Book review: Sasanka Perera. 2020. The Fear of the Visual? Photography,Anthropology,and Anxieties of Seeing

At the outset of his most timely book, Sasanka Perera makes his intentions clear—it is to ‘lay the groundwork for considering photography, a serious approach to anthropological research’ (p. 2). The dilemmas he faced in the process as well as the opposition—if not skepticism—resonate with those of us who have worked to bring photography into academic discourse. Melding the personal with structured arguments, the author takes us through the early history of colonial photography (Chapter 2—‘Imperial Power, Colonial Image-making and Photography’), the objectification of the ‘native’ body and role of the studio in the lives of the colonials and then of the emergent Indian middle classes.

The next chapter (‘The Shadows of Two Histories’) is a useful mapping of the acceptance of the camera by early anthropologists. When the camera went to the field, it was primarily, as well-known authors Elizabeth Edwards and Christopher Pinney point out, because of doubts regarding the interest or ability of natives to describe their circumstances ‘accurately’ (Pinney quoted on p. 85). However, according to Edwards (1992), the so-called objective photographs of more puny native types were used to support the now-rejected theories of Social Darwinism. Well into the 20^th century, it was Bronislaw Malinowski and Margaret Mead who actively used the camera to record their research findings. Malinowski writes, ‘I worked honestly for 3 hours with camera and notebook, and learned a great deal, lots of concrete details’ (quoted on p. 100), and in the late 1930s, Mead and husband Geoffrey Bateson took 38,000 photographs for their massive study based in and around Bali. In this context, Perera’s mention of the Sri Lankan anthropologist Gananath Obeyesekere’s use of photographs unwittingly reminds us that none of the rich Geertzian thick descriptions of post-independent India’s leading sociologists and social anthropologists ever used photographs.

The author then takes a bit of a quantum leap to the next chapter, an introspection on ‘Selfies’. He asks, what happens to the constantly edited and reproduced self? In an interesting observation on the word, an integral contribution of internet slang, Perera points out that though a product of 21^st-century technology, these are ‘fed by a much larger obsession with the self and the formulation of self-portraits’ (p. 122). Before ending his ruminations on this phenomenon that has invaded cyber space the author provides chilling statistics on deaths that have occurred by those unmindful of the dangers of standing on seashores, edges of cliffs and precipitous roads, phones in hand. In case the reader is in shock, an interesting description of wedding photographs that follows, will undoubtedly come as welcome relief. Particularly interesting is the discussion on the absent smile in early wedding photographs—a legacy of ‘Victorian upper-class social decorum, tempered by religion and caste’ (pp. 158-9).

After these two detours, in ‘Why Visual Anthropology and Visual Sociology’ (Chapter 6), Perera returns to the question that bothers many of us: why were these sub-disciplines necessary and could not the visual be accommodated within the mainstream of the two parent disciplines? He categorically affirms that the visual was a category with ‘which most of our academic counterparts were not keen to deal with’ (p. 181). Further, he feels that this is because the visual was ‘thought to be intellectually too soft, difficult to objectify, embedded in what is seen as layers of subjectivities, and finally, almost impossible to quantify’ (p. 185). Thus it was best to come up with a sub-discipline. In this useful chapter, Perera analyses important contributions of the American scholars Howard Becker, Douglas Harper and Bernt Schnettler. Though he does mention Christopher Pinney, Elizabeth Edwards and colonial photography, Perera could also have discussed Pinney’s fairly recent work on contemporary practices and fantasy via the camera—Artisan Camera: Studio Photography from Central India. Richly embellished with many photographs, Pinney analyses the sociological implications of the role of the camera in understanding life in small-town Nagda.

‘Photography, Research and the Liminality of Ethics in Contemporary Times’ (Chapter 7) raises some very important issues for those using photographs—archival or contemporary—in their research. When, in 2008, Perera started working with photographs, he had applied the general principles of field research ethics. However, 12 years later, given the world today and the changing discourse around photography and photographic practice, ‘I am longer sure if my own position regarding photographic ethics is applicable, or even practical any longer’ (p. 202). Or, as he notes, whether in ‘these constantly photographed global circumstances’ (p. 203), are such issues still relevant? Nevertheless, he does go on to address the matter of ethics and concludes, among other things, that when photographs have been part of the overall research design, it is easy to think ‘ethically in the conventional sense’ (p. 204). That is, permission is needed of subjects, photographs were not to be used for anything else beyond the stated purpose and so on—though, in order to safeguard oneself, it was useful to tell informants that they might find themselves on the internet. Perera then goes on to discuss street photography where norms are difficult to establish—but does point out that it needed to be distinguised from ‘clandestine photography utilised by some journalists and researchers in specific contexts’ (p. 218).

Sasanka Perera comes full circle in his last chapter, ‘Fear of the Visual’ and reminds the reader that his was ‘both a personal journey and an academic inquiry’ (p. 244)—and frankly, that is what makes the book so useful and interesting: given that the use of photographs is still not popular in anthropology and sociology, his iterations on colonial and contemporary uses of the photograph juxtaposed with dilemmas of ethics will embolden those staking a claim for the image as a legitimate research tool.