Material and Memory

Abstract

Despite frequently making use of photographs in their fieldwork and research, anthropologists rarely take account of their materiality. The identity of photography as a medium and its phenomenological status is, from the outset, assumed as given. There is no concern for what photography actually is in different cultural contexts. Recognizing photographs as material culture is a way to address this blind spot, and suggests that any methodological use of them requires a more complex and subtle approach.