In 1967 the anthropology department at Temple University hired Jay Ruby with the understanding that he would develop his interests in ethnographic film into a course and related activities. For several years prior to that, the department had organized an annual "Ethnographic Film Festival" that provided the faculty with a chance to see films they might wish to use in their teaching. In the spring of 1968 an undergraduate seminar in visual anthropology was taught and an Anthropological Film Festival organized featuring Sol Worth showing and discussing films recently completed by Navahos and Ray Birdwhistell exploring his use of film in the study of body movement. A number of other films were screened and discussed including Asen Balicki's Netsilik Eskimo series.
Over the years, the film festival evolved into the Conference
on Visual Anthropology (COVA), co-directed by Jay Ruby and Denise
O'Brien, - an internationally renowned event attended by hundreds
of people. COVA featured film and video screenings often with
the filmmakers present, photographic exhibitions, scholarly paper
sessions, hands-on workshops in video and photography, and organized
discussions about funding, distribution and training. COVA lasted
until 1980 and had a major impact upon the formation of the field
of visual anthropology.
In 1970, Ruby assumed responsibility for the Program in Ethnographic
Film (PIEF), the first professional organization in the U.S. devoted
to film and anthropology. PIEF published a newsletter, Karl Heider's
Films for Anthropological Teaching and was instrumental
in convincing the American Anthropological Association to include
film screenings as part of the scholarly program during their
annual meetings.
In 1971, the department added Richard Chalfen, a student of Dell
Hymes and Sol Worth, who specializes in the anthropological study
of the "home mode" of visual communication. Chalfen
and Ruby designed a graduate course of study that included not
only ethnographic film but also the anthropological study of all
forms of visible and pictorial communication. Their original conception
has remained the core of the program for more than 25 years. I
quote from a 1973 document:
We should initially state an obvious point: visual anthropology has been intimately tied to the production of still and motion pictures as visual ethnographies of exotic cultures. Without neglecting the importance of this work and the many valuable contributions to date, it is our feeling that visual anthropology is much more.
Visual anthropology should be conceptualized broadly enough to include, (1) the study of human nonlinguistic forms of communication which typically involves some visual technology for data collecting and analysis, (2) the study of visual products, such as films, as communicative activity and as a datum of culture amenable to ethnographic analysis, and (3) the use of visual media for the presentation of data and research findings-data and findings that otherwise remain verbally unrealized...
While recognizing the importance of technology for visual anthropology, we regard the acquisition of competence in film production as a technical skill that some students may need to acquire in order to pursue their research and teaching goals. As a technical skill, film production is viewed like other skills such as statistics, a field language, or contour map making- they are simply tools which have potential utility provided a research design calls for them. We realize that a basic understanding of film theory, construction and filmic conventions are necessary for an understanding of film as a communicative medium. We think of the film medium in terms of its limitations, advantages, functions, what it can and cannot be expected to accomplish and where the use of film is an indispensable aide to specific research interests.
The general question that must be repeatedly asked is, what have you gained after using a visual medium that you would not have gained without it? Significant scientific research problems for an anthropologist do not consist of how to get a better sound track, why a particular tripod does not swivel in the Arctic, or what is the best distribution company for my film. These technical questions become relevant after research has been designed which demands a methodological approach involving visual technology.
Let us now mention several types of problems in visual anthropology that are intimately tied to the use of film.(1) Micro-analytic studies of human interpersonal behaviors...are generally aided by some form of visual evidence....
(2) Visual technology may also be used in the study of macro-units of human behavior. Reference here is made to the production, for example, of motion picture footage of particular rituals, ceremonies, technological and/or artistic processes, socialization practices, subsistence patterns, warfare, and so forth. In this context, any visual manifestation of a culture is relevant subject matter.
(3) Third, the visual products of both professional and nonprofessional camera-use can be studied as cultural artifacts. Images here are treated as data of a particular culture. This interest becomes more important to anthropology as an increased number of societies begins to produce their own sets of mass mediated messages. Research interests may necessitate the use of content analysis for the study of themes, plots, or the construction of realities in media drama-work... As more societies begin using the technology of mass media, the entire process of visual communication may be studied as a culturally structured stream of expressive and symbolic activity. This emphasis must include behavioral observations of the process, the artifacts per se, and the audiences for specific productions. This perspective may apply to the creation and reception of a photograph; a film, and a television program, as well as to the creation of an art object, the study of dance, and other folkloric performances.
(4) A fourth and final problem is the dissemination of research findings, i.e., in developing the most effective strategy for using film or other visual forms to present anthropological statements. This problem encompasses not only the types of research mentioned above, but potentially all phases of anthropological inquiry. Here we wish students to explore film as a communication system in order to discover whether a set of filmic conventions can be developed that are somehow uniquely suited for the display of anthropological concepts.
There are some obvious consequences to our program. Being anthropologists we are primarily concerned with developing a rigorously anthropological approach to the study of visual communication. We are not training people who will become exclusively anthropological filmmakers, or dance ethnologists, or nonverbal specialists, or even sociolinguists. Rather we are in the business of producing anthropologists who will be able to integrate their interest in a particular communicative mode into a broad spectrum of a communication approach to anthropology. We are more concerned with training anthropologists whose primary interests are in developing a visual approach to the anthropological study of humanity than in producing anthropologists who occasionally collaborate with professional filmmakers to produce educational documentaries as an adjunct to their own research.
We feel that this approach is necessary in light of the traditional neglect of nonlinguistic communication forms by anthropologists and the corresponding tendency of anthropologists interested in this field to become peripheral to their own discipline. Our knowledge of humans as a multi-modal communicator is slight, We lack an understanding of the relationship between various codes, and in some instances the nature of the codes themselves. We feel that anthropology because of its unique holistic view of humans is in a critical position to provide an opportunity to study human communicative behavior as an integrated whole.
In preparing this talk we were struck how much this excerpt from
a 25 year old document continues to describe our program.
In 1972 a National Science Foundation grant allowed Ruby along
with Sol Worth, Karl Heider and Carroll Williams to conduct a
Summer Institute in Visual Anthropology (SIVA) at William's Anthropology
Film Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Twenty graduate students
and beginning assistant professors were selected for an intense
summer workshop. Among the guest lecturers were Tim Asch, Ray
Birdwhistell, Edward Hall, and Alan Lomax. During SIVA ,the groundwork
was laid for the creation of The Society for the Anthropology
of Visual Communication (SAVICOM) and a journal, Studies in
the Anthropology of Visual Communication with Sol Worth as
the first editor. After Worth's death in 1977, Larry Gross and
Jay Ruby became the editors until the journal's demise in 1985
and shortened its name to Studies in Visual Communication.
In the 1980s, SAVICOM became The Society for Visual Anthropology
and its journal, Visual Anthropology Review. Ruby was also
instrumental in the creation of a journal entitled Visual Anthropology
for the International Commission on Visual Anthropology. The journal
continues under the editorship of Paul Hockings. Soon after SIVA,
a program offering an MA degree in visual anthropology at Temple
was created in which students could spent one year at Temple studying
anthropology and one year at the Anthropology Film Center learning
filmmaking. This program, with its emphasis upon production, remained
until 1992 when it was transformed into the present Ph.D. course
of studies in the anthropology of visual communication in which
students needing some technical media training receive it within
Temple.
Between 1975 and 1990 Chalfen initiated theWorking Papers in Culture
and Communication a program newsletter,Visual Anthropology Internships,
a Graduate Lecture Series in Visual Anthropology, the Richard
Cross Gallery in the Department of Anthropology, and Richard Cross
MA Thesis Grants.
The 1990s saw many major developments. Three new faculty joined
the program - Jayasinhji (Bapa) Jhala, a filmmaker and anthropologist
interested in art, aesthetics, and indigenous media, Niyi Akinnaso,
an anthropological linguist interested in semiotics, the relationship
of images and words, and the ethnography of visual and verbal
communication and Denise O'Brien who is interested in the anthropology
of art particularly in Oceania and Japan. The facilities of the
media lab were augmented with equipment that allowed students
to learn video editing and mixed media digital production. Jhala
has developed a collaborative mode of video production in which
he co-produces works with several students. Finally, an undergraduate
major track in visual anthropology, the only one of its kind,
was added.
Temple University has had a thirty year involvement in the development
of an anthropological approach to the visible world. Its unique
undergraduate and graduate course of study allows students and
faculty to explore the impact of culture on visible and pictorial
forms of communication. The papers presented in these two sessions
are testimony to the breadth of this program.