photography

Photography, which is a natural adjunct to ethnographic fieldwork, has long been an interest of mine but one that I have not recently indulged as much as I would have liked. This interest began early with exposure to photos taken by my father in the 1930s and 1940s (and by playing with his ancient folding Kodak bellows camera). He had an untrained sense of balance that always caught my eye. I’ve included three of his pictures taken with that camera.

In the summer of 1966, as a grad student, I was sent to the Orinoco Delta to do some research with the Warao. To minimize the amount of film I would carry I selected the small but indestructible “half frame” Olympus-Pen D2 camera which, unfortunately, produces tiny slides. Subsequently, I’ve used a variety of SLRs and a simple point and shoot Pentax.