Media & communicationLesson 3 of 5 in the course Anthropology of Media

Photographic Gaze, Colonial Representation, and Gambian Studio Portraits

5 flashcards · 5 quiz questions · 5 match pairs · 5 fill-in sentences · English

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Summary

Photographs do more than record what was in front of a camera. They also shape how viewers see people, cultures, and relationships of power. This lesson introduces the gaze and explores how images of non-Western peoples in National Geographic could frame cultural difference.

Film scholars developed the concept of the gaze in the 1970s to examine both how viewers look at people in visual media and how people within images look at one another. Gaze theory asks what it means to view people and events through mass media.

All flashcards

What is the gaze in visual media?
A relationship of looking and representation in which power can shape who is observed, how they are depicted, and how images are interpreted.
What does jikko mean in Gambian portrait photography?
An ideal of conveying a subject’s character, mood, and personality as understood in everyday life.
What does jamano mean in Gambian studio portraiture?
An emphasis on fashionable novelty, change, and an imagined or aspirational identity.
What is juuntuwaay?
Props and imported goods used in studio photographs, such as bicycles, pens, or sunglasses.
Why should a photograph be treated as more than a transparent record?
Photographers and organizations select subjects, settings, moments, audiences, and purposes, shaping what an image communicates.

Quiz questions

  1. What does the male gaze describe in visual media?Answer: The positioning of women as objects to be looked at and evaluated.
  2. Why can looking in visual media be voyeuristic?Answer: The person being observed may not know that a viewer is watching.
  3. What pattern did Lutz and Collins identify in their analysis of 600 *National Geographic* photographs published from 1950 to 1986?Answer: Many depicted non-Western people as exotic, idealized, and close to nature.
  4. Why did the Basel Mission Society offer European supporters the opportunity to sponsor children in Ghana?Answer: To support mission work and attract converts and donations from Europe.
  5. What did Paul Jenkins’s archival research complicate about photographs of children on the mission compound?Answer: Their apparent rescue story obscured experiences of separation, control, and unhappiness.

Based on Introduction to Anthropology by Jennifer Hasty, David G. Lewis, Marjorie M. Snipes (OpenStax), licensed CC BY 4.0. Adapted into a summary, flashcards and quizzes.

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