University of Madras Hosts Frank Heidemann's Lecture on "Photographic Processes and Artefacts"

Visual anthropologists use photography as a research tool in their ethnographic field visits and for documenting their ethnographic subjects. India is a veritable mine for visual anthropologists who wish to study the visual literacies of Indians of different denominations. The mind boggling number of divisions along religious,linguistic,casteist,economic,racial and ethnic lines calls for a marching army of Colliers to enquire, understand and map the visual literacies of Indians. As I mentioned in my previous post, we have a long way to go in visual anthropology in the Indian context. But I do hope that in the coming years, at least a few of our research students in Communication, Sociology and Anthropology would take to visual anthropology as a serious research pursuit. Hopefully, they should be working overtime in filling the great void in visual anthropological studies in India.

In this context, it is very appropriate to have Professor Frank Heidemann for the first session of the Media and Society Seminar Series (MSSS), organised by the Dept.of Mass Media and Communication Studies, University of Madras, on 18 09 2009. The invite for the seminar (above) is an indirect testimony to the unexplored visual anthropological wealth of India.