ABSTRACT
Films and photographs are valuable sources of information for anthropologists. Scholars in the subfield of visual anthropology rely on photographs and films as the primary medium for analysis. Ethnographic films supplement written ethnographies as a means of communicating the findings of cultural/social anthropology. Details and patterns in complex events, such as public religious rituals, which are often difficult to observe and describe, can be recovered from films. Anthropologists conducting historical research make use of old photographs for the quotidian detail they reveal or for what their stereotypical poses reveal of intergroup or class attitudes.
