ABSTRACT
Introduction Ritual, reli gious or mundane, is a key aspect of every day life. As many social research ers have noted, ritual is an import ant way for us to understand the values, ideals and norms of an indi vidual, social group or culture (Evans 1998; Graburn 2001; McLaren 1999; Tong 2004; Wong 2001). Anthropologists have long incor por ated photo graphs of rituals into their analysis – for example, Chan and Yung’s (2005) study of Chinese street opera (often a ritu al istic affair) in Singapore relied on images to express the outside/outdoor nature of enter tain ment and contrast this with the
evolving role of theatre in Chinese ethni city. Similarly, Hockings’s (2010) study of funeral rites, Bezner’s (2002) analysis of wedding images as evid ence of ritual as a core aspect of American culture and Chappell, Chappell and Margolis’s (2011) consid er a tion of old school photo graphs showing ritu al ised school ing prac tices are evid ence of the effic acy of photo graphy to docu ment, illus trate and illu min ate ritual prac tices.
