Through Navajo Eyes

: An exploration in film communication and anthropology. Sol Worth & John Adair (1997). (with a new forward, afterword, and illustrations by Richard Chalfen). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. (Originally published 1972)

Forward to the revised edition (ix-xxi)
Chalfen describes the late 1960s and early 1970s as active times in the development of visual anthropology when the Navajo Project was carried out in 1966 (both CFC and the Fogo Island Project embarked in 1967). He noted that the change in the field of visual anthropology was accelerating in 1990s (as of writing this forward) and described one significant change: Visual products are seen as part of a process of communication and demands critical attention. Thus, more correct is anthropology of visual communication rather than visual anthropology. Chalfen ascribes the Navajo Project as a cornerstone of this reformulation. This is clear in the purpose of this project described in Chapter 15:

As we have said, one of the aims of our research was to develop a method for collecting, analyzing, and comparing how various groups and cultures structured their world when making a film about it. (p. 228)

This research was focused on a methodological development to interpret ways in which people in different cultures structure their world in particular by using film production techniques. This context constituted the particular condition of collaborative filmmaking in this project. Chalfen stated:

At this time paradigms of collaborative ethnographic film research were simply not well developed. In this sense the communication scholar Worth and the cultural anthropologist Adair were breaking new ground by suggesting an "action research" collaboration along two dimensions--first, across discipline, and second across the politically loaded divide of scholar/outsider and "native"/insider. (p. xiii)

(In this regard, Chalfen noted some philosophical and ethical issues around the idea of "handing the camera over to others": first, it is not familiar practice (at least back then--me) and it is still Western-oriented thing to force people to do.)

Chalfen categorizes several patterns of participation. The Navajo Project is in the 6th: researchers ask local people to make a movie on anything they choose. This practice, and yet, preserves objectivist attitudes: little emphasis on researchers involvement, and lack of attention to problematizing issues under investigation. On the other hand, a project that immediately followed the Navajo Project draw my attention. In 1971, Adair, approached by a psychiatrist, developed a project on Navajo alcoholism. Two films were produced and one of them was immediately lost. This approach was an advance and actual application of the method to address real problems.

Chapter 16. Some concluding thoughts (252-262)

Afterword to the revised edition (276-341)