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66 Zbigniew Libera, Magdalena Sztandara 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 present) 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 meaning 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 Ethnology 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 expose 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 different 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, experiences, 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
