Building upon the ideas from his "Transcultural Cinema", the author argues for a different conception of how visual images create human knowledge in a world in which the value of seeing has often been eclipsed by words. In ten chapters, he explores the relations between photographic images and the human body.

Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xiii INTRODUCTION: Meaning and Being 1 PART I: MATTER AND IMAGE 11 CHAPTER 1: The Body in Cinema 13 CHAPTER 2: Voice and Vision 32 PART II:IMAGES OF CHILDHOOD 65 CHAPTER 3: Films of Childhood 67 CHAPTER 4: Social Aesthetics and the Doon School 94 CHAPTER 5: Doon School Reconsidered 120 PART III:THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGINATION 145 CHAPTER 6: Photo Hierarchicus: Signs and Mirrors in Indian Photography 147 CHAPTER 7: Staging the Body: The Photography of Jean Audema 176 PART IV:THE ETHNOGRAPHIC IMAGINATION 211 CHAPTER 8: The Visual in Anthropology 213 CHAPTER 9: Anthropology 's Lost Vision 227 CHAPTER 10: New Principles of Visual Anthropology 264 Filmography 275 Bibliography 283 Index 299

"Embracing, generous, thought-full. David MacDougall weaves together Robbe-Grillet and Robert Flaherty, early cinema and indigenous media, films of childhood and colonial postcards to offer a fresh, compelling case for the primacy of film in the study of culture. Across a range of examples, he asks us to consider what form of knowledge cinema conveys incisively that written work grasps imperfectly. MacDougall stands as one of the great creators of, and commentators on, film working today."—Bill Nichols, author of Introduction to Documentary and Representing Reality

"This is a marvelous book, free of cant and jargon, by one of the most distinguished and reflective nonfiction filmmakers in the world today. Replete with implications for a whole host of intellectual disciplines and cultural practices, inside and outside the academy, it is an enormously exciting work."—Lucien Taylor, Film Study Center, Harvard University

"This is a terrific book, one whose arguments are provocative, thoughtful, and illuminating. Without question, it represents an important contribution to the present and future possibilities of visual anthropology in ways that are visionary and exciting, and that will be of interest to people interested in anthropology and documentary—fields in which David MacDougall is well known."—Faye Ginsburg, David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Media, Culture, and History, New York University

Embracing, generous, thought-full. David MacDougall weaves together Robbe-Grillet and Robert Flaherty, early cinema and indigenous media, films of childhood and colonial postcards to offer a fresh, compelling case for the primacy of film in the study of culture. Across a range of examples, he asks us to consider what form of knowledge cinema conveys incisively that written work grasps imperfectly. MacDougall stands as one of the great creators of, and commentators on, film working today. -- Bill Nichols, author of "Introduction to Documentary" and "Representing Reality" This is a marvelous book, free of cant and jargon, by one of the most distinguished and reflective nonfiction filmmakers in the world today. Replete with implications for a whole host of intellectual disciplines and cultural practices, inside and outside the academy, it is an enormously exciting work. -- Lucien Taylor, Film Study Center, Harvard University This is a terrific book, one whose arguments are provocative, thoughtful, and illuminating. Without question, it represents an important contribution to the present and future possibilities of visual anthropology in ways that are visionary and exciting, and that will be of interest to people interested in anthropology and documentary--fields in which David MacDougall is well known. -- Faye Ginsburg, David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Media, Culture, and History, New York University