Search

VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY AS A RESEARCH DISCIPLINE // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2013. Issue 1 (1). P. 68-74

Visual Anthropology is a modern dynamic interdisciplinary "industry" of the humanities, based on research experience in the field of ethnography, sociology, history, cultural phenomenology, phenomenology of religion, social psychology, aesthetics and semiotics. The subject of visual anthropology is a set of visual presentations of social and cultural communities and traditions. In the interests of visual anthropology we get all available visual fixation and transmission of social and cultural forms of expression of meaning. Visual images take up a significant segment of the culture as a social-communicative system. Currently, the image has become a leading medium of expression and transmission of important information. "Visual turn" in the culture, which is associated with the focus shift from the semantic aspect of the image to its syntax, is recorded and described. Human ontology and culture fundamentally transformed in connection with this turn. The question about the "correctness" of the image disappears because of the elimination of its referential parameter. The image is now measured not by fidelity of reality, but on the effectiveness of its impact on the recipient: the priority shifts from its identity to its functionality. Since the entire anthropological reality is concentrated in this sort of images, the attitude to reality becomes technical, manipulative. Visual anthropology is actively formed as an integral research discipline, the focus of which is on visual acts - human action or set of actions (both synchronous and consecutive), relating to the visual image, i.e. is an active, aimed at the production, broadcast and use of a visual image. Limiting activation of visual culture sector determines the relevance of research in visual anthropology and makes it one of the most dynamic areas of contemporary humanities.

Keywords: anthropology, culture, visual image, the visual turn