Pinney’s mentions that Im Thurn argues that cameras are used by anthropologist to record lifeless bodies and that they are distracting from live culture (Pinney, p.36). Cameras are focused on capturing one moment, so they are like the death of the rest of the culture because that one moment gets immortalized. As in death the one moment a person dies is finalized and immortalized nothing comes after the moment of death. When the focus of an anthropologist is on the most “other” aspects of culture, there are parts of the everyday culture not documented. A lot of the missing pictures not only are not taken, but are discarded in the editing process. When editing film, the photographer is looking for the images that answer questions that the research is asking. Other pictures that answers questions that were not asked of the culture are not used. Perhaps a parallel to this is the short film on the “The Falling Man”. This film shows the selection process of the image used for an article written about the 9/11 attacks. It shows how selecting the perfect image is important to a work because the image not only has to depict reality, but has to sit with the reader. There were many images taken of the same falling man, however he selected the images that was the most powerful and stood out. The other images were discarded. While the other images did not have any telling features about the man falling the fact that they were not used, shows how in anthropological works some of the images that depict everyday life are not used. This could be a problem because those images might contain something telling about the culture. When anthropological images transitioned from being moral to scientific this problem became more prevalent when informants were taken out of everyday life and posed in front of grids. Grid photographs are major disruptions to cultural life, but there are subtler disruptions as
Pinney’s mentions that Im Thurn argues that cameras are used by anthropologist to record lifeless bodies and that they are distracting from live culture (Pinney, p.36). Cameras are focused on capturing one moment, so they are like the death of the rest of the culture because that one moment gets immortalized. As in death the one moment a person dies is finalized and immortalized nothing comes after the moment of death. When the focus of an anthropologist is on the most “other” aspects of culture, there are parts of the everyday culture not documented. A lot of the missing pictures not only are not taken, but are discarded in the editing process. When editing film, the photographer is looking for the images that answer questions that the research is asking. Other pictures that answers questions that were not asked of the culture are not used. Perhaps a parallel to this is the short film on the “The Falling Man”. This film shows the selection process of the image used for an article written about the 9/11 attacks. It shows how selecting the perfect image is important to a work because the image not only has to depict reality, but has to sit with the reader. There were many images taken of the same falling man, however he selected the images that was the most powerful and stood out. The other images were discarded. While the other images did not have any telling features about the man falling the fact that they were not used, shows how in anthropological works some of the images that depict everyday life are not used. This could be a problem because those images might contain something telling about the culture. When anthropological images transitioned from being moral to scientific this problem became more prevalent when informants were taken out of everyday life and posed in front of grids. Grid photographs are major disruptions to cultural life, but there are subtler disruptions as