated into early articles in the American Journal of Sociology and
Becker (1974) has suggested intersections and overlaps between documentary photogra-
phy and sociology and anthropology that cover most of the important work up to that
date.
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 obviously
influenced 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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The Visual Ethnographic Narrative 17
R eferences
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Collier, John and Evon Z. Van Vogt
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Elton, Arthur and Edgar Anstey
1935 Housing Problems. British Commercial Gas Association.
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