Some beautiful pictures

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Wed, 2010-05-19 17:30
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hennakatrin
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Some beautiful pictures

Perhaps you have seen these pictures before - Hans Sylvester took pictures of Omo valley people in Ethiopia.

Absolutely fantastic set - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3jAmaImbBI

You can see several sets in youtube by Silvester and mostly same shots. I choose this one because in this clip you can see asymmetri - if you remember, CCJ mentiones in her Body and Placse presentation that usually our alteration of a body is symmetric. So it just cought my eye when I saw several women having only one breast painted. Of course - we can't see legs or lower part of a body, maybe there is digonalic symmetry... But still - it just jumps into eye.

And how many of us could decorate ourselves with ... let's say - whatever we find from fridge? And give the final hint while passing flower-shop... :)

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Fri, 2010-05-21 07:43
Spellstone
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Re: Some beautiful pictures

Thanks for posting, that is an extraordinary set of images.

A

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Fri, 2010-05-21 13:59
CCartwrightJones
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Re: Some beautiful pictures

Compare with the narrative of the cameraman (cringe) and the critiques here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdhU3-6SNfs&NR=1

The pictures are indeed wonderful ... but photographers and anthropologists, such as Leni Reifenstahl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leni_Riefenstahl, and tourism have made this discussion very complex. 

When I was at a body arts conference in Oxford, one of the presenters railed loudly at the complete reconstruction of Nuba body art by European photographers, and editorial preferences in "photojournalism".  On the other hand, the subjects particpate gleefully, expecting a paycheck, and play to the camera!  The only critique I would have would be mistaking the images in the photographs for something "natural". 

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Tue, 2010-06-01 17:32
(Reply to #3)
hennakatrin
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Re: Some beautiful pictures

It is a complex issue, indeed - the esthetisation. And making 'wild' edible for western eye. Maybe this is a bit same as with English Park of romantic period - make the cultural nature wild but in a romantic and tamed way with soft hind of 'dangerous'.

I think the question of 'editorial choice' is always there. It is actually there already in anthropological or even folkloristic fieldwork... It is in one hand related to cultural translation - what is object and when it becames subject or vice versa. And how to become own/accepted  same time keeping stranger's point of view but while representing material not to fake it. In another hand this is interesting and really fragile line of representing identity - how much it is real, how much constructed or reconstructed.

As Estonian we have this issue up even now - Estonian language, written language was created by - Germans, according to German grammar. We have a golrified description of Golden Ages of Mythologial Estonians - created by Baltic-Germans estophiles. How much is own and how much is... made up like with Nubas?
I don't know. :)

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