Anthro 359 - Ethnophotography

Spring 2007


J. David Sapir
ds8s@virginia.edu

Each student will give two oral and written presentations out of the following lists. Each will be of a different type. The first will be about a single photographer, the second is to be about the photography of a single topic - whether produced by one or more photographers.

The presentation should include examples to show and the written statement, paralleling the presentation, should come to no more than five pages for the first and ten for the second. One half of the course grade will be based on the presentation/write-ups and general participation in the class.

We will cover three assignments (four one time) each week for the first set and two per week for the second.

Guidelines for the presentations are:

  1. The first presentation is to be no longer than twenty minutes. Followed be a short display of photographs. The presentation and display can be intermixed. The second will run to about forty minutes. These have to be carefully prepared in advance. We do not want to sit through hems and haws - mumbles and wandering thoughts. 
  2. ESSENTIAL AND WITHOUT EXCEPTION: mark with a slip of paper the place of the photos for display. Number the order. Nothing is worse than waiting (and waiting) for the presenter to find the next photo. Limit the number of photos you show. There is a temptation to go on and on.
  3. Practice giving your presentation before hand.
  4. For the first presentation speak to the following topics:
    a. brief bio of the photographer
    b. place within photography of his/her time.
    c. opinion of contemporaries - why was he/she noted
    d. the place of photographer in today's view of photography.
  5. For the second presentation it is most important that the broad context of the topic be discussed. Because each of these topics is unique, the exact presentation cannot be expected to follow a set pattern. I will want to discuss before hand with each of you exactly how you plan to proceed.

Each student will have an "in the world" photo project. The format will follow the Life magazine "photo-essay" The project will be juried at the end of the semester and will account for one half of the course grade. Two (or more) jury members will be from the department and one, a photographer or expert on photography, from outside. Renée Bruns (for 25 years executive editor of Popular Photography), Richard Robinson (free lance photographer), John Bunch (Ed School) and John Mason (History) have come from the outside. The jury will take place in two stages and the time will be set well in advance. Probably different faculty will participate in the two sessions. In the past the jurors have been George Mentore, Susan McKinnon, Jeff Hantman, Ellen Contini-Morava, Lise Dobrin, Adria Laviolette & Gertrude Frazer.

Here is Renée's general advice.

I look for a story. "Tell me a story." A flow.
A beginning, a middle and an end.
I yearn for flow.
I look for knowledge, of being enriched.
I need to walk away from a picture story with a satisfaction.
I look for at least one summary picture, one that kind of sums it all up. You might not need one, but it certainly helps.
If technically bad, it can kill the story.

29 Jan, 26 Feb, 19 Mar, 30 April  will be "view days" when students will display for comment their work project in progress. Keep in mind that your photo project should be started as soon as possible. I am not interested in having "last minute" throw togethers. The third view day, 19 March, comes several weeks earlier than heretofore. This is so we can have David Plowden, documentary photographer, as a visitor. He is coming to Virginia for the Festival of the Book - 21 March - 25 March .

On other days we will look at anyone's work which is brought in. Prints should be 5X7 size, jury prints should be 8X10. Start thinking immediately about your project. I expect a preliminary statement next week and I shall want to talk to each of you individually about it. Do not wait around before you begin. I hold regular office hours at by appointment and times are very flexible.  You can reach me: UVa 924-6821; home 295-5496; but the best way to reach me is via e-mail: ds8s@virginia.edu

Part I Classic photographers 

·  5 Feb

·  12 Feb

·  19 Feb

·  26 Feb - View Day #2

·  3-11 Mar - Spring Recess

·  12 Mar -  Roy DeCarava - (The remainder of the class will be announced later)
       

Part II Monograph

In this section you will be expected to explore beyond the books listed. For example whomever picks the Danny Lyon book on the Civil Rights movement will read about the movement in general so as to better place the book.

These are the topics I currently have in mind. If any of you can think of something you would rather do then, if it makes sense, it can be substituted for one of these. Last year we had some very ill chosen topics, that might have personally interested the student but did not have sufficient documentation

  1. A unique and early contribution to Visual Anthropology was Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead's Balinese Character. It, and a follow up study, Growth and Culture by Margaret Mead and Frances MacGregor were one of a kind books. This is the most "anthropological" topic for the course
  2. The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was the largest and most important documentary project ever conducted in the United States, if not everywhere. A great deal has been written about this topic and whoever takes it on should be prepared to do a lot of digging. (You can get a sense of it magnitude by going to the Library of Congress' American Memory page: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsowhome.html
  3. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Considered the most important text to emerge from the Documentary tradition during the 1930s. Photographs by Walker Evans and text by James Agee.
  4. The British Mass Observation project. Here is the British equivalent - after a fashion - of the American FSA project. The key photographer was Humphries Spender. You will want to examine document photography today in the UK. It has all been influenced by the Mass Observation project. You will want to include as well something about the early Bill Brandt (his documentary period) and continue on to contempory British Documentary photography.
  5. The Photo-Essay as it developed in Life magazine during its heyday (1940-19640. You will want to consider several of the photographers associated with the genre, especially W. Eugene Smith and people like Alfred Eisenstadt and Maraget Bourke White.
  6. Photographing natives Americans. This recommeded only for those students who have studied about the history and ethnography of  Native Americans. No one to date has given an adequate presentation on this topic. There is a lot there and one good place to look is photographs of and about the Navaho. Two extremes can be found Leonard McCombe's Navaho Means People from the photojournalistic side and Laura Giplin Enduring Navaho and Elizabeth Forster & Laura Gilpin Denizens of the Desert A heavy breathing critique of the whole thing is James Faris, Navajo and Photography (or something like that). Very polemical.
  7. The Civil Rights movement starting with Danny Lyon's Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. Also Down Home, Camden, Alabama, Bob Adelman. Beyond these two contrasting books you will want to see how the main stream print media photographed the events.
  8. Vietnam during the war: Two starters might be: Face of North Vietnam, Marc Riboud and Vietnam, a Book of Changes, Mitch Epstein. You will want to examine official US government photography along with the hard edge photography of photojournalist. Several of the photographs by the latter became "icons" for the war. Why?
  9. India: Indian and Western takes. How Indians go about photography in contrast to Westerns in India. Books by Judith Gutman, Through Indian Eyes and Chris Pinney, Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs for the former and the work of such photographers as Margaret Burke-White, Cartier Bresson and Mary Ellen Mark for the latter.
  10. El Salvador El Salvador (photos) & Somoza's Last Stand (text) Larry Towell. Also Susan Meiselas Latin American photography. This is a heavy topic! Or one might wish to examine, more broadly, Latin American photography in general.
  11. MAGNUM. The international photo agency founded by Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, David Seymour and George Rodger in 1947. There is a biography of Magnum by the British journalist Russell Miller, a 40th anniversary volume (In Our Time) and a recently published 50th anniversary volume. Almost all of the major photo journalists have at one time or another been a member.
  12. Going back to the early part of the 20th century - Documentary photography of Jacob Riis (How the Other Half Lives) and Lewis Hine especially his work for the Survey,

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