Photography and anthropology

We cite from the COVER:
"In Photography and Anthropology Christopher Pinney presents a provocative and readable account of the strikingly parallel histories of the two practices, as well as a polemical narrative and overview of the use of photography by anthropologists from the 1840s to the present. Walter Benjamin suggested that photography 'makes the difference between technology and magic visible as a thoroughly historical variable', and Pinney here explores photography as a 'divinatory practice' that propelled anthropologists towards the lives of those they studied."
"Early anthropology celebrated photography as a fixed record whose authority and permanence promised an escape from the lack of certainty in speech. But later anthropologists faulted photography for failing to capture movement and process. Anthropology as a practice of 'being there' has thus found itself entwined in an intimate engagement with photography as a metaphor for the collection of evidence."
"Through numerous archival and contemporary images Photography and Anthropology presents both a history of anthropology's seduction by photography and also an anthropological theory of photography."
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