Drawings, illustrations, and images have historically been, and still are integral part of anthropologists’ notebooks, field diaries, and published works. Until very recently, this production has only rarely drawn the attention of isolated, anthropologists such as Michael Taussig and Tim Ingold (Ingold 2011; Taussig 2011). At the present juncture, there is a mounting interest in this form of artistic practice, despite it is never considered under the rubric ‘art’ (Kuschnir 2016; Kofes and Bruno 2018; Ballard 2022). The long silence that surrounds this vast production warrants investigation not only due to its ambiguous role in visual anthropology but also because its study opens the possibility of fruitful synergies between art and anthropology, two disciplines that for a long time have operated almost entirely separately. The need for a rapprochement comes from the necessity to evaluate not only the images’ content but also the form, at once interesting for ethnography, and for the study of artistic modes produced outside the art historical canon.
You can see the exhibition here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/f3b9b1f5561640879612d0040717bcc4