- Convenors:
-
Richard Fraser
(Arctic University of Norway (UiT))
Peter Ian Crawford (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)
Christian Vium (Aarhus University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the role of photography for understanding alternate futures. It considers the use of historical and contemporary photographs and new forms of digital sharing by actors in diverse ethnographic contexts and their collaborations with anthropologists, museums, and institutions.
Long Abstract:
We invite participants working in diverse ethnographic contexts to consider how photographs are used for imagining alternate futures. We especially welcome those working collaboratively with source communities, through institutions such as museums, and in dialogue with NGOs, political organisations, and conservation initiatives. Particularly in the digital era of social media, the Internet, and new mobile technologies, we are keen to explore how people harness, disseminate, and share photographs in new and novel ways, specifically to imagine and actualise alternate futures.
Possible sub-themes include:
- The role of photography in anthropological history and the encounter between anthropologist and host community
- Ethnographic accounts of photo return, repatriation, and digital sharing
- The use of photographs as tools during ethnographic fieldwork and photo elicitation
- The relationship between museums and host communities and the politics of representation
- Photographs as personal, transportable, and trans-historical objects
- The use of photographs to reconstruct local histories, challenge historical representations, and project alternate futures
- The role of digitisation in archival research
- Artistic and museological encounters with photo collections
- Gendered dimensions of photographic depictions and subaltern experiences
- Questions of ownership, democratisation, and decolonisation
- The ability of photographs to communicate “invisible” dimensions (e.g. sacred places, spirits, and non-human actors)
- The “political ecology” of photographs in the context of the Anthropocene.
- Digital photographs, drones, and mobile phones
- The agency of photographs and their after-lives in physical and digital forms
- Phenomenological experiences and tactile encounters with physical and digital photographs
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 9 March, 2023, -Attila Paksi (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)
Paper short abstract:
This paper highlights the benefits and drawbacks of using participatory photography in a research setting. The paper builds on data acquired between 2016 and 2018 using the Photovoice method with the Namibian Khwe San people in topics related to well-being, traditional knowledge, and food security.
Paper long abstract:
Participatory photography has been used in a variety of research settings to gain insights into local social dynamics, assess available resources on the ground, and evaluate project outcomes, among others. Photovoice is one of the several participatory visual methods where participants identify, capture and reflect on specific topics within their own community through photography, with a specific aim to trigger long-lasting positive social change.
Between 2016 and 2018 multiple Photovoice sessions with Namibian Khwe San hunter-gatherers (n=41) were carried out on topics related to well-being, traditional knowledge, and food and nutrition. Each session followed an adjusted version of a training manual (photovoice.org), organized within a duration of 7 to 10 days. Participation was voluntary. Purposive sampling stratified by gender and age has been used to invite participants. The method yielded a total of 657 photographs and their related narratives.
The photographers reported a sense of enjoyment and empowerment throughout the Photovoice sessions. They took visually well-composed, high-quality photos and shared the stories behind them in great detail. The method contributed to increase trust and balance power relations between the researcher and the community members, and to showcase and strengthen cultural identity. Apart from a valuable set of research data, the method resulted several poster presentations of local traditional knowledge by the participants, and a written report related to food insecurity, which was handed over to local policy-makers.
Bente Sundsvold (University of Tromsø)
Paper short abstract:
Seabird populations are declining at an alarming speed. We will explore how to put an old seabird archive to work through local exhibitions and co-creative workshops in more-than-human approaches. Can we "bring the birds to the tables" to visualize alternate and multi-species imaginaries?
Paper long abstract:
Seabird populations are declining at an alarming speed, globally as well as nationally. Inspired by Tsing et al’s work on the Matsutake Worlds Research (2009), the FUGLAN VEIT project (NRC 2021-2024) explores how more-than-human approaches may bring new attention and alliances in the management of seabirds who seek human protection during the nesting season.
In the presentation we explore some of the experiences by putting to work a nearly fifty-year-old archive at Tromsø museum, Norway. The archive contains several hundred interviews, tape recordings and thousands of photos of local people’s seabird practices along the coast of Northern Norway. The archive is used as an asset for local exhibitions and workshops, inviting descendants of the interviewees and local seabird practitioners to reflect, comment on the images and stories, and to share stories of the contemporary practices and prospects for the future. In the workshops we focused on how to “bring the birds to the tables”, and in the paper, we will discuss some of these findings related to visualizing alternate and multi-species imaginaries.
Sarica Robyn Balsari (UCL)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the production and circulation of photographs within the Parsi community in Mumbai, noting the ways in which contemporary images act as a space where Parsi millennials can carve out new identities and anticipate potential futures.
Paper long abstract:
The proposed paper focuses on the photographic representation of the Indian Zoroastrian (Parsi) community in Mumbai. The Parsis, a minority community who fled Persia between the seventh and eighth century due to Islamic persecution, maintain a unique position in Indian society. Despite its relative socioeconomic eminence, the community has experienced a dramatic decline in population due to low nuptiality, strict endogamy and high emigration. Against this backdrop of crisis, this paper explores possibilities of the reimagination of Parsi identity in the twenty-first century through contemporary photographs that contest traditional tropes of decline and loss. Exploring the production and circulation of photographs within the community, the paper highlights the ways in which traditional markers of Parsi identity are refashioned and negotiated by today’s millennial generation through playful and subversive images on social media. The paper suggests that unlike conventional Parsi imagery that evokes the past, contemporary Parsi photographs point to the future, thereby reinventing Parsi identity in the discourse of decline, survival and revival. Amidst growing fears of epistemic erasure, the preservation of cultural memories, then, assumes new forms and materiality amongst Parsi millennials, with images providing the opportunity to negotiate visual representation and collective memory. This paper incorporates a transcultural and materially mediated approach, specifically exploring how contemporary photographs disseminate the past, present and future across time and space.