Two different visual anthropologist, Leibovitz and Natchwey

Today’s topic is about the comparison of two famous photographers, Annie Leibovitz and James Natchwey. After the description of them, I write the ideas about visual anthropology from that comparison.

Annie Leibovitz is one of the famous portrait photographers in the United States. Her father works for the American army, so that she often experienced looking at world through the pane of car which she was in during moving out. She explains herself that such experiences affects her to be comfortable the life looking through the lends. One of the styles she takes is to become a part of objects. She willingly takes part in the objects’ lives and naturally takes their photos. Sometimes, she requires the objects to formalize their postures. In this sense, she is allowed to create her ideal images when she takes pictures.




On the other hand, James Natchwey is one of the famous war photographers in the world. He sometimes holds the exhibition of his photographs and those events are widely accepted in worldwide. He began his career as a war photographer in order to tell the real situations of war. Actually, he said that he had felt guilty at first. However, he strongly accepts it as his mission in the world, with careful respects on his objects. According to the nature of his workplaces, he is never allowed to get a chance to require some postures. He just follows the nature of war, and takes photos in order to indicate the reality.

Comparing to those two different types of photographers, I think Natchwey is more like the anthropologist in the point of his nature of photos. However, it can be said that Leibovitz also practices visual anthropology when she takes part in the objects’ lives.

In conclusion, even though they are different types of photographers, their purposes are exactly the same in the point of communicating some particular states by using photos, and this is what visual anthropology. I realized the necessity to become some parts of objects from Leibovitz and the special attention toward objects from Natchwey. As a learner of visual anthropology, I should keep in mind that critical point and try to communicate the cultural matters around me through my camera in my blog.

Here is some links I referred and cited the images

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/annie-leibovitz/life-through-a-lens/16/
http://www.jamesnachtwey.com/
http://www.ted.com/pages/view/id/165
http://www.thedigitaltrekker.com/2009/12/james-nachtwey-opportunist-or-opportunity/

My Grand Mother

This is the portrait of my grand mother, Satoko. She was born in Tokyo during the Second World War, and she lost her older sister by that war. She got married and moved to Nara prefecture when she was 30. Her characteristic is typical Japanese, so that I am often accused by her. Now she is around 80 years old, so that she spends her time relatively relaxed mood. She enjoys reading books, watching the movie, traveling around and listening classical music. The second picture of her portrait is about her dairy time which is reading with listening to classical music. She was used to live alone in a large house in Nara, but my father and I moved to her house 2 years ago, so that now she lives with my father and me. There are completely three generations, so that sometime we have dispute against each other. However, the most of the case is good term with us.





I have learned Japanese sense from spending time with her. As it is often said, Japanese people tend to avoid direct communication. I know we should assert directly in some time, but I realized that avoiding such communication leads to be afforded to do something. My grandmother seldom to be panic about what to do, because she has mind space every time. She always avoids direct communication in order to give herself the objective perspective. It is very useful when the one falls to the troublesome situations. This is one of the disciplines by my grandmother.

My Neighborhood, Gakuenmae, Nara city

This is a Japanese traditional grocery store, called “Dagashiya”. It is mostly run by an old woman. In that shop, we can buy some snacks, drinks and cigarettes. The price of one snack is around 10 yen ~ 60 yen, so that the main customers of it are kids who go to elementary school. Actually, I went to Dagashiya when I was about 10. Now I go there to buy cigarettes. The reason why it deals with both snacks and cigarette is that it used to sell only cigarette. However, only selling cigarette is tired for the old women, so that they begin to sell snacks in order to enjoy the communications with kids.









This is the coffee shop where I often go to. I like the taste of coffee, master’s talk and the piano. Most of the cases, there are no customers, so that I can enjoy the coffee and playing the piano. The master also deals with organic vegetables, and it is rare in this area. He is also famous as a poet. For both of reasons, he is sometime picked up by TV.
The master wears the black shirt, and other guy is one of his friends who does fortune as his temporary job.
If you have interest in his poetry, please check his blog.

My neighborhood, Gakuenmae, is a place known as elder people's place.
There are many old people who are generally rich. Most of them have large houses and spend money on many things.
Gakuenmae is also known as the residential area where the president of Kintetu Densya living in.

He put his conmany's devote into Gakuenmae, so that Gakuenmae is flourished now.



This is master’s blog.
http://yaoyaro.exblog.jp/