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72 Zbigniew Libera, Magdalena Sztandara 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 ethnographic 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 similarity 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 ethnographer. The background— “local actors®’—and ethnographers sitting close to the informants and performing activities (engagement, interest, and comprehension) 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 notebook, 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
