Imaging the Field

Drawings, illustrations, and images have historically been, and still are integral part of anthropologists’ notebooks, field diaries, and published works. Until very recently, this production has only rarely drawn the attention of isolated, anthropologists such as Michael Taussig and Tim Ingold (Ingold 2011; Taussig 2011). At the present juncture, there is a mounting interest in this form of artistic practice, despite it is never considered under the rubric ‘art’ (Kuschnir 2016; Kofes and Bruno 2018; Ballard 2022). The long silence that surrounds this vast production warrants investigation not only due to its ambiguous role in visual anthropology but also because its study opens the possibility of fruitful synergies between art and anthropology, two disciplines that for a long time have operated almost entirely separately. The need for a rapprochement comes from the necessity to evaluate not only the images’ content but also the form, at once interesting for ethnography, and for the study of artistic modes produced outside the art historical canon.

Artists and anthropologists’ intentions in depicting ethnographic subjects may be different, but the kernel of the issue we present with this exhibition is how observation is employed as part of the ethnographic project. Anthropologists are not artists. They do not train in fine arts, nor any artistic proclivity is essential to become one. Yet, they are required to observe and describe what they experience or witness through words in carefully crafted texts. Despite the emphasis on writing, many of them draw, sketch, illustrate, and interpret visually what they see. However, when probed about their abilities and skills, they quickly dismiss their drawings as having no inherent artistic merit, giving little or no credit to the largely impressionistic sketches that populate their logs. To be true, the substantial variation between styles and modes of expression among them is astonishing. And this difference is the driving force that structures this curatorial project because it allows a fine-grained examination of the intentions and purposes that drove the production of such a diverse inventory in every new instance.

To appreciate the extreme diversity of images made by anthropologists in the field we selected fifty-nine illustrations from the RAI’s pictorial archives, which among others, are comprised of hundreds of drawings, sketches, watercolours, rubbings, doodles, and diagrams made by various anthropologists that date back to the early years of its establishment in 1871. Visual material made by Alfred Gell, Charles Seligman, Max Gluckman, Adela Breton, Marian Smith, and Edith Durham, among others, elicits questions related to the use of draughtsmanship in fieldwork contexts and its use beyond recording data. If there is any merit in presenting all this material together is to show the clear difference between styles and intents that highlights the stark difference between a sketch and an illustration. Both have a place in the anthropological project and here we stress the importance of a reflection upon their role in the context of knowledge production.

Each of the items exhibited here responds to separate questions that frame the most recent discussion on anthropological images, and imagery. Recently published scholarship underlined the complex relationship that anthropology has with art making, illustrations, pictures, and images, and the place it historically assigned to visual material before and after the adoption of time-based media, photography and film (e.g. Geismar 2004; Morton 2018; Carocci and Pratt 2022). Early expeditions made extensive use of artists that could record flora, fauna and populations with equal competence. Images produced under these circumstances though not made by anthropologists, are records of the role of art in the process of anthropological knowledge production, stressing different forms of synergy between what was observed and how it was described for ethnographic purposes. This can be seen in a vast production of images by professional artists, who due to their artistry became unwilling ethnographers (e.g.; Amy Drucker: 600_000159, 600_000158, 600_000131; Carl von Saar: 600_000015).

While we are interested in investigating general questions about how this inventory relates to art and visual anthropology’s canon, we also want to explore how different styles work in conjunction with textual descriptions, and what drives anthropologists to resort to specific images in their diaries, and publications.

Variably accomplished through techniques as simple as pencil sketching or ballpen drawings, several of these works equally display more elaborate methods of image production and reproduction, from watercolours to rubbings, tracing, and photozincography. Each of these visual methods raises distinct questions about the rhetorical modes in which ethnographers choose to express their observations visually. Though artistic accomplishment and formal evaluations may seem significant in content delivery, we want to encourage viewers to see beyond skill and achievement to reflect upon how different visual strategies and rhetoric may convey what words cannot explain. The very existence of sketches and drawings in fieldwork diaries and notebooks invites us to ask what kind of commentary on anthropology they produce beyond being used as complements to a largely textual account. If it is true that as the adage recites ‘an image is worth a thousand words’ why aren’t anthropologists using more images in their ethnographies?

Volumetric renderings, a sense of depth, the visualisation of emotions, the inclusion of realistic details, stenographic sketching, and other strategies are variably used to bear specific messages, but the question about the purpose of the illustrations in anthropology remains. How do specific images support the text? Can pictures be analysed as a separate form of knowledge? What is the role of certain styles and genres in ethnographic narratives? In what context are pictures illustrative, heuristic, explanatory, or simply impressionistic? What difference does it make if they are rendered naturalistically or stylised? Do they verge on the technical, thus promoting pictures’ purely functional purpose? Or are they produced to convey emotional states, give context, or wider background? The richness of the RAI archives invites us to ponder these questions.

Written ethnographies aim to be loyal representations of human societies, cultures, and behaviours. They construct versions of reality as experienced through the eyes of the anthropologist, and paradoxically, they strive for detached neutrality. Several images in this selection are perfect examples of this endeavour. Yet others display more freedom, almost as if translating visually internal states that result more as sentimental traces of an experience than exact reproductions of what the eyes saw. Images’ various levels of accuracy therefore place each of these pictures on a continuum on which different degrees of detail may turn an ethnographic account into something more elusive, and evocative.

Some forty years ago anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz, James Clifford and George Marcus alerted us of the constructedness of ethnographic texts arguing that all anthropologists could do was acknowledge their positionality instead of searching for scientific objectivity (Geertz 1989; Clifford and Marcus). Revealing for the public the fictions employed by their predecessors to deploy their anthropological narratives, they reframed anthropology as a discipline situated at the crossroads between (social) science and the humanities. This exercise chimes with the endeavour we are entertaining here. Much in the same way as ethnographic texts derive their rhetorical strength from literary genres, so do ethnographic sketches from art styles. The benefit of adopting a disenchanted approach to fieldwork sketches the way Geertz, Clifford, and Marcus did for texts, may afford us the possibility of unlocking what ethnographic images can potentially tell us about anthropology and the information embedded in the visual material ethnographers used to build its knowledge.

Several of the sketches show variable amounts of text associated with them. The nature of these accompanying texts is revealing and helped us separate this inventory into categories that we hope will guide the viewer in navigating the manifold styles, genres, and typologies of images presented here. The vast inventory of pictures in the collection was separated into three general sections: Fieldwork Sketches, Forms of Objectivity, and The Evocative Power of Images. The structuring principle underpinning the three parts is related to the role that images produced by ethnographers may have in the wider anthropological project. Inevitably, like all classifications, this distinction is artificial and wants to be the point of departure for further conversations. The three sections are not mutually exclusive, and we encourage viewers to unpack them to find continuities, overlaps, slippages, ambiguities, and paradoxes between them. Viewers may find that transversal readings of these categories are more fruitful. Here we want to simply offer a roadmap through a complex and multi-layered field that we hope many will find as much fascinating as thought-provoking.

The first section ‘Fieldwork Sketches’ provides a point of entry into the world of the ethnographer made of drawings, annotations, maps, and diagrams that help him/her to build a mental picture of the fieldwork with all its idiosyncrasies, contradictions, and contingencies.

This process can be appreciated in Herbert Basedow’s classification of Aboriginal face paintings (600_000573), Robert Wood Williamson’s Oceanian clothes (600_000458, 600_000459, 600_000461), F. W. Christian’s Micronesian architecture (600_000445).

The scientific style of Natural history’s illustrations was successfully adapted for physical anthropology’s purposes early in the history of the discipline, as seen in Sir Arthur Keith’s primate sketches (RAI MS440/2/3/1). It eventually trickled down to accompany other descriptions that required detached, impartial, and allegedly objective, visualizations that illustrated in an unbiased mode what the observer had experienced in the field.

It appears that anthropologists and ethnographers went to great lengths to be as precise as they could be in delivering readers highly accurate representations of people, objects, or manufacturing techniques. Many simply drew from life such as in the case of Emrys Lloyd Peters and Stella M. Peters’ drawings of Berber tent implements (RAI MS 438/1/6), Walter Edmund Roth’s Guyanese trays (600_000737, 600_000734), Blackwood and Balfour’s Tiv ritual objects (600_000793), West African Efik’s symbols (RAI MS 210/2), or Siberian shaman’s headdresses stored in the Seligman collections (RAI MS 262/2/1/15/2).

Some of the more procedural sketches, used specifically to elucidate operational modes, methods of work, and technologies, are often accompanied by explanatory texts that clearly remove this form of representation from the conventional realm of art despite occasionally appearing at first glance rather surreal, as in the case of Gluckman’s East African door’s designs (600_001051).

Even a cursory glance over these pictures indicates that they were made to aid the ethnographer, and were not meant to be seen and appreciated for their artistic pretence by viewers outside the boundaries of anthropological departments and specialist readership. This can be seen in Marian Smith’s British Columbia’s fishing methods (RAI MS 268/2/16), in the maps made of Cowichan’s trapping sites (600_001004), the crude juxtapositions between Uganda’s common women and prostitutes produced in 1930 (600_000990), or the rather economical visualisation of a British Columbian woman’s dress (RAI MS 332/8).

The part called ‘Forms of Objectivity’ collates images that seek to offer an accurate visual record of what the ethnographer sees beyond serving as visual accounts of a process or a detail. This material reveals how in their strife for objectivity anthropologists experimented with diverse visual solutions and techniques. This process is perhaps best summarised in the drawing of a head spanner, an ‘objective’ drawing about a scientific technology, which offers an interesting visual commentary on anthropometry’s obsession with measurements and proportional calculations (e.g.; 400_049210). These types of illustrations turned mere fieldwork records into images that could be used as illustrations in books and articles. The move from mnemonic to illustrative shows a tension between anthropological aims and images’ multiple lives.

Achieving the highest possible level of loyalty to the subjects represented resulted in the employment of a variety of techniques that could result from ethnographers’ lack of artistic training. Some even include measurements that can help with relative proportions (e.g.; 400_049580; 400_155585).

At the same time, some methods of image reproduction were simple shortcuts that augmented, aided, and complemented drawings, as can be seen in the rubbings of Melanesian designs to be sent to Charles Seligman (RAI MS 364/3/6/4-5). New technologies enabled different levels of accuracy and it is at this point that images become versatile complements to published texts. Pictures were produced by tracing of real photographs, as in the case of images from Borneo (600_000722), and Sudan (600_000692). Alternatively, they may be altered by painting on the negatives. This can be seen in the early 20th c. image of a Hopi woman from the American Southwest (400_027428) (cf. Geismar 2004; Morton 2018).

In other cases, the use of photozincography enhanced images’ clarity with the effect of having the accuracy of an image drawn from life and the intelligibility of a photograph simultaneously. This can be seen in the image of Robert Woodthorpe’s Naga warrior from the end of the 19th c. (RAI MS 442/2/2) (Hentschel 2002; Simpson 2021). Here the very technique used to reproduce an image generated a picture that could serve the purpose of ethnography or of illustration in a book concurrently. Probably sanitised of all the messy details that prevented a clear reading of the original image, this like other similar pictures could be employed to visualise published ethnographies.

Many anthropologists have used, and continue to rely on images of their own making in their books and articles, from Valdemar Bogoras to Raymond Firth, Lévi-Strauss, and even Alfred Gell, some of whose work is displayed in this collection (RAI Alfred Gell Collection).

The final section called ‘The Evocative Power of Images’ invites viewers to reflect upon an inventory of anthropological visual production that seems to transcend purely recording purposes. This corpus, rather than conveying bare facts and providing data, creates moods and sentimental reverberations engendered by the very techniques variably mustered by the artist/ethnographer. It is a production that adds an emotive layer to the ethnographer’s experience in the field, one that is often characterised by poetic and subjective engagements with both the people and places encountered during fieldwork. This set of images contrasts the technicality of fieldwork sketches to expose the multi-layered, abundant, and kaleidoscopic array of image-making adopted by anthropologists.

On the other hand of the spectrum are images whose evocative character situates them in a rather ambiguous category that transverses anthropology and art simultaneously. Examples from Edith Durham’s fieldwork in the Balkans (600_000099), Wilson’s Northwest Coast landscapes (600_001002), and Thomas Atholl Joyce’s accomplished portrait of a Central African man (RAI MS 439/11/15) are a case in point.

Associated with this inventory are also images of ethnographic interest made by professional artists. Whether produced as exercise, mere curiosity, or recording interesting subjects, these pictures truly straddle the fine line between anthropology and art. Anthropological archives may find them interesting not only for their technical mastery, but for the connotative aspects implicit in them beyond the allegedly unbiased, objective, and detached perspective of the scientist. Many of them rely on pre-existing visual cultures framed by a long tradition of portraiture, and life-drawing that infuse the sitters’ faces with life behind the data. In fact, it is legitimate to ask what exactly are we looking at? What kind of anthropological information can we elicit from these artworks? Features might have been useful for physical anthropological considerations, but what of the voyeuristic potentials of certain nudes? (400_014180).

These more elaborate drawings, sketches, watercolours, and paintings, while augmenting contextual descriptions, often are not strictly speaking ‘ethnographic’. The amount of visual information contained in them, though visible, is only partially complete, for example in Adela Breton’s rendering of a Japanese temple, where not every feature of the structure is clearly detectable, nor defined (600_000098). These realistic idioms, clearly derived from scientific imagery, portraiture, and life drawing, invite us to ask questions about what exactly counts as ethnography, and whether we can confidently draw a line between what is art, and what is anthropology.

• Ballard, Chris 2022 ‘Marginal History’ History and Anthropology 22(1): 86-103

• Carocci, Max and Stephanie Pratt (eds) 2022 Art, Observation and an Anthropology of Illustration London: Bloomsbury

• Clifford, James and George Marcus 1986 Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography Berkeley: University of California Press

• Geertz, Clifford 1989 Works and Lives: the Anthropologist as Author Cambridge: Polity Press

• Geismar, Haidy 2004 ‘Drawing it Out’ Visual Anthropology Review 30(2): 97-113

• Hentschel, Klaus 2002 ‘The Material Culture of Printing’ Mapping the Spectrum: Techniques of Visual Representation in Research and Teaching Oxford: Oxford Academic

• Inglod, Tim 2011 ‘Drawing Together: Doing, Observing, Describing’ pp. 220-226 in Tim Ingold Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge, and Description London: Routledge

• Kofes, Suely and Fabiana Bruno (eds) 2018 Imagens, Grafias, e Suas Múltiplas Articulações na Experiência Antropológica Campinas: UNICAMP

• Kuschnir, Karina 2016 ‘Ethnographic Drawing: Eleven Benefits of Using a Sketchbook for Fieldwork’ Visual Ethnography 5(1): 103-134

• Morton, Christopher 2018 ‘La Description Graphique: Dessins et Photographies dans les Carnets de Terrain et le Travail de Conservateur de Henry Balfour’ Gradhiva (27): 59-88

• Simpson, Thomas 2021 ‘Ethnography’ pp. 116-182 in T. Simpson (Ed.) The Frontier of British India: Space, Science, and Power in the Nineteenth Century Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (check Cambridge Core)

• Taussig, Michael 2011 I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Dr. Max Carocci is Adjunct Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at the Richmond American University in London. For more than twenty years he has been teaching anthropology, art, visual and material culture in a variety of universities across the UK (Birkbeck College, Goldsmiths College, Chelsea College of Art, UCL, University of East Anglia). In addition to his academic career, he has served as curator at the British Museum, the Weltkulturen Museum Frankfurt, the Venice Biennale, and several institutions (including the RAI), and galleries in Britain and abroad. Max has published widely on a variety of subjects at the intersection of Anthropology and Art. Among his latest publications, Art, Observation, and an Anthropology of Illustration (co-edited with Stephanie Pratt, Bloomsbury, 2022), Art, Shamanism and Animism (co-edited with Robert J. Wallis, MDPI: Basel, 2022) and the article "Representations of Baja California Indians as ethnographic art", Colonial Latin American Review, 2023.

 https://www.maxcarocci.com/