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  • Camera Monologue: Cultural ...
    Suhr, Christian

    Visual anthropology (Journal), 10/2018, Volume: 31, Issue: 4-5
    Journal Article

    Cameras always seem to capture a little too little and a little too much. In ethnographic films profound insights are often found in the tension between what we are taught socially to perceive and the peculiar non-social perception of the camera. Ethnographic filmmakers study the worlds of humans while leaning on, and sometimes being inspired, obstructed and even directed by the particular non-human and monologic forms of seeing and hearing that a camera can produce. But how would a camera perceive the footage it produces, and what would it think of the various ways we use it? In this textual experiment, I imagine what different cameras might reply to these questions if they could speak. In doing so, I call attention to ethnographic filmmaking as a more-than-human, more-than-collaborative and more-than-dialogical mode of cultural critique.