"Embracing, generous, thought-full. David MacDougall weaves together Robbe-Grillet and Robert Flaherty, early cinema and indigenous media, films of childhood and colonial postcards to offer a fresh, compelling case for the primacy of film in the study of culture. Across a range of examples, he asks us to consider what form of knowledge cinema conveys incisively that written work grasps imperfectly. MacDougall stands as one of the great creators of, and commentators on, film working today."--Bill Nichols, author of Introduction to Documentary and Representing Reality
"This is a marvelous book, free of cant and jargon, by one of the most distinguished and reflective nonfiction filmmakers in the world today. Replete with implications for a whole host of intellectual disciplines and cultural practices, inside and outside the academy, it is an enormously exciting work."--Lucien Taylor, Film Study Center, Harvard University
"This is a terrific book, one whose arguments are provocative, thoughtful, and illuminating. Without question, it represents an important contribution to the present and future possibilities of visual anthropology in ways that are visionary and exciting, and that will be of interest to people interested in anthropology and documentary--fields in which David MacDougall is well known."--Faye Ginsburg, David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Media, Culture, and History, New York University
"The prose is jargon-free, lucid, and, at its best, poignant, especially when the author writes about the now-grown child subjects of his treasured postcard collection. . . . [MacDougall] urges scholars to see the visual as a complement rather than as a substitute for the verbal, as a language with its own vocabulary and potential. Given the author's obvious accomplishments in both forms, his long and successful career stands as the best evidence for the validity of his argument."--Richard John Ascárate, MEDIEN
Winner of the 2007 Dorothy Lee Award, Media Ecology Association PART I: MATTER AND IMAGE 11 CHAPTER 1: The Body in Cinema 13 PART II:IMAGES OF CHILDHOOD 65 CHAPTER 3: Films of Childhood 67 PART III:THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGINATION 145 CHAPTER 6: Photo Hierarchicus: PART IV:THE ETHNOGRAPHIC IMAGINATION 211 CHAPTER 8: The Visual in Anthropology 213 Filmography 275
One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2006
Acknowledgments xiii
INTRODUCTION: Meaning and Being 1
CHAPTER 2: Voice and Vision 32
CHAPTER 4: Social Aesthetics and the Doon School 94
CHAPTER 5: Doon School Reconsidered 120
Signs and Mirrors in Indian Photography 147
CHAPTER 7: Staging the Body: The Photography of Jean Audema 176
CHAPTER 9: Anthropology ?s Lost Vision 227
CHAPTER 10: New Principles of Visual Anthropology 264
Bibliography 283
Index 299