Recreating First Contact: Expeditions, Anthropology, and Popular Culture

It was during the interwar years that both still photography and film production became integral parts of anthropological, exploratory, and adventure travel expeditions. Anthropologists Bell (curator of globalization, anthropology dept., National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Inst.), Alison K. Brown (anthropology, Univ. of Aberdeen), and Robert J. Gordon (anthropology, Univ. of the Free State, South Africa) have compiled a collection of insightful scholarly essays that more or less chronologically document some important expeditions of those years, the films they produced, and the influence those films had on popular thought about what were then considered remote and exotic cultures. Many of the essays describe the interaction between expedition members and their native subjects. The documentary films produced by these expeditions sometimes reflected the anthropologists' or explorers' biases and quite often reinforced popular stereotypical ideas among viewers. The essays, each with copious notes and bibliographies, are fascinating and perceptive. They illuminate the growing importance of the production of visual images and films in anthropological research as the 20th century progressed.