Who Knew????

Who knew? I am a visual anthropologist!!!
You may or may not know that one of my passions is to keep a history of my family in pictures. I have books to attest to this and have tried lots of different ways. Right now, my favorite is the picture of the day...a picture everyday with a little journaling note, dropped in an album and usually within a week of being current. That's my favorite part, it's current! This week I was listening to a radio show about a display at the BYU Museum of Art called "Suburbia". It is a display of photos taken in the '70's in Livermore, California when the suburbs were just coming into existence. It is a collection of people doing everyday things like bar-b-queing or paying bills etc. The discussion was whether the photographer was a photo-journalist trying to tell a current story or they used the word "visual anthropologist", implying more of one who is studying a people to record for posterity and to help understand the evolution of the species. It's hard for me to explain but when they used the word I pictured a very clear definition in my mind. If an anthropologist studies life that was and tries to piece together the people who left behind the artifacts they study...then a visual anthropologist would study pictures of a people to define their life as well. One example I found to define visual anthropology said, "It aims at preserving images of little known and vanishing cultures, showing their specificity and universal essence, dialogue between alienated worlds." Not that I consider my family a "vanishing culture" or an "alienated world" (although we can be strange at times!), but I take pictures because I want to remember! I want to remember what we did for fun, what we did together, what we did each day that makes us who we are. I want my grandchildren to know their parents and what they were like when they were young. What were their talents, what were they doing when they were growing up, how bad was their taste in clothes and hairstyles?? I want them to know that Grandma and Grandpa haven't always been old! Anthropologists study anything they can find to understand the life of the people that are no longer there: what they ate, how they lived, what they wore, how they worshipped, where did they live, what did they do for fun? Using my new skills taught to me by another visual anthropologist, Jessica, let's see if I can show you something of my documentation!

"Synthetic nature of Visual Anthropology which unites expression of contemporary art and humanitarian ideas provides interest not only of professionals but also of the broader circle of viewers intrigued by historical destinies of their family, their people, their world." With that definition, I would say that all of us bloggers are also visual anthropologists!