Photography that revisits: Participatory influences in post-colonial, auto-ethnographic visual anthropology practices

Sobers, Shawn

Abstract

My current creative practice – of a photographic discourse which revisits and moves closer into the subject after the shutter has been pressed - brings together three distinct but (for me) related areas in my educational background; BA in film & photography, MA in Anthropology of Media, and a PhD in Participatory & Community Media. Challenging the accepted practices of contemporary fine art photography as a medium which is largely self-contained, and that of visual anthropology where the images usually points towards a larger body of background research – my practice is a fusion of the two, with experiments to find the blurred lines and presenting the visual anthropology as the art work, and the art work as the anthropology.

This paper will talk through some of my projects in this area, which draw on archive images, historical documents and other pre-produced stimuli to re-imagine, re-interpret and re-visit ideas with an auto-ethnographic African diaspora post-colonial sensibility. As a practitioner/researcher who also happens to be Rastafarian, I am fully aware of the complexities of embracing anthropology, which is a discipline not without its critics in afro-centric discourses, and this is a tension I bring to my work as a visual anthropologist.

Citation

Sobers, S. (2014, May). Photography that revisits: Participatory influences in post-colonial, auto-ethnographic visual anthropology practices. Paper presented at Photography and Anthropology conference - Royal Anthropology Institute

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Photography and Anthropology conference - Royal Anthropology Institute
• Start Date: May 29, 2014
• End Date: May 31, 2014
• Publication Date: May 30, 2014
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: anthropology, photography, post-colonialism, Orientalism, autoethnography, visual anthropology
• Publisher URL: http://www.therai.org.uk/conferences/anthropology-and-photography/
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : Photography and Anthropology Conference - Royal Anthropology Institute