Early in our history, an American pundit observed that in France, there are 350 kinds of cheese and one religion, and that in the United States, there is one kind of cheese and 350 religions.1 Today there is a growing number of religious groups, all seeking to discover and explain the source and meaning of life.
This incredible diversity of religion has shaped and continues to define the mosaic-like culture of Houston. This project attempts to represent the geographical, denominational, and ethnic multiplicity of belief systems in the greater Houston area through the medium of still photography. Although these photographs are visual documents that describe particular aspects of ritual and ceremony, communion, and fellowship, they are not to be considered products of purely objective investigation. To claim impartiality would imply that no agenda motivated this research, or that my cultural location is without bias. Paradoxically, however, what does give these images scientific legitimacy is the manner in which they can be utilized to impart ethnographic information.2 Indeed, the ubiquitous snapshot holds the same potential scientific value as any so-called "methodical" or "controlled" photograph if it contains information of practical interest.3 For statistical purposes, they can be used to measure, count, and compare.4 The objective of this project is to register and survey, within my time frame, a wide range of faiths and their followers.
The photographs in this work represent the preliminary stages of ethnographic research; they are visual fieldnotes, much like a written journal--a sketchbook of first impressions and queries. In terms of written work, fieldnotes is a broad term, describing sketches, musings, technical notes, casual observations, and quick calculations. They
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are indicative of the ethnographer's way of seeing the world, and are therefore personal.5 My visual fieldnotes, therefore, constitute series of pictures that reflect a wide curiosity, one that has not quite found its focus, one that is searching for its bearings among the first group of photographs. These pictures are the products of initial inquiry of individual and collective worship, spiritual environment, physical space, and material objects of devotion. My intent is for these visual descriptions of culture to refine and advance future investigation of religious diversity, thereby developing a comprehensive study that culminates in a coherent and socially relevant anthropological document. This series of photographs therefore suggests a work in progress.
Photographing human interaction requires personal participation, thus rendering images that reflect the photographer's sensibilities, whether artistic, scientific, or humanistic. Indeed, the viewer will approach these photographs with his or her own cultural baggage, engaging each picture at multiple levels--emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. With these images I endeavor to connect with the viewer, to elucidate moments I glimpsed in the sanctity of the church, the temple, the mosque, or other spiritual space.
The postmodern movement of the last twenty to thirty years has prompted much discussion and activity about the exploration and formulation of alternative methodologies for investigating cultural systems. It is a contestation of established theories that has compelled many anthropologists to rethink, for example, their relationships with their subjects, to recognize that these agents of cultural information are actors who actively participate and contribute to the dissemination of information. Lila Abu-Lughod's 1993 experimental ethnography Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories, typifies this active collaboration between scientist and subject. The theoretical
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discussions of her text are interwoven with Bedouin women's commentaries, explanations, and songs.
There has also been a trend to devise innovative ways of gathering and evaluating information, such as Alan Ereira's work with documentary film. The film From the Heart of the World: the Elder Brother's Warning (1990) incorporates active collaboration with the Kogi people of the Colombian Sierra Nevada, who also assertively directed the collection of information about their community.6
In that vein, this visual project is experimental in that it also challenges traditional anthropological notions of data collection and organization. The conventional method emphasizes the written word, thereby striving to concretize particular concepts and ideas. It is informed by linear logic, in which the anthropologist organizes data chronologically or in other sequential forms, in order to build a framework and give cohesion to the ethnographic document.
However, theorists increasingly question the limitations of this sequential ordering of information. In his essay Ethnographic Writing and Anthropological Careers (1986), George E. Marcus suggests that there is a trend among anthropologists to experiment with the organization of ideas and records through innovative literary techniques-literary consciousness-such as the personal narrative.7 Other methods, such as prose and dialogue also represent new literary vehicles in which to deliver information. The written word however, continues to problematize the record because it describes events and personalities in the language of the ethnographer (which is biased to particular cultural sensibilities), and frequently, if not always, is not the language of the subject.
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Translating directly from the subject's language also poses problems of readability and coherence, especially if the account was in the spoken voice. Abu-Lughod's Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories illustrates the dilemma of incorporating her subject's voices so they accurately reflect their lives. The women's accounts are recorded as spoken dialogue, and the repetition of words (to emphasize an idea), for example, tends to give the reader the impression that the subject cannot articulate her thoughts or express them clearly.
The utilization of photographs as principal ethnographic data, on the other hand, is a technique of recording and collecting information that employs visual language-color, light, shadow, texture, form, movement-in short, all that is perceived by the eye. Raghubir Singh's Bombay (1994), a vibrant photo essay whose explosion of color brilliantly describes that city, illustrates the impact and completeness of visual language. Each of Singh's photographs captures the multi-flavored essence of Bombay: buzzing shiny mopeds racing with rickshaws full of sacks of rice and salt through crowded narrow streets; musicians in silky mango and aquamarine saris fanning their fingers over a sitar; men carrying heavy wooden chairs on their shoulders on a dry brown afternoon.8
Through this qualitative method, photography evokes the nuances of culture and allows the viewer to consider social questions unfettered by the descriptive and culturally weighted nature of words. Although anthropologists have historically recorded cultural activity with still and movie cameras, notably Margaret Mead in her collaborative work with Gregory Bateson Balinese Character (1942)9 , they have traditionally utilized photographs as supplementary information or as visual footnotes to ethnographies, which were principally written documents, researched and organized in particular sequential orders.10
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Photographing is a dialectical process: unencumbered by cause and effect reasoning, the visual anthropologist can capture a panorama of cultural information instantaneously. The resulting contact sheets act as visual fieldnotes that inform the direction of further investigation. This journey is not unlike travelling on a spiral path, where one moves forward with many detours. Indeed, the information registered on the filmstrip reflects this meandering of the photographer's eye, gathering details of human activity and surrounding spaces for later examination.
Although the still photograph does freeze a moment in time and space, it is not static. Unlike the moving image (film or video), it stares back, enticing the viewer to return, to contemplate, to discover. An uncaptioned photograph further provokes dialogue with the viewer, as its content gives the viewer something to contemplate. Captions, by virtue of their written expression, tend to tell the viewer what to think. Accordingly, the photographs in this project have no captions, only titles naming the place of worship.
The marriage of anthropology and photography represents to my mind, an ideal fusion of investigation and expression through which to visually communicate my interest in the purpose and structure of religious life. As anthropologist and photographer, my intent in producing this visual project is to examine how religion informs culture, especially how it helps shape individual and collective identities. Human beings define themselves in relation to the world in which they live--their families, communities, and physical environment--and religion pervades this cosmos.11
I am also interested in the social utility of provoking thoughtful interfaith dialogue at the personal and public levels. There is an increasing awareness in all spheres of society--community, government, education--that mediation and reconciliation are
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effective tools for the resolution of conflicts. The efficacy of these devices is contingent on basic knowledge and understanding of cultural systems, and visual records such as these photographs can contribute to this edifying experience.
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