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/