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biography of things (cf. Kubica 2013). Therefore, they should be understood in the
context of photographs’ creation, usage, meaning, and also the “crossing from one
categorical domain into another, or from one set of material relations into another”
(Banks & Vokes 2010: 339). Thus perhaps it is worth problematising the issue of
the presence of this type of photography—especially photographic self-portraits of
ethnographers—also in the context of their archival function. Consequently, even
the method of archiving, using or presenting (excluding, forgetting, or making pre¬
sent) becomes important. As Marcus Banks and Richard Vokes argue, “The transit
of an image between the private and public (and vice versa) has the potential to
rework the meanings which are attached to it” (Ibid.: 340). Therefore, the mean¬
ing of these photographs from the field with ethnographers in the background can
change depending on the photograph’s assignment to a particular collection, ways
of usage, and contexts in which they are used.
Photographs from the 1950s, sixties, and seventies presenting ethnographers
during their fieldwork, found and deposited in the archives of Institute of Ethnol¬
ogy and Cultural Anthropology, have begun to live a second life and might be
analytically examined. Looking at the photographs from today’s perspective allows
us to treat them as something more than just “stubborn”, silent images or aesthetic
pictures from the last century. What is more, they take the form of a peculiar
photo-narrative and perhaps even the specific album of the ethnographers in the
field (see chapter “Album of the ethnographers in the field”). To put it simply, we
can treat those individual photographs as a rich repository, specific collection of
similar works that have some “story to tell”. And as it seems, this photo-narrative
may have multiple threads. First of all, a careful analysis of those images indicates
that we can treat ethnography as a field of study in which it is worth trying to ex¬
pose the problem of anthropological knowledge as a construct and as a product of
ethnographers. Next we will look at them in the context of their “formation and
production”, the types of interference in their content, which determines the dif¬
ferent forms of presentation and social biographies and places them into specific
sociocultural discourses (Edwards & Hart 2004).
The idea of taking photos and creating an album of “being there” reveals some
important clues and provokes some important questions worth considering. The
issue of the self-depiction of ethnographers is also interesting and allows us to relate
these images not only to the category of authority but also to “being” a witness of
the working methods and encounters. What do they tell us about ethnographers
in the field, about the ethnographic authority and ways of “being there”? What
do they tell about the self-depiction of the ethnographers at the moment of being
photographed? After all it is well known that ethnographic gaze is not innocent,
just as photographs from the field are not innocent (Clifford 1988). Following
Elizabeth Edwards’ idea (1997) that photography speaks about the culture, experi¬
ences, and beliefs of people, however not at the level of superficial description but
as a visual metaphor, combining what is visible and invisible, it is worth paying