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Photography and Anthropology
Christopher Pinney
€ 38.62
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Description for Photography and Anthropology
Paperback. Photography and Anthropology is a highly illustrated, provocative analysis of anthropologists' use of photography from the 1840s to the present. Series: Exposures. Num Pages: 192 pages, 40 colour illustrations, 40 black & white illustrations. BIC Classification: AJC; JHM. Category: (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly. Dimension: 219 x 189 x 16. Weight in Grams: 640.
Photography and anthropology share strikingly parallel histories. Christopher Pinney's provocative and eminently readable account provides a polemical narrative of anthropologists' use of photography from the 1840s to the present. Walter Benjamin suggested that photography 'make[s] the difference between technology and magic visible as a thoroughly historical variable,' and Pinney here explores photography as a divinatory practice. Though viewed as modern and rational, this quality of photography in fact propelled anthropologists towards the 'primitive' lives of those they studied. Early anthropology celebrated photography as a physical record, whose authority and permanence promised an escape from the lack of certainty in speech. ... Read more
Photography and anthropology share strikingly parallel histories. Christopher Pinney's provocative and eminently readable account provides a polemical narrative of anthropologists' use of photography from the 1840s to the present. Walter Benjamin suggested that photography 'make[s] the difference between technology and magic visible as a thoroughly historical variable,' and Pinney here explores photography as a divinatory practice. Though viewed as modern and rational, this quality of photography in fact propelled anthropologists towards the 'primitive' lives of those they studied. Early anthropology celebrated photography as a physical record, whose authority and permanence promised an escape from the lack of certainty in speech. ... Read more
Product Details
Publisher
Reaktion Books United Kingdom
Number of pages
192
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2011
Series
Exposures
Condition
New
Number of Pages
192
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
ISBN
9781861898043
SKU
V9781861898043
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 4 to 8 working days
Ref
99-2
About Christopher Pinney
Christopher Pinney is Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University College London. He is the author of Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs (1997) and 'Photos of the Gods': The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India (2003), both published by Reaktion.
Reviews for Photography and Anthropology
'A masterful synthesis of his twenty years of explorations into the parallel histories of anthropology and photography, Chris Pinney's intellectual archeologies of image, observation, and evidence are at once deeply historical, deeply contemporary, deeply critical, and deeply provocative. I can't imagine a more vivid blow-up of how the photographic magic of realism mirrors and shadows the anthropological realism of magic.' ... Read more