Creating a Postcolonial Visual Anthropology Archive

Abstract (English)

This paper describes the challenges of creating a new ethnographic archive in 2023 at the University of Southern California to house almost fifty years of visual and textual ethnographic materials created by USC faculty and graduate students associated with the Department of Anthropology’s Center for Visual Anthropology (CVA). The Center was established in 1977 by anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff, whose ethnographic research on elderly Jewish holocaust survivors in Los Angeles formed the basis for the academy-award winning documentary film Number Our Days. The CVA archive includes footage from this and another of Myerhoff’s films, audio tapes and footage from former CVA director, Timothy Asch’s Yanomamo films, textual material relating to the history of visual anthropology in the US, and digital material from numerous USC Masters in Visual Anthropology graduate students. The paper discusses the institutional challenges of creating a new archive and argues for the need for centralized digital collaboration and communication among ethnographic archives worldwide. The presentation will also show examples of the creative use of archival material by ethnographic filmmakers, scholars, and visual artists at USC’s newly established Center for Ethnographic Media Arts (CEMA). It concludes with a description of a new fellowship at USC funded by CEMA to provide technical and financial support for an artist or anthropologist interested in using the materials in the CVA Archives for their own archive-based project.