A Few Thoughts on Photography and Anthropology

From the Philippine Star:
“Filipino photojournalist Hannah Reyes Morales has been tapped as one of the photographers for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.

Alongside Russia’s Nanna Heitmann, the two will showcase a photography exhibition in Oslo, Norway to highlight this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winners.

This year’s laureates, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, won the prestigious award for championing press freedom through “their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

Here is my take from an anthropological standpoint (I am taking this as proof that I learned something in the last two years).

Looking into the stories behind the photographs as well as the stories told by the photographs helps us understand the world.

In this almost 7 minute video from National Geographic, Hannah Reyes Morales has a conversation with her mentor Erika Larsen (2:21 in the video). Larsen says “I think we find the most profound, deep things… in what is perceived as daily life activities.” This is anthropology today – looking at the world around us and how people interpret the world, drawing from their own beliefs and experiences (making meaning), and figuring out how these influence their actions.

Me: now I understand why one of the assignments in one of the classes was a photo essay.

Also me: maybe this is one reason I was drawn to anthropology as a field of study. My photography generally falls into two categories – documentary and artistic. Or perhaps more accurately, I started with the desire to document stuff, later evolving into making the documentation pretty and eventually the “pretty” became its own thing. In telling the stories through the photographs, I find my own meaning while trying to tell the world about that meaning.