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statements. In case of ethnographers’ self-depiction in the photographs from the
field, it is simultaneously about the truth of ideas (conventions) and the truth of
events seen through those conventions that are an integral part of conducting eth¬
nographic research in the field.
Ethnographer in the Field Viewed as an “Ethnographic Type”
The photos from the field seem to be addressing not only the moment of taking
the photo but also the moment of being photographed—the moment of facing the
camera in which the subject automatically adopts a pose and constructs a specific
self-image or identity as in a family photo album.
One should also remember that ethnographers who hold the camera and take at
a first glance somewhat informal pictures are also users of a particular culture. This
implies that one standing on both sides of the camera cannot separate oneself from
entanglement with a certain sophisticated presentation. Here we can see some sim¬
ilarity with so-called peasants photography from the first decades of the twentieth
century. In this case, however, the main characters are mostly ethnographers and
the elements of the scenery are the “natives”, material objects, and the defined area
understood broadly as a field. In the 1950s and sixties, due to the imposed mode
of “salvage ethnography”, the field in Polish ethnology was defined by folk and
traditional culture in different regions from Podhale through Cracow, the Kielce
region, Podlasie to the Warmia, and Mazury (Burchard 1964). Such prespecified
scenery is essentially the same in all-visual representations of portraits from the
field. Frequently, the photographed object is a researcher or group of researchers
incorporated into the framework of the situation automatically recognized as the
“field”: they were captured interviewing aged people at the thresholds of the old
houses, usually busily taking some notes or examining, as detectives, artefacts (also
sketching them or taking photos) or at activities being carried out by the “natives”.
Photographs representing ethnographers and photographs of peasants (cf. Sulima
1992) remained in line with specific ideas and visions of the researchers on how
each of them should look like in the field.
It might be argued that there is a certain cohesion of the composition whose
purpose is to reach a more stable and recognizable image and sense of being eth¬
nographer. The background— “local actors®’—and ethnographers sitting close to
the informants and performing activities (engagement, interest, and comprehen¬
sion) confirms the norms and a standardized set of stereotypes about “being in the
field”. As Fulya Ertem remarks, “At the heart of the act of posing, lies the desire
to appropriate one’s image, to frame one’s subjectivity in order to be looked at
(and thus approved or constituted) by the social gaze” (Ertem 2006: 155). A note¬
book, pencil, camera, and specific costume are used as object-signs that not only
are necessary for conducting a fieldwork but also distinguish researchers from the
respondents. Portraits of ethnographers correspond to the image that they have of