Looking with an artificial eye : some notes on the camera as a tool of research
Janno Simm · NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives · 2004
”A picture is more than a hundred words”, says a native Estonian proverb. There is a tendency among orthodox anthropologists to think of the camera as just another research tool, an extension of the pen and the notebook. However, in my opinion and according to my experience, the “visual” research methods can also leave a strong imprint on the textual aspects of research. When I discovered the issue regarding the use of a camera in the field in a conversation with my supervisor when preparing for the fieldwork. Among other advices, my supervisor asked me to consider in which cases the camera may prove not useful or even an obstacle in the research. This was like a gust of cold shower, because my academic background is cross-cultural psychology and filmmaking. Therefore I had never considered the camera as an eye that could lie. In this paper I intend to clarify the different usages of the camera in anthropological research and draw on examples from my own fieldwork to illustrate the roles the use of camera imposes on a researcher. Nowadays, taking a still or video camera to the field is not uncommon. The use of camera as a research tool during the anthropological fieldwork is almost as old as the cinema, stemming back to the famous Torres Strait expedition in 1898 where Alfred C. Haddon is a pioneer using a camera in the field (de Brigard, 1973). From then on, various attempts have been made to use the camera in the field. However, the camera made its breakthrough as a genuine field tool as late as the 1960s with the advent of portable 16mm film cameras and the technology of synchronous sound recording. Video technology, owing to its low cost and easy handling has made the use of visual materials appealing even to the mainstream anthropologists, who earlier avoided using film stock and (relatively) sophisticated cameras. The latest development is the ”digital age”, that is, the pocketsize cameras, which allow making a near-broadcast quality recording and an editing equipment that has become affordable to even domestic users. The ”digital revolution” has raised a question about the value of the visual material recorded. The availability of technology and simplicity of operation have made recording an alluring option; now it is enough to just push the red button. . . This leads to an extensive amount of recorded material that anthropologists bring home from their fieldworks. Not surprisingly, there is a lot of ”visual noise”, that is incoherent footage that only serves as a memory to aid the researcher. It is a kind of home video from the field. As it has been noted, most anthropologists ”are never quite known what to do with visual” (MacDougall, 1997). This raises the question; what kind of decisions must a researcher make before deciding on whether to use the camera in his or her research? I had a quite confused understanding of the camera-related issues I was about to encounter during my fieldwork among the fishing and reindeer-herding Khanty, a Finno-Ugrian nation in northwestern Siberia. Three questions have to be considered. I believe, there are three major questions the researcher should be aware of before he decided to use the camera in the field: The first thing the researcher needs to consider is; what will be the use of the filmed material? There could be several possibilities: firstly, as a memory aid. That means, no special training or planning is required. The intended audience will be the anthropologist himself, with a (presumably) profound knowledge of the meaning and the context of the filmed material. The outcome is more like a home video, made in the field. Next, the researcher has to consider how he will use the filmed material in the future. Since many researchers are engaged in teaching and lecturing, sooner or later they will need to use some of their footage in their teaching. This means that the audience will not necessarily be as knowledgeable about the topic as the anthropologist himself. In such case a commentary is needed, and only a selection of the most relevant sequences required. However, the anthropologist must behold a certain level of visual literacy. If the cameraman can barely recognise his familiar subjects in poorly lit or focused video, the viewers most of probably will not. The poor quality of recording may tend to diminish the viewer’s interest in the subject. Therefore, some a priori planning and certain amount of technical training is appropriate, even if the initial plan was to use the footage only as a memory aid. Last but not least, if part of the research includes a multimedia product like an ethnographic film, video web stream etc, a higher level of media literacy and some professional skills are very useful. In this case, the anthropologist could consider the hiring of a professional filmmaker, to collaborate with a TV crew (though the standards of the TV production may impose some problems on its own) or to undergo some special training in ethnographic filmmaking. This third purpose is radically different from the previous two. The major difference lies in illustrational and inquisitive purpose of a camera. The second question the researcher has to consider is of a methodological character; is there a real need to