State of the Ethics in Visual Anthropology

SARA PERRY AND JONATHAN S. MARION

Rooted in anthropologists’ long-standing roles as producers, users, and disseminators of images, this brief article takesthe pulse of ethical considerations related to visual media in the discipline. Reflecting on the intent, content, and im-plications of the Society for Visual Anthropology–sponsored visual ethics discussion sessions at the 2007–9 AmericanAnthropological Association meetings, we seek here to situate these events in the context of recent disciplinary engage-ments with image-based responsibilities and to assess their relationship to comparable endeavors in allied fields. Ourconsiderations come together in a discussion of why, how, and to whom visual ethics matter. Ultimately, we put forward aseries of tentative proposals for the Society for Visual Anthropology’s future navigation of these issues. [Key words:anthropological responsibility, imagery, visual data, visual ethics, visual media]

December 2009 marked the third consecutive yearof the American Anthropological Association(AAA) annual meetings at which the Society for

Visual Anthropology (SVA) has hosted discussion-basedsessions dedicated to the topic of visual ethics.1 Signifi-cantly, 2009 also witnessed the publication of two uniqueAnthropology News In Focus series on both visual ethics(April 2009)2 and codifying ethics (September 2009), aswell as the final approval of the AAA’s revised Code ofEthics (AAA 2009). This convergence of interests withinthe discipline overallFwhich is arguably also mirrored incognate fieldsFleads us to pause here to reflect on theintent, implications, and future of the SVA’s ongoing eth-ics forums. We suggest that such reflection is especiallyimportant given that the AAA’s new ethics code does notyet attend to matters of visual media. This is in spite of thefact that anthropologists are major producers and circu-lators of graphic products, not to mention enduringwitnesses to the pictorial creations of others. Problemati-cally, anthropological practitioners generally still havelittle means to account for the impact of such creations onour disciplinary histories and intellectual/professionaltrajectories (but see, among others, Grimshaw 2001;Hammond et al. 2009 for recent explorations), and fewtools to bolster visual competency across the field as awhole. In fact, one might argue that we have been left withlimited practical resources to guide us in negotiating themoral complexities of visual communication.

Accordingly, we appreciate the SVA’s visual ethicsroundtables as among the few communal forums avail-able to anthropologists for meaningfully workingthrough these complexities. We review here the history

of the roundtable events, their organization, and thecharacter of recent contributions to them. We brieflyseek to compare these sessions to current initiatives inrelated disciplines, and to suggest parallels between thevisual ethical challenges of practitioners across theanthropological field. Ultimately, this article aims toprovide introductory commentary on some of the clearconcerns that underlie responsible visual practice in an-thropology and, in so doing, act as a springboard forfuture exploration and navigation of the issues.

Visual Ethics Discussions at the 2007–9 AAAAnnual Meetings

The current series of ethics dialogues was initiated in 2007in the form of two SVA Special Event lunchtime ses-sionsF‘‘Ethics and Examples: A Discussion RegardingVisual Ethics’’Forganized by one of the authors (Marion).Faced with conflicting interests regarding the uses of hisphotographs of competitive ballroom dancers, Marionconceptualized these sessions as active conversationsabout on-the-ground, in-progress research concerningvisual media. Presenters were asked to provide (1) briefopen-ended examples that did not lend themselves tosimple ‘‘do’’ and ‘‘do not’’ dichotomizations, and thatcould thus serve as (2) focal cases for collaborative de-liberation of real-world ethical matters faced by anthro-pologists working with visual data.3 Audience andspeakers alike were encouraged to question individualapproaches to the visual, challenge each other to thinkabout the ramifications of imagery, and consider potential

Visual Anthropology Review, Vol. 26, Issue 2, pp. 96–104, ISSN 1058-7187, online ISSN 1548-7458. & 2010 by the American Anthropological Association. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-7458.2010.01070.x.

means of managing such ramifications. Especially in lightof the 2007 AAA meeting theme of ‘‘Difference,(In)equality & Justice,’’ these discussions aimed to pushpresenters’ ethical research questions beyond idiosyncraticconcerns into collective considerations of imagery’samassment, use and dissemination, its global reach, andsavvy (or unsavvy) mobilization.

As described elsewhere (Perry 2008), the 2007 ses-sions exposed an assortment of themes and outcomesbehind the application of visual media, many havingprofound consequences for both living and past humanand nonhuman beings. What was critical herein was theraw nature of the featured case studies, as presentersshared current and active ethical negotiations whose ef-fects were still unknown and unfolding. The ensuingdialogue, therefore, had major epistemological andutilitarian potential in the sense of being poised totruly reshape the research process and its results. Thisreal-time significance of the sessions placed impetuson monitoring their on-the-ground impact in thefield, and it was thus that the SVA’s 2008 Roundtable on‘‘The Ethics of Visual Data: Picturing Inclusion, Collab-oration, and Engagement,’’ coorganized by both authors,came into being (see Marion and Perry 2008). Introducedby Marion, the 2008 session primarily consisted of re-visiting, one year further along, cases from the subfieldsof archaeological (Perry), sociocultural (Kate Hennessy),and biological (Anne Zeller) anthropology. The topicalcontent of each presentation was different: Perryaddressed dubious practices of pictorial constructionand pedagogy in archaeology; Hennessy confrontedcontradictions in the application of new media technol-ogies to the visual materials of indigenous nations (seeHennessy 2009); and Zeller struggled with conflictingobligations to multiple human and nonhuman stake-holders while filming in Indonesia. However, at theheart of all three cases was a concern for the articulationand marshalling of rightsFrights that were variouslybeing asserted, challenged, ignored, silenced, miscon-strued, or otherwise mediated. That such concerns could

be ‘‘resolved’’ via the roundtable was neither a realisticnor an intended goal of the session, but we believe thatthe 2008 event, in its revisiting of familiar examples, tes-tified to the concrete benefits that can come from seekingcooperative ethical feedback from the AAA community.In other words, each case study suggested that practition-ers’ visual methods had been constructively affected byguidance proffered through the sessions.

Such guidance was extended again in 2009 with theSVA session on ‘‘End/s, Ethics, and Images: A Roundta-ble Discussion on Visual Ethics’’ (co-organized by bothauthors), which looked to (re)assess both previous andnew case studies, as well as broaden and, in turn, un-derscore the scope of interested contributors. Introducedby Marion, the roundtable broached the moral consid-erations underlying the graphic work of both appliedvisual anthropologist Patricia Sunderland and ChiefArchitect of IBM’s Collaboration Platform John Bosma,and returned to take ethical account of the continueddevelopment of archaeologist Perry’s research. Cursoryassessment of these cases would call attention to theirapparent diversity, including speakers’ disparate fore-grounding of individual, corporate, and academicenvironments, and their respective focuses on video,flow charts/diagrams, and two-dimensional photogra-phy and illustration. At stake in each example, however,was the fact that visual media, as with all forms ofrepresentation, are often used and understood in unan-ticipated ways outside and sometimes within theiroriginal anthropological frameworks of creation. Thecorollary here, as spotlighted by the 2009 Roundtablepresentations, is that consideration of the ongoing livesof images within and beyond these frameworks must betreated as an ethical responsibility in the production anddistribution of the visual (see Figures 1 and 2).

Visual Ethics in Allied Disciplines

The significance of the SVA’s ethics sessions is arguablymost evident in their ability to tease out the aforementioned

Jonathan S. Marion received his Ph.D. from UCSD in 2006, where he was trained in sociocultural and psychological anthropology.Marion’s research on competitive ballroom and salsa dancing throughout the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe focuses onperformance, embodiment, globalization, gender, dress, and activity-based constructions of personal and collective meanings andidentities, and he is the author of Ballroom: Culture and Costume in Competitive Dance (Berg: 2008). An adjunct professor at Cal-ifornia State University San Marcos, where he teaches Cultural, Medical, and Visual Anthropology and an interdisciplinary seminaron Body and Identity, Marion is an amateur ballroom competitor, part-time professional photographer, and Co-Administrator ofhttp://www.Dance-Forums.com and http://www.SalsaForums.com. Sara Perry is completing her Ph.D. in archaeology at the Uni-versity of Southampton. She holds a BA and an MA in anthropology from the University of Victoria, and her research interestsinclude archaeological representation, visual methodologies, anthropological theory and practice, and critical pedagogies. Sara is onthe directorial team of the English Heritage–funded Visualisation in Archaeology (http://www.viarch.org.uk) project, and she cur-rently works as a British Academy Research Fellow at the Society of Antiquaries in London, as well as a Teaching Fellow atSouthampton University.

State of the Ethics in Visual Anthropology PERRY AND MARION 97

similarities between anthropological projects. In so doing,they offer the opportunity to disrupt what Prosser andLoxley (2008) see as the common pessimistic presumptionthat graphic media are so slippery and completely hetero-geneous as to elude any kind of ethical governance or bestpractice. In fact, what seems to have been made obviousthrough the SVA events is that many practitioners are ac-tually yearning for such guidance, and that when provided,it can help to stabilize points of theoretical and method-ological volatility. This predicament leads us, in turn, to

ponder whether a moral imperative now confronts the AAAitself as regards furnishing its members with visual ethicalguidelines.

Certainly, disciplinary principles of practice of thissort are not unknown to visual researchers. Just as moralconcerns simmered across the anthropological communityin 2009, so too did they simultaneously come to a head forthe International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA)with the publication, after a half-decade of review anddevelopment, of its IVSA Code of Research Ethics andGuidelines (Papademas and the IVSA 2009). Three yearsprior, the Visual Sociology Group (VSG) of the British So-ciological Association released its Statement of EthicalPractice (VSG 2006)Fa slightly less prescriptive tool fornurturing responsible visual inquiry. Before that, the As-sociation of Social Anthropologists of the United Kingdomand Commonwealth (ASA) produced Ethical Guidelinesfor Good Research Practice, which made very cursorymention of the appropriate application of certain visualmedia (ASA 1999). Interestingly, the Australian Anthro-pological Society’s (AAS 2003) code of ethics replicates,virtually word-for-word, the ASA’s guidance on suchmedia. Yet even the fleeting acknowledgment of visualmoral matters within the ASA’s and AAS’s documentationis stronger than that which is currently on offer throughthe AAA’s code of ethics.

FIGURE 1. This image, used in Marion’s introduction of the2008 SVA Ethics Roundtable, highlights the enduring ethicalimplications and responsibilities of working with visual media.Arriving in Hollywood Beach, Florida, for the 2005 UnitedStates Dancesport Championships, Marion received an e-mailconcerning four-time U.S. National Professional Open SmoothFinalists Larinda McRaven and Steven HevenorFfrom theirlocal newspaper, the Hartford CourantFasking for images touse in a story about the couple. Thinking he was doing them afavor, Marion e-mailed this image from the 2004 YankeeClassic in Boston, Massachusetts (one of the few with him inFlorida on his laptop), only to wake up the next morning(September 7, 2005) to learn that his image was on the frontpage as illustration for the headline ‘‘Assault Claim Divides

Dancers.’’

FIGURE 2. This image represents one of the critical/decon-structive methodologies that Perry brought to the 2008 and2009 SVA Ethics Roundtables, and represents a technique thatwas subsequently tried by other session participants (in thiscase, by Bosma, at IBM, as he reported back at the 2009Roundtable). While the methodology proved problematic forBosma, this example helps highlight the potential of engaging inreal-time exchanges across (sub-)disciplinary and professionallines, and illustrates the value of cross-collaborating in the de-velopment of strategies to address ethical responsibility in the

production and distribution of the visual.

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Archaeologists and museums specialists, too, appearto have more direction available to them than does thewider anthropological community. This is reflected in avariety of recent efforts to grapple with the ethics ofdisplaying human remains and artifacts, including theUK Working Group on Human Remains’ (2003) DraftCode of Practice for the Treatment, Care and Safe Keepingof Human Remains in English Museums and Collections,and the World Archaeological Congress’s (2006) TamakiMakau-rau Accord on the Display of Human Remainsand Sacred Objects (also see Brooks and Rumsey 2007 fordetails on other ethical codes). Leopold (2010) has com-piled a reference list of articles and policy documents onthe (online) exhibition of culturally sensitive materials.And multiple volumes have been dedicated to the ex-ploration of museum ethics (e.g., Edson 1997; Marstinein press). Recently, too, the Dilmun BioarchaeologyProject (2009; see Morgan et al. in press for context) re-leased its Ethics Statement, representing an ongoingattempt to push the overall discourse on moral visualpractice toward a broader ethics of remediation, ratherthan to leave it curtailed around archaeologists and alimited set of exhibitionary issues.4 However, attestingto the situated and perhaps, then, uncodifiable natureof ethical negotiation, when the Dilmun project teamsought extradisciplinary guidance from the IVSA on theethics of display, their request was met simply with thecapitulation that such matters are highly variable acrossindividuals and specialities (Papademas and the IVSA2009:251).

Our intent here is not to insinuate that the onlyway forward for visual anthropologists is to constructa definitive moral policy for practitioners. Indeed,among others, various archaeologists have been ada-mant in contesting the efficacy of such policies,suggesting that in their sweeping embrace, they effacethoughtful reflection and can hence nurture orthodoxyand blind absolutism (e.g., Swain 2001, 2002; Tarlow2001). The social scientists Prosser et al. (2008:11)touch upon similar reservations, observing that suchregulation has the potential to inappropriately bureau-cratize and circumscribe what is an obviously nuancedprocess, thus helping to safeguard institutions aboveactual research participants. Interestingly, however,Prosser and colleagues’ recommendation is not to es-chew ethical guidelines (indeed, elsewhere, Prosser(2000:132) calls for the formulation of a ‘‘‘checklist’ ofmoral dilemmas’’ to provide ethical orientation topractitioners)Fa stance that has been echoed byanthropologists too (e.g., see Meskell and Pels 2005).Rather, they indicate that the real issue is a lack ofgeneral visual competency and, accordingly, the needfor rigorous training programs that offer meaningful

direction in best practice (Prosser et al. 2008; Wiles et al.2010; also see Pauwels 2008).

Why Visual Ethics Matter

Visual anthropologists have clearly been at the van-guard of such training programs, working to solidifycritical visual research methodologies, including carefulstrategies for mediating ethical concerns. The contribu-tions of Banks (2001, 2007) and Pink (2001, 2007), forexample, complement the pioneering volumes of Grosset al. (1988, 2003) on image ethicsFand in their attemptto put forward generalized counsel on visual work, thesepublications evoke the aims of the SVA’s ethics round-tables. What is of concern, however, is their perceivedrelevance to and incorporation within the broader an-thropological discipline. Given visual media’s absencefrom the AAA ethical code, we are compelled to wonderif matters of image ethics are merely being understood asthe preserve of just a few visual professionals, ratherthan the necessary responsibility of all anthropologists.

Recognition of the universal importance of graphiccompetency is arguably what has inspired the UK-basedEconomic and Social Research Council’s National Centrefor Research Methods to sponsor a series of general out-puts on visual research and ethics (e.g., Prosser 2006;Prosser and Loxley 2008; Prosser et al. 2008; Wiles et al.2008, 2010). A multidisciplinary effort, these documentsarguably seek to press the scope of the conversation be-yond the interests of specialty image scholars, towardthe skilled training of the collective social scientificcommunity. Critical here is the recognition that virtuallyall social practitioners deploy and receive imagery withvarying degrees of consequence and expertise, andshould, therefore, be equipped with the tools to appro-priately manage such interactions. One might go as faras to suggest that it would be ethically dubious, perhapseven academically negligent, nowadays to overlook thevisual enskilment of the greater scholarly and generalpopulation. This attempt to think outside the disciplinarybox has been a primary objective of the SVA’s ethics ses-sions, as evidenced by the participation of professionalswho variously identify themselves as primatologists,applied anthropologists, archaeologists, cultural anthro-pologists, private practitioners, filmmakers, photographers,artists, visual anthropologists, and software inventors. Inthe same vein, the sessions have sought to stretch our eth-ical dialogue past the usual privileging of photographs andvideo, into a more reflective attention to the miscellany ofpast and present visual media and remediations, includinganalog, digital and hybrid illustrations, drawings, charts,diagrams, maps, tables, film, etc.

State of the Ethics in Visual Anthropology PERRY AND MARION 99

However, the extent to which these events have, infact, truly broken down disciplinary barriers and invitedcommon appreciation of the issues is a matter of debate.5

Indeed, for one of the authors (Perry), it has not beenuncommon for her participation in the roundtables as anarchaeologist to prompt suggestions that archaeologicalanthropologists do not have to manage the same ethicalconsiderations regarding imagery as do, for example,cultural anthropologists. At issue, arguably, is the as-sumption that some practitioners, because of theirattention to the past and to nonhuman materials, treadmorally neutral or, at least, ethically less-loaded terri-tory. But certainly, from the perspective of archaeology,this is an assumption that demands confrontation.Indeed, it is an assumption that, as noted above,has already garnered confrontation in the form of mul-tiple ethical codes of conduct for archaeologists, inaddition to various scholarly volumes on ethicalarchaeological practice (e.g., Scarre and Scarre 2006;Vitelli and Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2006; Zimmermanet al. 2003, among many others). The reality, of course, isthat every archaeologist deals with living beings andcurrent affairs, and, indeed, many archaeologists focustheir research specifically on matters of the recent andcontemporary past wherein existing populations areimmediately caught up in the inquiry. More than this,however, to relegate ethics to the realm of the present, asthough they have no relevance to history or prehistory,seems to be an incredibly problematic and misconceiveddefinition of the term. Archaeologists produce images ofpeople, about people, using data derived from currentand past people; they display products made by people,implicating people, evoking, provoking, or purposelydiscounting people; their visual representations, as such,have effects on people and other creatures, includingthemselves.6

Accordingly, to curtail the discussion of ethicsaround issues that implicate only specific (sub)disci-plines or media overlooks the extent and interconnect-edness of anthropologists’ moral commitments andresponsibilities. This point deserves repetition, especiallyin light of the fact that so many case studies in the visualethics literature appear to have prioritized video andphotography above most other forms of graphic display(e.g., Gross et al. 1988; Prosser 2000). The inadequacy ofsuch a focus is testified to by the range of media prob-lematized at the SVA’s roundtable events, from hand-drawn illustrations to digital workflow diagrams. Indeed,what has become apparent is that just as a pie chart canhave repercussions for human (and, we might add, non-human) beings (as Dragga and Voss 2001 outline in theiranalysis of technical illustration), so too can a photo-graph, a map, a drawing, a table, a website, a YouTube

video, or the 3D presentation of an individual’s heritage.Bosma’s material at the 2009 Roundtable highlightedexactly such issues, foregrounding the ethical implica-tions of various styles of representing individuals andgroups via diagrams as they participate in large-scaletechnologically mediated systems.

In this respect, the SVA ethics sessionsFwith theiropen-ended discussion format and broad-scale rep-resentationFhave sought to subvert traditionally com-partmentalized thinking in and about anthropology’ssubfields, foci, and visual media. Moreover, they haveattempted to do so while still respecting the situated na-ture of the research process and the integrity of indi-vidual practitioners’ scholarship. Ultimately, we suggestthat they have exposed not the wholeheartedly uniqueand irreconcilable nature of morality in image work, butthe larger and fundamental linkages between our mani-fold anthropological projects. In other words, what theywitness is our collective struggles with matters of visualcompetency and authority: with questions about whatconstitutes ‘‘the visual,’’ who owns it, who can reproduceand educate about it, where it resides, how it can bemanipulated and construed, and with what effects, andwho has the skill to manage it with the fewest adverseramifications. At stake, thus, are major issues of ac-countability, responsibility, social justice, authorship,rigor, specificity, and overall proficiency and training inimage production and circulation. These are matterscommon and significant to all forms and subjects of vi-sual representation and to all who make, disseminate,and consume such representation. They may not alwaysbe manageable with the same tools or intellectual strat-egies, but as the SVA ethics roundtables attest, they arepresent and potent across the anthropological fieldFnosubdiscipline excluded.

What Comes Next?

Although informal feedback indicates that the roundta-ble sessions have proven educative and perhaps evenconceptually transformative for some, it is clear nowthat participants seek to press the format and objectivesbeyond mere discussion. Multiple commentators havesuggested that the sessions be restructured into moreintensive, outcome-oriented events whose results areofficially communicated to, and debated by, the SVABoard. Moving forward, it has been recommended to usthat such communications be assembled into sugges-tions or coherent guidelines for ethical practice amongSVA members. At the very least, themes from theroundtables might be recorded and circulated to the SVAthrough its website or listserv.

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With these and other recommendations in mind, weare prompted to propose various potential next steps forthe SVA and AAA as regards image ethics. We do notintend these proposals to be declarative statements onbest practice, but rather informed suggestions gainedfrom multiple years of grappling directly with the issues,as well as collecting input from commentators. The SVAhas recently launched an ethics committee, on whichboth authors sit, alongside Nancy Mithlo and its chairKarl Heider. This committee is still embryonic in terms ofits organization and aspirations, yet is positioned to ad-dress ethical concerns at a deeper infrastructural levelthan can be achieved solely through small roundtabledialogues. Ideally, it would formally affiliate with theAAA’s own Ethics Committee, whose legacy and re-source base offer key research and development tools forthe SVA. Such an affiliation might entail negotiating theSVA’s representation on the AAA’s Ethics Committeeand Friends of the Committee on Ethics, or simply initi-ating regular contact between the chairs of all bodies.Of importance here is ensuring that visual researchers’interests are reflected in the AAA’s ethical deci-sion-making processes. This point recalls Pauwels’s(2008:256) and Clark and colleagues’ (2010) observa-tions that, in the absence of such representation, visualstudies are often hindered by existing codes and reviewboards that do not account for image-sensitive practice.In the longer term, such representation has the potentialto champion visual methods and competencies beyondthe SVA alone, pushing them into the intellectual tool-kits of the broader anthropological community.

To complement the SVA’s Ethics Committee, variouspractitioners have suggested the composition of a pageof visual ethics-related materials for inclusion on theSVA website. These sorts of ethics resource banks are notuncommon within the discipline, as testified to by Leo-pold’s (2010) bibliography cited above, not to mentionthe AAA’s own ethics resource webpage (http://www.aaanet.org/cmtes/ethics/Ethics-Resources.cfm). Organi-zations such as the Australian Anthropological Society(2009) have compiled full comparative reviews of theethical codes of kindred associations, and the Society forAmerican Archaeology (n.d.) maintains a range of onlineethics information, from reference lists to news briefsand teaching syllabi. The extent to which such resourcesare exploited by professionals and the public is not nec-essarily clear, nor is the frequency with which they areupdated. Accordingly, we are interested to see the SVAbuild upon the AAA’s existing ethics database with-out replicating its content or otherwise overburdeningusersFand the SVA itselfFwith excessive new docu-mentation to assess and maintain. This process couldentail appending a small number of supplementary

visual ethics links to the AAA’s resource site, or linkingthat site directly to a dedicated SVA webpage. In con-necting with the AAA, we again seek to extend thediscussion of ethical visual practice beyond the SVAalone. The longer-term concern here, however, is ensur-ing that any featured resources are kept meaningful andcurrent.

In the context of capitalizing on relevant extantmaterials, the AAA also supports an online ‘‘case stud-ies’’ feature through which members can submit andcomment upon anthropological ethical dilemmas. Somesuch dilemmas directly pertain to the work of VisualAnthropology (e.g., the application of photography toethnographic research) and arguably thus demand re-sponse from the SVA community. As it has beenproposed to us that a case study database might be usefulto the SVA, we would advise that the AAA’s preexistingresource be employed to this effect, and that visual an-thropologists actively assert their expertise in relateddiscussions, as well as contribute their own case studies.In so doing, we can harness an established infrastructureand avoid investing in duplicative and potentially in-effectual tools, such as the ASA’s original ethics casestudy blog, which initially saw little use (Harper 2006),and even today still seems underexploited. Our effortscan thus be concentrated at larger institutional changevia partnership with the AAA.

Along the same vein, conversations between theSVA and AAA are in progress over establishing an an-nual Association-wide ethics roundtableFan eventwhich the AAA, independent of the SVA, has been con-templating for at least the past year (Plemmons 2009).But in line with Pauwels (2008) and Clark et al. (2010),we appreciate that matters of visualization still deservetheir own special attention or risk being eclipsed by text,oral, and number-orientated approaches. Given thatfeedback indicates SVA members would like the visualethics roundtable sessions to continue at a more rigorouslevel with immediate linkages to the Society’s adminis-tration, we suggest that they become regular features ofthe SVA meeting program. Following the advice of sev-eral of our colleagues, this arrangement might entail asingle or double session, perhaps even contiguous withthe Society’s annual business meeting, to which indi-viduals/groups would apply to briefly discuss an ethicalconcern or theme, and at which a dedicated body of SVAcommentators would guide, attempt with input fromaudience members to respond to, and record the pro-ceedings. The ultimate intent of directing the affairsas such would be twofold: firstly, to document themanagement of real-world visual ethical affairs andthen to make that documentation accessible (whetheron the AAA case study site, the SVA website, Visual

State of the Ethics in Visual Anthropology PERRY AND MARION 101

Anthropology Review, or Anthropology News) for othersto review and comment upon; and secondly, to funnelthe discussions into the development of a series of ori-enting principles for ethical visual practice in thediscipline. The latter principles would ideally be ‘‘roll-ing’’ in nature, such that they are reviewed each year bythe SVA Ethics Committee following the roundtablesand rearticulated over time to address changing circum-stances. In this way, they seek the kind of ‘‘active’’ statusthat the AAA itself has striven to promote in its ethicalcode (Fluehr-Lobban 2009). Moreover, in their collabo-rative development and ongoing maintenance, suchprinciples have the promise to achieve the ‘‘thicklydescriptive ethics’’ postulated by the ASA (Harper andMookherjee 2009:10).

We appreciate that there are multiple paths availableto the SVA for the future negotiation of image ethics,and we see the Society as poised now to advance anapproach that is not reactive (as seems apparent even inthe case of the AAA [Harper and Corsın Jimenez2005:11])Fbut anticipatory and fluid. To date, the SVAroundtables have offered a simple venue to initiate con-versations about specific moral issues, but it is clearlytime to push the state of ethics in Visual Anthropologyinto a broader, more engaged, and responsive domain.

Acknowledgments

Among many others, we owe great thanks to Liam Buckley, JeromeCrowder, Aaron Glass, Ian Kirkpatrick, Stephanie Moser, TrudiSmith, Patricia Sunderland, and Anne Zeller for critique of andinput on both this article and the annual visual ethics sessions androundtables.

Notes

1 Such events are not uncommon for the SVA: in 2006 itsponsored an invited paper session on ‘‘working ethics’’ (seeMcDonnell and Cavanagh 2007 for description).

2 Jonathan Marion assisted the Anthropology News staff indeveloping both the visual ethics and the multisensory/multimedia In Focus series in this issue.

3 The 2007 presenters included Matthew Durington (TheHunters Redux); Anne Zeller (Videographer vs. Anthropol-ogist vs. Community vs. Government); Thomas Blakely(To Look or Not To Look. To Film or Not To Film. To Showor Not To Show); Aaron Glass (To show or not to show[Edward Curtis photos of human remains]: anticipating orimposing sensitivities?); Nancy Mithlo (Changing Stan-dards of Access and Cultural Sensitivity: The Yeffe KimballPhotography Collection, Institute of American Indian Arts,Santa Fe, New Mexico); Jerome Crowder (Infidelity andEthnography: Taking Sides in a Family Struggle); JonathanMarion (To Share or Not to Share: Access, Ethics, and

Images); Jill Le Clair (Ethics, ‘‘vulnerable’’ populations andvisual material: privacy versus representation in disabilitysport research); Kate Hennessy (Intellectual Property Rightsin the Age of Digital Reproduction); Sara Perry (WorkingWithout Tools: The Ethics of Analyzing and TeachingOthers to Analyze Archaeological Imagery); and GuidoPigliasco (Ethnographer, Advocate or Lawyer? Circumstan-tialities of Fieldwork in Fiji).

4 See Bolter and Grusin (1999) for the classic text on remediation.5 Davey’s (2010) recent review of the subdiscipline of visual

anthropology suggests that this lack of appreciation of thecommonalities between practitioners is a persistently prob-lematic trait of the field.

6 We think it important here to reiterate that while we utilizethe term ‘‘people’’ to highlight the potential moral reper-cussions of graphic work, images have profoundimplications for a far larger audience than that comprisedof human beings alone. These implications are hinted at inthe ethical guidelines of organizations such as the NorthAmerican Nature Photography Association, or (as observedabove) in the primatological work of Anne Zeller.

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