Paper short abstract:

The paper will elaborate the question of the role of visual ethnography in post socialistic era in Eastern Europe. The hypothesis is that the development of (digital) visual technology helped to resist and prevail in many fields of human activities. The challenge is to reconsider the methodology and field-work methods in visual ethnography.

Paper long abstract:

The visual record is an important act of identification of the person and of the cultural situation, which reveals a sensual experience of reality. In anthropology the senses were not regarded as a scientific facts for a long time. This is perhaps a reason that academy was often neglecting endavours in the field of visual anthropology.

The paper will ask the question of the role of visual ethnography in post socialistic era in Eastern Europe. The hypothesis is that the development of (digital) visual technology helped to resist and prevail. There is a vaste field of using visual technology in family production, in the public broadcating, in the sophisticated use in scientific research and in the video art movement. All these fields of intensive use of visual technology enhanced creativity of individuals and of the groups, especially of young people. Democracy of visual production is expanding the sphere of so called open society and enabled many marginal groups to express themselves.

The challenge is in a further inquiry of the hypothesis: did (digital) visual technology help to win the war for democracy? However there are collateral effects in the whole issue like the radical change of esthetic in visual media and the erosion of ethic principals. What are we witnessing today is a chaotic and perhaps epoch-making transformation in the field of the visual, which we have to reconsider.