Contemporary Australian Aboriginal art can be argued to be one of the most well known examples of collaborative ethnographic practice using creative art – the multiple functions of works, the layers of inter and cross-cultural collaboration shaping the works, the underlying relationship of Aboriginal painting to story, culture and cultural expression – all qualities...
How do we use visual ethnography to represent places? Landscape images alone often render a place somewhat opaque – capturing a static moment, leaving out the dynamism of country, weather, sensory experience, encounters, people and their lived stories. For me some of the most successful uses of the visual in telling stories of place...
See this recently posted musing on participation and collaboration on Savage Minds blog… It pertains specifically to social and digital media technologies and the resulting communities, but presents an interesting typology… Any thoughts from others on the nature of participation and collaboration in media/arts/ethnographic contexts?
Following on from the National Film Board of Canada’s desire to continue participatory film making into the digital age they have produced an ambitious participatory digital ethnography project called High Rise. NFB calls High Rise a 360 degree documentary – by which they mean it is an interactive documentary – a field growing in...
Side by Side blog has been rather quiet for many months now – mainly because I (Maya) have been busy with my new son Aubrey who was born last September. We’ve been taking some time to get to know each other away from the digital world, but we are now getting into a routine...
Check out a cool project that is using participatory video making to link communities in the western desert and the western suburbs of Sydney. The Stories Project – hosted by Curious Works in collaboration with Martu Media has brought together young film makers from the western desert and refugees living in western Sydney to...
Following the boom of media making by Indigenous people in Australia in recent years the challenges of how to archive and make accessible Indigenous-made materials, as well as repatriate historical and anthropological materials to Indigenous communities, have led to a some interesting community based archiving and multi-media projects. The Mulka Project, is based in...
Side by Side Online Gallery is pleased to present the Stars of Bethlehem Exhibition. Stars of Bethlehem is a participatory video project that worked with young Palestinian refugees in camps in Bethlehem in 2007. This exhibition features 3 of the films made by young film makers during the project, representing their experiences and lives...
On the theme of documentary made in close collaboration with communities check out the Big Stories, Small Towns project that happened in Port Augusta, South Australia. Two experienced film makers lived and worked in Port Augusta for several months in 2008, producing a series of films about community stories. The material is only available online...
The Society for Photographic Education is hosting its annual conference in Philadelphia, USA, in March 2010 with a focus on diversity in photographic practice. Sessions will include discussion by photographers and educators about collaboration, photography & film making with teens, photography by working class people, blind people… Of particular interest are the featured speakers...