Introduction to the anthropology of photography in Serbia

Abstract

Despite significant strides from the beginning of the 20th century, there was no systematic or institutionalized reflection on photography in Serbian ethnology and anthropology until the 1980s. Until then, photography was mainly used as an additional technical tool for field recording, documenting, and presenting field materials in museums or scientific institutions. However, since the end of the 20th, and especially at the beginning of the 21st century, an increasing number of social scientists have included photography in their works, either through historical and theoretical reflection or through practical use in specific research. This step can be related to the institutionalization of the sub discipline of visual anthropology in Serbia. The paper presents the assumption that both flows are part of a broader process called the visual turn, and the associated flourishing of systematic thinking about visual culture. In this paper, we aim to reconstruct the main features of the visual turn in the local academic community and point out some of its consequences. In addition, our goal is to present the most important achievements related to the mentioned turn, and consider their impact on recent examples of thinking about photography, i.e. its use in ethnological and anthropological research in Serbia. This paper emphasizes the examples that are important in the theoretical, methodological, or applied-scientific framework.

Keywords

• anthropology of photography
• ethnology and anthropology of photography in serbia
• visual turn
• visual culture
• visual anthropology