William Crocker's Photographic Collection Among the Canela of Central Brazil

Bibliographic Data

ID4269864
AuthorsFabiola Iuvaro (Sainsbury Laboratory, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume11
Issue1
Pages93
Publication date2017-06-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEspaço Ameríndio (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1982-6524 • E-ISSN: 1982-6524
PublisherUniversidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (PUBLISHER • BR)
DOI10.22456/1982-6524.72386
OpenAlexW2734080679
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited13

began field research with the Canela (who live in Maranho state, Brazil) in 1957 and continued to do so intermittently until 2011 -a total of more than fifty-five years. This time in the field exceeds that of any other long-term field research in Social Anthropology. As soon as he arrived among the Canela he began his intensive documentation of their life. Photography and film played a major part in his observation and his use of these media proved extremely innovative in ethnographic study. The material to be discussed in this paper can rightly be considered one of the most detailed and accurate sets of visual documents about Lowland South-American community life ever collected. Despite the importance of this collection and its potential to reveal material stories, it has remained largely unexamined and academically undervalued. My immediate aim in this paper is to re-examine Crocker's visual project in two different but related ways. The first is to look closely at his use of photography in the sense of drawing him out of his relative obscurity, and secondly, to focus my analysis on the circumstances under which the photographs were made, the theoretical ideas that informed them, and the methods employed in taking them in a degree of detail and in a manner that is, to the best of my knowledge, unprecedented. An interview I conducted with Dr. Crocker, today 92 years old, enriches our understanding of the archive collection. For those in the field, these important efforts touching on the 'archival impulse' of Crocker's research, illuminate various points of his work, his irrepressible desire to return to the original, a nostalgia for the recording of the place of absolute commencement

Archaeology · Art · Documentation · Ethnography · Field research · Photography · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Computer Science · History · Museums and Cultural Heritage · Participatory Visual Research Methods

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access