Eye and camera, voice and text : the interaction of photographic images and literary texts in ethnographic and social documentary studies and the work of Glenn Busch : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the degree of Master of Arts, Department of Social Anthropology, Massey University

Abstract

Eye and Camera: Voice and Text is a general enquiry into ethnography, photography and the composite or hybrid forms of ethnographic photography and social documentary photography. It consists of three theoretical discussion chapters and one extended case study of a major practitioner's work. Chapter one discusses ethnography as a literary genre. Chapter two, the more important attempts at providing a theory of what kind of medium photography is and how it produces meaning. Chapter three begins by considering what a specifically ethnographic and social documentary photography is and does before concluding with a survey of several major projects which have made considerable use of photography for the purpose of ethnographic and social documentary understanding. The concerns of the first three chapters are then brought to bear in a fourth and final chapter devoted to the New Zealand social documentary photographer Glenn Busch. Busch's work (and that of two of his former pupils) has been chosen because of its clear social focus and because he uses combined visual and verbal means of presentation.