History
Photos and moving pictures have been used by ethnographers since soon after they were invented. The first ethnographic film occurred in 1895 by Felix-Louis Regnault who filmed a Senegalese woman making pots. Film was used among many researchers however it was Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson who first used methods of visual ethnography such as photos and film as scientific instruments. They opened up the potential of photography and film as analytical tools and data repositories. Visual anthropologists became very interested in the use of video on the 1980s for its convenience, durability, economy and utility. Since the 1990s researchers from different disciplines began to engage with videos as distinct from ethnographic films. This involved the reflexive use of the video as a medium to create knowledge and not just to store data. Technological developments, such as the use of digital video, continue to offer new possibilities for the use of videos in ethnography.
Read more about this topic: Video Ethnography
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)