This semester, we are focusing on documentary media art, and my project concentrates on documentary photography. During last semester, I studied applied anthropology. Documentary photography is, according to the dictionary, a way of photography that records events or environments both essential and relevant to history and as well as everyday life. Therefore, in this paper, I am going to discuss the relationship between anthropology and photography.
Anthropology, according to the dictionary, is a subject that learns about humanity. Cultural anthropology is one of the most significant fields of anthropology in the modern world, for we are living in a globalized society. The development of modern scientific techniques such as the internet has bonded us closer than ever before. A better understanding of other cultures becomes more critical. Photography is a beautiful technique that could provide a large amount of information and data for cultural anthropologists to analyze different cultures.
Modern photography is a technique that was invented in the 19 century. The first photo with the human is called Boulevard du Temple(Figure 1).
Figure 1. Boulevard du Temple (Louis Daguerre. 1838.).
This image shows a view of a morning French street. And Louis Daguerre made the image in 1838. However, because the exposure of this image takes about 8 minutes, the street, which is supposed to be busy, seems empty. There are only two still people on the street, and it seems they are cleaning their boots. This picture is an excellent source for modern anthropologists to learn about the French city development in the 19 century, together with people’s daily life at that time.
Since the beginning of the invention of the photography technique, photography has had a deep relationship with anthropology(Morton 2018). Photography is a form of art that freezes time at a specific moment. Photographers are walking around the world and use cameras to capture every moment. These moments contain not only gorgeous landscapes but also humans. The pictures with humans soon became excellent materials for anthropologists’ research. Before the existence of photography techniques, anthropological studies largely depend on paper archives. Many anthropological theories are made based on the articles that anthropologists read. They could do the field research when they are trying to learn more about a different culture, but that would spend a lot of time based on the transportation condition at that time. Photos, on the other hand, by the ability to freeze time at a specific moment, could provide a clear view of another different culture for anthropologists. Anthropologists could gather more information besides the paper materials. Photography has primarily amplified the anthropological archive.
There is an interaction between photography and anthropology, and the production is called visual anthropology. Visual anthropology is one of the subfields of social anthropology which studies humans through films, photography, and new media since the mid-1990s. Visual anthropology only became possible after the birth of the camera in the 19 century. Arguably the first group of anthropologists was not anthropologists at all but rather photographers. For example, the father of photojournalism, Mathew Brady, takes a lot of images during the civil war, providing many documents to anthropologists to learn human activities during that period. Figure 2 is a picture Mathew Brady took during the American Civil War in the 19 century. Taking a photo at that time requires a long process time, for the early photography equipment is too large to move, and the early photography technique is 
Figure 2. Wounded Soldiers in Hospital (Mathew Brady. ca. 1860 – ca. 1865)
wet-plate photography( a technique invented by Englishman Frederick Scott Archer in 1851), it was not easy for photographers to a picture during the battle. Therefore, most of the photographers at that time tried to avoid capturing battle photos. Despite the limitations, however, Mathew Brady and his team still take some pictures that could show the war’s cruelty. Figure 2 shows a hospital during the Civil War; although there is no battle scene in the picture, people could still be shocked about the war’s cruelty from seeing many wounded soldiers in the hospital. Anthropologists could learn a lot from these pictures, for the American Civil War represents the conflict and unity in a specific period.
In his work, Jay Ruby(1996) says the people behind the machine influence the camera; therefore, the photo interacts with two things: the culture of who filmed and the cultures of who films(p.1). Humans are curious about unfamiliar things. Therefore, taking the picture itself could be considered a communication between two different cultures. Because the photographer could share a diverse cultural background with the photography subject, photographers could find many different angles to observe another culture. Understanding other cultures from different angles are what anthropologists do. Therefore, a photographer might have the ability to become a great anthropologist.
Anthropologists learn about humans in many different ways, such as what we have learned this semester, archaeology, biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. Photographers also have many different ways to document human activities and their cultures.
Documentary photography aims to document human cultures, human living conditions, and social activities. The beginning of documentary photography has a strong connection with anthropology. In 19 century, an archaeologist, John Beasly Greene, traveled to Nubia to take pictures of ruins in that region(Will, 2007). The image in Figure.3 is from John Beasly Greene. He took this picture in 1854, and it was a picture of the Abu Simbel Temple. From the image, we could see a Nubian temple ruin. The Nubian culture is a “lost culture.”
Figure.3-John-Beasly-Greene-Abu-Simbel-temples-1854.
There is no country called Nubia, and the current Nubia area belongs to Egypt and the Republic of Sudan. The Nubia Kingdom used to be under Egypt’s control, and it gets independent around 500BC. Therefore, the Nubian culture is primarily influenced by Egyptian culture. This influence could be seen on the left side of the picture, as the statue looks like an Egyptian Pharaoh on the left side of the picture. Using photography techniques allows archaeologists to collect visual information to analyze different cultures. However, photography is more than a recording method for archaeology. Archaeology aims to understand how human behavior and cultures change over time. Understanding our history could provide a guide to our future.
Nevertheless, the public is different from archaeologists; not everyone has the ability to enjoy reading tons of paper documents to learn about history. On the other hand, the picture has the power to capture the public’s attention quickly. With images of artifacts, people would have more passion for discovering what has happened before and what tradition shapes them to become who they are now. Like photography, archaeology likes a cultural disposition rather than an academic discipline(Shanks&Connie, P1); it has more emotional involvement.
Visual ethnography is another field in which photography and anthropology interact with each other. Ethnography is a branch of anthropology that studies individual cultures, and it plays the role of observing and recording local cultures. Visual ethnography is a subject that uses visual methods such as film, videos, and photos to study ethnography. Although anthropologists would try their best to be as neutral and objective as possible while collecting data from another culture. However, the writing record would be affected by the researchers’ cultural background, more or less. Photos, however, could reduce the chance that other cultures influence the document. Images could be taken while the subject of the study even notices the camera, like what street photographers are doing in modern society. Henri Cartier-Bresson, for example, is one of the most famous street photographers. He takes a lot of images that could help us study different people and cultures. 
Figure 4. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Srinagar, Kashmir. 1948
The picture shows a group of Muslim women praying at the holy site in the Indian city of Srinagar. Cartier-Bresson catches the moment when the lady in the picture reaches out. This picture could help anthropologists learn about Muslim culture through how the local people pray and the way they dress.
Photography is relatively young when compared with anthropology. However, photography and anthropology all play the same role as observers, and they are all studying humans. Before the existence of photography, anthropologists could only learn about humans based on field studies and paper archives. Not all people have the patience and passion for reading. Photography provides a new perspective for anthropologists to observe and learn about other cultures. It is a way that could freeze the time at a specific moment for later research. Although my study of photography and anthropology has just begun, but I have the faith that there would be more connections between photography and anthropology. I am looking forward to learning about other cultures anthropologically through my camera.
References
- Wounded soldiers in hospital; ca. 1860 – ca. 1865; Mathew Brady Photographs of Civil War-Era Personalities and Scenes, 1921 – 1940; Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, Record Group 111. [Online Version, https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/wounded-soldiers-in-hospital, November 19, 2021]
- Morton, C. (2018). Photography, anthropology of. The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1621
- Rebecca Jeffrey Easby, “Louis Daguerre, Paris Boulevardor View of the Boulevard du Temple,” in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed November 19, 2021, https://smarthistory.org/daguerre-paris-boulevard/.
- “Visual Anthropology.” In Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, David Levinson and Melvin Ember, editors. New York: Henry Holt and Company, vol. 4:1345–1351, 1996 [1].
- Collier, J., & Collier, M. (2009). Visual anthropology: Photography as a research method. Univ. of New Mexico Press.
- Will Stapp, “John Beasly Greene”, Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century PhotographyNew York and Oxford, England: Routledge, 2007, pp. 619-622
- Emberling, Geoff. Nubia: Ancient Kingdoms of Africa. New York: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. 2011: 9–11. ISBN 978-0-615-48102-9.
- Shanks, M., & Connie, S. (n.d.). Archaeology and photography. Reclaiming Archaeology. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203068632.ch7