A seismic shift has occurred in the area of visual anthropology. The naïve realism encoded in long takes shot proscenium-style has given way to a more impressionistic approach that aims at creating a more immersive experience for the viewer. A seminal moment in this movement is often credited to the 2012 release of the film Leviathan by Lucien Castaing‐Taylor and Véréna Paravel, but the groundwork for this shift was being laid well before.
This new approach, championed by, among others, Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, can be seen as following in the theoretical footsteps of neo formalism, and therefore faces some of the same theoretical challenges. Do the techniques utilised by this new wave of visual anthropologists actually affect the audience in the ways the filmmakers claim? Could these reactions be culturally bound? And what does this approach mean for anthropology as a discipline, and how it defines itself?
New and exciting developments and paradigm shifts in a discipline often lead to a reevaluation of the discipline itself, and this panel will draw together experts in the field to discuss this exciting new direction in visual anthropology and what it means for the future of the discipline.
