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Visual Field Notes: Drawing Insights in the Yucatan
Author(s) -
HENDRICKSON CAROL
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
visual anthropology review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.346
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1548-7458
pISSN - 1058-7187
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-7458.2008.00009.x
Subject(s) - indexicality , field (mathematics) , visual anthropology , generative grammar , visual arts , sociology , process (computing) , set (abstract data type) , visual culture , interdisciplinarity , aesthetics , epistemology , anthropology , ethnography , art , linguistics , social science , computer science , philosophy , mathematics , pure mathematics , programming language , operating system
This article considers the creation of visual field notes as part of the process of conducting fieldwork. By means of drawing and related activities, anthropologists immerse themselves in a field‐based, generative process that engages them, simultaneously, in the acts of thinking, seeing, and doing. Insight and understanding emerge in the course of producing marks on a page that have iconic and indexical dimensions. The indexical potential of drawing(s), in particular, is noteworthy as visual signs stimulate connections between the world “out there” and issues in anthropology and other disciplines via culturally recognized signifiers. This path to understanding by visual means is never entirely predictable but nonetheless vital and creative. With theoretical inspiration drawn from the fields of anthropology, art, and education, this article is based on the experience of producing a set of visual and verbal field notes as part of a college field study trip to the Yucatan.