You never know when or how new research will begin. Let alone how you’re going to do it. That’s why it’s always good to take notes…and photographs.

In March 2012, when I was in the middle of my doctoral work in Cabo Pulmo, I just happened to map the coastal profile of a nearby beach (known as “Los Frailes”). It’s a long, sandy stretch of beach that curves around a small bay. I walked along the edge of the waterline with a small hand-held GPS unit and mapped the profile. I’m still not sure why I did it; I just decided to map it. By chance, the very next week, a huge section of that same beach collapsed into the ocean. As it turns out, there’s a deep underwater canyon that runs right up to the shore. That morning I heard several reports about the beach collapse, so I raced over to check it out with a few friends. About 120 meters of the beach–the same place where I’d walked and mapped the week before–had just fallen into the ocean. I re-mapped the coast, took some photographs, and archived it in my memory bank as something to keep in mind.

Later that year, this issue of coastal instability came up yet again. In early September, I stepped outside to watch an approaching storm as it hit Cabo Pulmo. I didn’t even mention this event in my fieldnotes, but I did take photographs (see Image 1 above). At the time, my research was focused primarily on the local politics of conservation and development. I wasn’t looking at anything related to the effects of climate change, coastal erosion, or sea level rise. But there it was. Once again: archived.

I returned to Cabo Pulmo in 2013. This time, I was paying more attention to coastal erosion, but it still wasn’t my primary research focus. I re-photographed the sea wall and beach that I had photographed in 2012 (see Image 2). This second image is shot with a different camera, and from a different position, but the change that took place is pretty clear: a large section of the rounded sea wall in the foreground is gone, along with a big chunk of the soil behind the wall.

During that trip in 2013, I spent more time photographing the effects of coastal change and erosion, including photographs of failing sea walls and repairs. This was when I began paying closer attention to the unstable nature of the coast, and not only how people live with this instability, but also try to control it as much as possible. These sea walls are basically temporary fixes that can withstand coastal erosion for an often unknowable period of time. Some hold up better than others. But these residents persist, battling against the tides and storms.

Around that time I started asking more people about these changes. Some of these conversations had come up during my interviews, and I wanted to know more. One couple who has been traveling to Cabo Pulmo for more than two decades shared a photograph they had taken of the beach in the mid 1990s (Image 3), which is basically a 180 degree view of the same beach shown in images 1 and 2. Like all of the other images (and data), this went to my mental archive as something I wanted to focus on more closely in the future.

Fast forward to the present. I just returned from another follow up trip to Cabo Pulmo this past June. I also went there for some follow up research in 2017. On both of these trips I was paying ever more attention to erosion and what people were saying about it. Image 4 (below), taken on New Year’s day in 2017, shows a similar view of the beach as Image 3. If you look closely at Image 4, you can see the same orange-yellow wall on the left side of the image that is in Image 3. These images were clearly taken from different positions, but they show the dramatic changes that have taken place over the past two decades. The sandy beach that used to buffer these coastal structures has been severely reduced. At high tide, there is no beach. Image 5, from June of this year (2018), shows the same approximate location. This last image was taken at a moderate high tide, and it illustrates the complete loss of beach (and a sea wall that has been severely undermined).

The collapsing beach and the storm photograph that I discussed at the beginning of this post have, in the end, sparked an entirely new line of research for me. I am currently working on new projects that examine coastal erosion and sea level rise from an anthropological perspective. This includes ongoing work in Cabo Pulmo, and an expanded project that examines these issues along the California coast in the US.

Up until this point, I have used photography in a fairly unsystematic way, mostly as a quick note-taking tool. I took photographs to loosely document places and events, and as visual reminders. Now it’s time to get far more systematic. When I shot all of these images, I was not thinking about using photography as a primary method for my research, but I am now.

Repeat photography is a thing, in case you didn’t know. If you haven’t heard about it, I recommend checking into the work of photographers such as Mark Klett (for starters). Here’s a short article from the Christian Science Monitor in 1985 that discusses some of Klett’s work, along with a few others who have undertaken this kind of re-photographic work. In Klett et al.’s 1977 book “Second View: The Rephotographic Survey Project” the authors relocated and rephotographed locations that were first documented by 19th century photographers:

Over a period of three years, using the photographs of O’Sullivan, Jackson, Hillers, Russell, and Gardner, along with government maps and notes, the survey found 120 of the orginal sites. They then made photographs that matched the originals in both angle and light.

The work of Klett and others has been very useful and inspirational. But is anybody using this methodology in anthropology? The answer is yes. Trudi Smith, for example, is an anthropologist who has done some excellent work with repeat photography. I first learned about her work back around 2009 and have followed her since. Her work is creative, detailed, and compelling. Smith published a 2007 article in Visual Anthropology titled “Repeat Photography as a Method in Visual Anthropology.” Answering George Marcus’s call for a ‘research imaginary’ that challenges and reorients existing ethnographic practices, Smith writes:

I propose that repeat photography reimagines ethnographic practice and realigns product and process in visual anthropology while it examines the photographic record of a place and subjects it to contemporary analysis. Repeat photography reworks the double meaning of ethnography for visual anthropology. The process, or the fieldwork component of ethnographic practice in repeat photography, is a visual, embodied strategy that emphasizes looking, insight, and reenactment.

Klett et al. and Smith each blend the scientific and the aesthetic in their work. They are concerned with not only finding and rephotographing certain locations, but also thinking through the process that goes into making photographs. Why did the photographer make the image in that particular way, and what does it tell us about culture and aesthetics of that time? And what does this tell us about change, not just in landscapes but also in cultural meanings and memories that people attach to those landscapes?

As I move from the note-taking stage to a more focused research project, these are definitely some of the questions I plan to explore via repeat photography. I am also interested in exploring how this kind of photography can be helpful for opening up dialog and reflection about issues (climate change, sea level rise, and the subsequent social, economic and political problems that come with them) that are often difficult to discuss.

In Cabo Pulmo, this means I will be systematically rephotographing images that I have taken between 2005 and the present. At the same time, the plan is to repeat photographs such as Image 3 (above) and and then interview residents (and hopefully some of the people who took the photographs) to round out the process. Working with the photographic collections of local residents could be a great way to not only document historical change, but also to create venues for talking about both the present and the future.

I’m doing something along the same lines up here in California, although in this case there are often extensive photographic archives (via local Historical Societies and various university collections) that provide a good baseline for repeat photography work. I am starting this work in San Diego and Santa Cruz counties, and building off of the work of Gary Griggs (among others) for the latter. Griggs, who is a coastal geologist and Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, has done extensive work on issues of coastal change, erosion, and sea level rise (see Griggs 2017 for example). He has not only produced a ton of scholarly articles about these issues, but also written a lot for broader audiences. This includes a popular 2006 publication with Deepika Shrestha Ross that employs repeat photography to examine the Santa Cruz coast in the past and present. Here’s a short online article about some of this Santa Cruz-based work by Griggs and Ross.

In all of the sites where I am working, the primary idea is to use visual methods to compliment and augment more traditional ethnographic methods. I’m looking to find out more about the material effects of coastal erosion and sea level rise (i.e. literally documenting how places have changed), while also exploring the social meanings and implications of these persistent, ongoing processes.

As someone who grew up near the ocean, and in the water all of the time (like 4-6 hours per day), I can’t say that these issues were at the forefront of my mind. Sure, I knew about sea walls and erosion and the effects of big storms (like the 1983 El Niño), but these weren’t issues that were on my mind day in and out. This stuff only became a pressing issue when something big collapsed or when some massive storm overtook a coastal road. Otherwise, for me and many of the people I surfed with, we just sort of lived with the changing coast and took it all day by day. We paid close attention to all of the daily effects (shifting beach sands affect waves daily), but it’s not like we were worried all the time about long-term change or damage.

This is all personal and anecdotal, of course, but based upon some of the preliminary interviews and informal conversations that I have done on these issues so far, many people seem to have a similar attitude. While climate change, sea level rise, and coastal erosion are big, hot-button issues, it’s not necessarily the case that they are such pressing issues that they are a daily concern. It’s hard to see change at this level. Some of this depends quite heavily on the extent to which people feel that they are personally at risk, however. But, as with climate change, trying to assess not only what people think, but also how and why they ultimately decide to take action is tricky. These are just some of the questions that I am in the process of trying to answer now. Photographs, especially when they depict striking differences, may be able to help highlight some of the long-term changes that are difficult to see on a day to day basis, and therefore facilitate the ethnographic process. That’s the idea, anyway.

The next step is to identify some of the images and locations that I plan on rephotographing. That means paying closer attention to dates, time of day, tides, lighting, lens choices, angles and so on. But that’s the fun part. After that I’ll move on to using those images as part of the interview process. Or, perhaps, it could be fun to open up the whole process and have people relocate and photograph these places with me. These are just some ideas. It’s always fun (and challenging) to move from ideas and notes to actual research. And that’s right where I’m at now.

All of this began with a chance event, which I happened to document, and a few photographs of an approaching storm. This is how research and a lot of creative work takes shape, at least for me. Sometimes things lead nowhere, and sometimes small avenues, ideas, or side projects lead to whole new lines of exploration and research. This is yet another reminder for why taking good fieldnotes is so important, because you just never know where some seemingly minor detail will lead you. But in this case, don’t just take notes! As I said in the opening lines of this post: take photographs as well. It doesn’t matter if you’re using an iPhone or an 8×10 film camera. And, if you think you have any interest in using repeat photography as a method: take notes about your photographs as well! Trust me, it will save you an immense amount of time when you try to relocate and rephotograph something you shot 10 years ago. Wish me luck.

Ryan

Ryan Anderson is a cultural and environmental anthropologist.

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This series – #ROR2018 – has taken a backseat for several months. I’ve been mostly active on Twitter while I navigate state bureaucracies, assemble a research team, begin the process of data collection, management, and analysis, build a house, do my part to getting Footnotes off the ground, deal with #hautalk, fast for Ramadan, and focus on my visiting partner. Things have been hectic, but I found a fleeting moment to address something. Recently, I received an email from a student. Here is an excerpt:

I would be very curious and interested to read something about how you engage in what you named “visual ethnography” and how photography interacts in your practice in anthropological research: what use do you make of the camera? What place holds photography in your project? How does it change it?

I want to begin by noting that “visual ethnography” is not my term nor is it my invention. I want to first clarify how I think about ethnography. The suffix of ethnography should not denote that it is just about writing, but that it involves description, representation, and record more generally. It can be written and it can be recorded as a photograph and video, but it can even be a soundscape or illustration. The term “visual ethnography” may then seem redundant, but I think it’s necessary in order to distinguish a particular sensory engagement from the accepted standard of reading “written ethnography.” Importantly, I don’t think that any form of ethnography should stand alone: just as visual ethnography should be paired with text (or something else), so too do I believe that text should be paired with non-text. My hope is that we can move toward a significantly more mainstream “multimodal” model of anthropology, to use a hot new word. Multimodality describes just that: anthropology that engages with the world by many different ways. Text and photos and video, but also social media, art, experience, sense, and on and on and on.

Ethnographic photography, in particular, is practically as old as the camera,[1] but some of my favorite work comes out of the early to mid-20th century. While not deliberately ethnographic, you should spend some time perusing the documentary oeuvre of Kiowa photographer Horace Poolaw and portraiture of the Malian photographers, Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe. Among today’s active photographers, I admire the portraiture of Matika Wilbur and Omar Victor Diop, the street photography of Brent Luvaas, and the work of Jason De Léon. Not all of these photographers were or are “ethnographers,” but to say their work is not ethnographic or documentary[2] would be to undermine the expansive potential of ethnography itself.

To answer the above questions, it is tempting to say that the camera is another tool and photography another kind of data, but that would be a vulgar underestimation of what they actually can do. The camera is a tool, but also method, key, and weapon; photography is data, but also directive, generative, and educational.

The camera both opens doors and closes them. In my experience, people want to be photographed during the events for which they are dressed to the nines, like naming ceremonies and marriages, which I attend frequently, but also religious holidays like Korité (Eid al-Fitr) and Tabaski (Eid al-Adha). Being known as a photographer means being invited to these events which are so important to peoples’ lives and it means sharing in celebration with them. The camera has been at the center of conversations which jumpstart of new friendships.

Most of the people I photograph begin as strangers and become my friends. I help with the farm work, go through all the annoying ethics documents with them, and ask for their input into the creative process. (Kate Schneider, personal communication)

People do not always want to be photographed as they walk through the market, drive to work, or take part in other quotidian tasks – the kinds of things one captures in the genre of “street photography.” As a result, while I’m regularly told to take my camera everywhere, I’ve actually been taking my camera to fewer and fewer places. People treat me differently, sometimes as an interloper (one who invades private and personal spaces), other times as a tourist (one who is not significantly invested in the care and attention to the experiences of the community around me). Common sense is helpful: I would never raise the camera to my eye in the thick of a hospital waiting room, consultation room, or delivery room, even if childbirth lies at the center of my dissertation research. Those are moments best left to the memory of the attendees.

One reason I chose anthropology, as opposed to journalism, was because anthropology allows me to put my camera down. I don’t always need to “get the shot.” (Jeffrey Schonberg, personal communication)

The key, of course, is to be respectful and to ask permission, and to engage in a collaborative project and to pay or barter when appropriate. A collaborator’s time, labor, and voice are important to the development of strong ethnographic photography. When in doubt, one might ask themselves what they might do as not to embody the naked entitlement and privilege from which Diane Arbus and Susan Sontag have drawn.

“Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do,” [Diane] Arbus wrote. The camera is a kind of passport that annihilates moral boundaries and social inhibitions, freeing the photographer from any responsibility toward the people photographed. The whole point of photographing people is that you are not intervening in their lives, only visiting them. The photographer is supertourist, an extension of the anthropologist, visiting natives and bringing back news of their exotic doings and strange gear. The photographer is always trying to colonize new experiences or find new ways to look at familiar subjects—to fight against boredom” (Sontag 1977, 33).

Move slowly and with caution. Compose carefully. If possible, use film. Take the time to listen to those with whom you engage, or at least make yourself conspicuous to them, as well as your audience.

Take your time, shoot film. Publish photos, lest we keep our interlocutors invisible. Be visible in your work. (Jason De Léon, paraphrased from my #displace18 notes)

I like to joke, perhaps to the chagrin of my committee, that if “a picture is worth a thousand words,” then I should be able to submit a portfolio of 100 photographs as my dissertation. What it really means is that photos can be coded (if coding is your thing). Codes are thematic keywords, which are akin to hashtags, that one can assign to words, phrases, paragraphs, but also photos (or parts of photos), video, sound – anything really. The codes I use have been collaboratively developed and defined (in Wolof, French, and English) with the assistance of two Senegalese graduate students. I use these same codes to organize my photography in order to tie visual representations of themes, ideas, or just memories to those that are written (i.e. notes) and spoken (i.e. transcriptions). Like notes, not everything can be coded and photography is therefore also generative; it gives way to new ideas, directions, and questions, particularly when they don’t fit neatly into categories. Photography gives me pause for reflection. It provides visual cues from which I recall details that I might not have put into words at the time, or maybe I can catch things that I had not seen before.

So, then, back to methods: Photographs can also be cues to others. With a method called “photo elicitation,” we may present a photograph to someone and ask, “Can you tell me about this?” With another called “photo voice,” we call on a group of participants to take photographs and then present them to each other in a focus group-style interview session. In both cases, though to varying degrees, what we’re seeking is the perspective of the participant in a different way than we might in informal conversation or formalized interviews.

My journey with photography – like the rest of my work and my approach to it – is still unfolding, but I know that it will occupy a significant portion of my dissertation. (Editor’s Note: Dear Committee, Not 100%. Sincerely, Dick.) There’s only so much of the story that I can tell in writing.

[1] Early examples of photography that told us something about people and their relationships to histories, experiences, and power can be found in the works of Augustus Washington, a Black American portrait photographer and daguerreotypist who worked in Senegal, Gambia, and Sierra Leone and opened a studio in Liberia in 1853; the Lutterodt brothers, Ghanaian portrait photographers of the late 19th century; Alphonso Lisk-Carew, the Sierra Leonean portrait photographer of the early 20th century. Even though they came after some of those listed above, the following three White Dudes tend to be a starting point for the history of ethnographic photography in Visual Anthropology curricula and “household names” (at least in the house of North Atlantic Anthropology): Franz Boas was using photography as early as 1894, the photographer Edward Curtis began his career in “salvage ethnography” in 1895, and Bronislaw Malinowski was photographing during his research between 1915-1918.

[2] In my Visual Anthropology course in college, we were asked, throughout the semester, to ponder the difference between visual ethnography and documentary. The best answer I could come up with was that it depended on whose voice was most apparent – researcher, collaborator, participant. As filmmakers and photographers collaborate with ethnographers, or as students seek dual training in ethnography and film/photo, I’m not so sure it’s a question worth asking any more.

Dick

Dick Powis is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include men and childbirth, prenatal screening technologies, and reproductive health in urban settings in Senegal. Read more at dickpowis.com.

www.dickpowis.com

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And, predictably, no amount of unproblematic entry will prevent the difficult transition that I always have: First, some mixture of jet lag, allergies, humidity, and weather lays me out for a day or two; this time four and counting. It’s embarrassing to arrive and then appear to go straight to bed for longer than a day while my body resets. The longer lasting difficulty is having to readjust to the languages. I find that when people speak to me in French, they prefer a French response – the same for Wolof – but without thinking I might just respond with whichever comes naturally. This can be a real problem when remembering to use tu– and vous-forms appropriately (I am habituated to using tu) or responding to older people with Wolof slang (which always gets a laugh from younger people). While I am considered conversationally fluent in French, it’s important to note that I didn’t begin learning French until I was 26, (and Wolof at 28). I was once told that the ability to learn a new language after the age of 16 falls precipitously, though I’m not sure if that’s true. It takes my brain about 3-4 weeks to relearn major social and linguistic cues and after two months I have relatively no problems.

I’m currently staying with relatives of my host in the Liberté 6 neighborhood for a few weeks while my house in Parcelles becomes habitable. As it stands, it has no roof, windows, doors, running water, or electricity, but it should very soon. I bought a brand new front door and watched it get installed the day I arrived. I am apprehensive to completely unpack until I can do so in my own semi-permanent space. I say semi-permanent because I am co-funding the construction of this house with my host and I understand that I should always have a place there when I want to return. Rather than pay rent, I’ve chosen to put the same amount of money that I could afford for rent into this home. That money goes a lot further, of course, than it would in the US.

I would like to start my research timeline by the end of January by at least renewing contact with the clinic(s) in which I want to work and putting out a call for research assistants. I’ve been told that starting research within the first month is ambitious at best, even foolhardy. It keeps me motivated, especially as I seize upon my New Year’s resolutions – something I’ve never pursued before – to exercise, take photographs every day, and keep a rigid routine involving not only my health but research-related items such as committing at least one hour per day to writing highly detailed ethnographic notes. (In the future, I will write a blog in this series about my workflow and the mobile apps that I find indispensable to ethnographic research.)

The transition into research seems to be as much of a “hurry up and wait” situation as it was when I was waiting on my funding to come through. It might be that the hardest part is just learning to cut myself some slack.

Dick

Dick Powis is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include men and childbirth, prenatal screening technologies, and reproductive health in urban settings in Senegal. Read more at dickpowis.com.

www.dickpowis.com

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Early on in college, I took a lot of inspiration from John Hawks’ article calling for researchers to be transparent and engaging with their research in combination with Tricia Wang’s article outlining “open ethnography.” To me, Wang’s methodology was an answer to Hawks’ call. Somehow, I would have to navigate ethics review boards which weren’t at all familiar with using social media to disseminate information – and I did (which is a blog post for another time). Later, Samuel Collins and Matt Durington’s work helped me to refine my multimodal workflow, and with Harjant Gill’s help I was able to articulate my mission. As I’ve written there, here, and elsewhere, the overarching goal of publishing data in near-real-time across multiple platforms is to engage multiple audiences, i.e. my home public, a social media savvy Senegalese public, and academic scholars worldwide. Each entry written on a particular social network for a particular audience paints a larger picture when taken as a whole. Conversations with Kate Schneider, Matika Wilbur, and Jeffery Schonberg gave spirit to the ethical relationship between my photography and my photographic collaborators, extending as a fine analog to the relationship between the research and the research participants. I’ve played with some of these multimodal methods in the last five years and I’m about to begin the 12 months of my dissertation fieldwork, so I think it’s important for me to outline the vision of my open ethnography.

This is the ecosystem of my live fieldnotes.

• Facebook: Short texts, personal musings, and conversations about life and research, but also things that have nothing at all to do with research or Senegal. (Access to this account is limited.)
• Twitter (@dtpowis): Shortest texts and multilingual musings reaching the widest audience. While my home public looks on, this is the social media where I’m mostly like to engage with Senegalese interlocutors.
• Instagram (@dtpowis3): Snapshots of selfies, food, books, notes, Post-It Notes, mind maps, sketches, and other kinds of ethnographic marginalia.
• Instagram (@dickpowis): Street and portrait photography captured with digital or film cameras. (Yes, I am lugging darkroom equipment and chemistry to Dakar.)
• Anthrodendum: Long texts about my experiences preparing for and engaging in life and dissertation research (if there is a difference). I’ll use this space to fuse together the smaller components from other social media accounts and fieldnotes and talk about emergent themes. The subreddit r/Anthropology can sometimes serve as an extended comments section to discuss the content of my blog posts, because I’m doing that now since that I’ve had a change of heart.

I’m avoiding YouTube because I know too much about video editing and the time and effort required for that kind of project would completely consume the research project that I am there to do. (Data is very expensive, as well.) I won’t employ Snapchat in this ecosystem because I would like my notes to have some permanence. All materials will be united across all platforms with the hashtag #RoR2018 (i.e. Relations of Reproduction 2018). Am I missing anything? Is there anything else I should consider?

Dick

Dick Powis is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include men and childbirth, prenatal screening technologies, and reproductive health in urban settings in Senegal. Read more at dickpowis.com.

www.dickpowis.com

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