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I've haven't written much about my research here, which is odd because it's something I think about rather a lot. The reason for my taciturnity is maybe that I have a tendency, lately, to be taciturn in this here blog, or maybe to do with that quote from 'Walden': "The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels." Once I've cycled back and cycled back, it's hard to believe everyone else hasn't heard it all before; a bit like the stretch of road you walk so often that you hardly see it, much less think to record it with words or photographs.

And that's something I've been thinking about a lot lately: the relationship between research and photography. A friend of mine got back from Cumberland House yesterday, and yesterday night a few of us gathered in her apartment and discussed the trip. Cumberland House is a community of about 2000 in northeastern Saskatchewan; it is mostly Cree and Métis¹, and it has seen its fair share of researchers. And now the community is tired of people who come and mine them for information and then disappear like so much ephemera--really, it's hard to blame them. In modern Canada there are certain bureaucracies around research with First Nations to try to avoid echoing past exploitation: researchers are expected to approach the Chief and Council of a First Nation for permission and embark in a partnership; even once this happens, the data ownership is with First Nation, which means they could retract rights at any point. This is intended to push researchers towards conducting research that is valuable to their participants, to ensure collaboration. It isn't quite that straightforward, but I think a lot of people would like present it as just that straightforward.

Photography, though. I remember years ago going to a show--at the Eastman House, I think (Dad?)--of early photographs of American Indians². As I recall, the photographer was fairly famous. I think he may have traveled around with a darkroom in the back of a wagon. Regardless--my point is that those early photographs are similar to early anthropological research, in that the intent was for the images to be brought back to 'civilization' to show people what these Indians were like. Much has been made of the soul stealing powers of cameras; I couldn't tell you where that story comes from, or whether it's a true myth or a myth about a myth. What I do know is the way the camera, like the research process, serves as a technique for creating and recording individual data points, which eventually become a narrative. The riddle, then: what is the narrative? Who tells it?

I don't think anyone believes the camera is objective anymore, but there was a time when it seemed so: it is, after all, light writing, exposed via chemistry, with the camera obscura serving as a sort of mechanical eyeball (and if we can't trust our vision, what can we trust? Nevermind the fact that my vision is terrible). The research process was also long suspected to be objective (this, as has been hammered into my head, stems from positivism).

I had to do portraits for one of my photography classes. I'm pretty sure, by the end of that unit, everyone in the course knew I hated portraits. I didn't like any of it: the studio, the lights, asking people to come in and then sticking a heavy camera (I couldn't use my camera, which only made me more ornery about the whole process) in their faces while strobes went off. I can't even articulate my resentment fully, but I think it has to do with the fact that, with my photographs as with my research, I feel a certain self consciousness about what I'm taking. I don't think it's necessary for a photographer to feel that way, but I do believe the camera as an object has the potential to change a relationship. It is, after all, a thing you place between yourself and the subject being photographed. The process of observing, recording, and eventually reporting for research functions in much the same way.

A few months back when I was browsing the 'Berkshires' tag on Tumblr I found a post, presumably from someone's vacation, with a photograph of the view down our valley (my photograph of the same view, different season, is here). This is the stretch of road I walk so often when I'm home that I rarely record it. Seeing it through someone else's lens made me distinctly uncomfortable: our road isn't the most direct route to anywhere in particular (though it is an exceptionally nice road, if I do say so myself) so it feels just a bit private. It makes me wonder who these people were, and what else they took from the valley. For them it was a vacation; for me, it's home. That will always be the gap between the tourist and the local (as hesitant as I am to call myself 'local' to a place I haven't lived very long). Yet we can both take the same picture. It's the narrative behind the photograph that shifts.  And that's just the landscape; that's hardly comparable to someone taking a photograph of myself and imposing a narrative onto it, placing words in my mouth or pairing them with my image.

Let's wind back to Cumberland House, then. Recall: the people there are tired of having visitors tell their stories. The solution hasn't been to forbid visitors from collecting and telling these stories, but to ask what can be given in exchange. How will this information will be used? Who will it be served? Within academia, the goal of research is to push the boundaries of knowledge (or so I've been told). But outside the ivory tower, we're looking at something else entirely. The current philosophy is to marry those two ideals, but they don't always come together well or easily, even with the best intentions.

And the camera? For the purpose of this essay it's halfway to being a metaphor, but I have another essay in the works that's centered on photography rather than research but address similar questions (I think?), so we'll see what comes of that. Hopefully, it'll be a little more cohesive than this.

It occurs to me I've still managed to sidestep any actual discussion of my research project. But this post is already longer than maybe 100% of the other things I post, so to save your eyes and everyone's time, I'll put that off a little further still. 


¹'Métis' is the term for individuals of mixed aboriginal and European heritage.

²I'm hardly an expert on this, but as a general rule I use 'First Nations' to refer to aboriginal people/tribes in Canada and 'American Indian' to refer to the same in the U.S. Describing someone as First Nations has certain political connotations--not every tribe in Canada identifies itself as a First Nation because doing so involves certain treaties with the Crown--and thus is inapplicable in the U.S. According to Census interviews conducted in '95 'American Indian' was the preferred term there, hence things like the American Indian Movement and the National Museum of the American Indian (conversely, in some part of Canada--at least, as far as I know, Alberta--'Indian' has heavy racist connotations). (This is why political correctness is hard.)