The Camera and the Anthropologist: Reflections on Photographic Agency

How does our choice of camera impact the way we see our field sites and carry out our work within them? What kinds of seeing does a particular camera enable or foreclose? This essay draws on recent theoretical interventions in new materialism and object-oriented ontology, as well as the author’s last decade of experience producing images in the field, to argue that visual anthropology is a collaborative, co-agentive act between anthropologist and camera. Our cameras matter, we conclude, and it is time for us to begin thinking through how they matter and the kinds of material differences they make.