One Picture is Worth A Thousand Stories

By Adam Gray, May 2022

Rehearsal of the toka dance in Yoohnanan on the island of Tanna, September 1974. Kal Muller films and photographs of Vanuatu (New Hebrides), Tanna Island slides, Slide roll #56.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Vanuatu (then known as the New Hebrides) was on the brink of independence from French and British colonial governance. The culturally and linguistically diverse archipelago in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, with over 100 languages spoken across multiple islands, had been governed as the New Hebrides under a joint French and British “Condominium” administration since 1906. Ni-Vanuatu political resistance, which incorporated expressions of traditional culture into the movement for independence, would go on to achieve independence for the nation in 1980, establishing the Republic of Vanuatu.

The Human Studies Film Archives, part of the National Anthropological Archives (NAA) at the National Museum of Natural History, recently digitized a group of 29,000 photographs taken by photographer and author Kal Muller in the midst of these transformations in Vanuatu society. (1)

The making of the photographs also took place against the backdrop of changes in the tools and methods of anthropology. In the mid-twentieth century, a new generation of relatively portable and inexpensive film and audio equipment, such as the Nagra III tape recorder and Arriflex film cameras, offered anthropologists new opportunities to incorporate photography and film into their research. The establishment of institutions such as the Film Study Center at Harvard University (1957) and the National Anthropological Film Center (1975) at the Smithsonian contributed to the development of “visual anthropology,” an academic discipline that incorporates the production and analysis of images, as well as the study of how people use and produce images, into studies of cultural phenomena.

Muller’s photographs are part of the Kal Muller films and photographs of Vanuatu (New Hebrides), which also contains 15 hours of uncut film footage, over 50 sound recordings, and a small amount of correspondence. (These portions of the collection are not digitized.) The collection will be of interest to Ni-Vanuatu communities interested in their history, traditions, and local knowledge, and will prompt discussions about the history and theory of visual anthropology.

A group of women and girls, possibly in Lendombwey village, island of Malekula, in December 1968. The photograph appears to show the production of one of the sound recordings in the collection. Kal Muller films and photographs of Vanuatu (New Hebrides), Vanuatu slides, Slide roll #147.

Kalman “Kal” Muller, a photographer and author with an interest in anthropology, spent several years during the late 1960s and early 1970s living with and photographing communities on several islands of what is now the Republic of Vanuatu. Though he did not have the formal training of an academic anthropologist, Muller’s skill as a photographer, along with ties he developed with local communities, brought him into contact with some of the people and institutions that played key roles in promoting the use of film in ethnographic research: Muller collaborated with American anthropologist and filmmaker Robert Gardner (1925 – 2014) and the Harvard Film Study Center to film the naghol (in Bislama; land dive, in English) carried out by the Bunlap community on Pentecost Island, resulting in the film Land-Divers of Melanesia (1972). He also received support from the National Anthropological Film Center. The Film Center, which in 1981 was relocated within the National Museum of Natural History and renamed the Human Studies Film Archives, acquired Muller’s photographs and films shortly after they were made. (2)  In 2019, the Archives acquired an additional group of Muller’s photographs from the Harvard Peabody Museum, now incorporated with the previous acquisition.

Cinematographer (possibly Muller) films a group of men, possibly in Lendombwey village, island of Malekula, in January 1969. In correspondence from December 1968, Muller states that he was in Lendombwey village, island of Malekula, filming men in a grade-taking ceremony, and this image may relate to those events. Kal Muller films and photographs of Vanuatu (New Hebrides), Vanuatu slides, Slide roll #180.

In the years since Muller made these photographs, anthropologists--as well as archives and museums that hold knowledge created by and about indigenous communities--have re-examined the assumptions, concepts, and power dynamics intertwined with the production of anthropological images. Photographs don’t just provide evidence of cultural phenomena; they provide a means of exploring questions of memory, history, and interpretation. Like other materials found in archives, they can be valuable resources for cultural sustainability and community-based research activities. One photograph can be used to tell a thousand stories. 

The photographs Muller created during his time in Vanuatu, alongside the films, sound recordings, correspondence, and other documents in this collection, form a complex and voluminous group of images that hold complex layers of information and value. As in other archival collections, the different components speak to each other: correspondence between Muller and E. Richard Sorenson, the inaugural director of the National Anthropological Film Center, points to the interplay between individuals, institutions, and local communities which resulted in the production of the films and photographs; the films contain footage that would be edited into Land-Divers of Melanesia; the photographs show expressions of Ni-Vanuatu heritage, images of western filmmakers and anthropologists shooting film and recording sound, as well as urban and festival scenes in Vanuatu shortly before independence, making them records of the diversity of Ni-Vanuatu culture and of anthropologists’ attempts to represent that diversity.

Men construct a tower for the naghol (land dive), likely in Bunlap, South Pentecost, Pentecost Island, October 1968. Kal Muller films and photographs of Vanuatu (New Hebrides), Vanuatu slides, Slide roll #15.

Before putting the digitized photographs online, the NAA reviewed them to identify culturally sensitive content in order to prevent such images from being made public. As it does with all of its collections, the NAA extends an open-invitation to individuals and communities represented in the NAA to engage in collaborative efforts to improve how it describes and stewards those materials. The NAA looks forward to the conversations that the digitization of these images will enable.

The finding aid for the Kal Muller films and photographs of Vanuatu (New Hebrides), along with the digitized photographs can be found here. To learn how you can access parts of the collection that have not been digitized, get in touch with an archivist at hsfa@si.edu.

Notes:

(1) As Muller himself can be seen in some of the images, apparently at least one other person took some of the photographs; unfortunately, the NAA has not been able to identify the additional photographer(s).

(2) Muller also worked with the Film Center in an effort to produce films and photographs of religious ceremonies practiced by the Huichol of San Andres Coamiata, Jalisco, Mexico. The resulting materials are also held by the Human Studies Film Archives. Former Smithsonian Department of Anthropology Graduate Fellow José Carlos Pons Ballesteros has written an informative series of blog posts about his research with that collection here.

Sources Consulted:

“About.” The Film Study Center at Harvard University, Accessed April 26, 2022. https://filmstudycenter.fas.harvard.edu/about/.

Chio, Jenny. “Visual anthropology.” Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology (2021). DOI: http://doi.org/10.29164/21visual

Foster, S. and Adams, Ron. "Vanuatu." Encyclopedia Britannica, March 10, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/place/Vanuatu.

“The History of ARRI in a Century of Cinema.” ARRI, Accessed May 12, 2022. https://www.arri.com/news-en/the-history-of-arri-in-a-century-of-cinema

“History of the Film Archives.” National Anthropological Archives, Accessed April 20, 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20001022013618/http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/guide/film_history.htm

Jolly, Margaret. “Custom and the Way of the Land: Past and Present in Vanuatu and Fiji.” Oceania 62, no.4 (June 1992): 330-354. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40332509

“Nagra III.” Nagra Audio, Accessed May 12, 2022. https://www.nagraaudio.com/product/nagra-iii/

Ruby, Jay. "The Professionalization of Visual Anthropology in the United States: The 1960s and 1970s." Visual Anthropology Review 17, no. 2 (2001): 5-12. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/var.2001.17.2.5

Schäuble, Michaela. "Visual anthropology." The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology (2018): 1-21. DOI: 10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1969

By Adam Gray, Contractor, Human Studies Film Archives

Submitted by Daisy Njoku, Anthropology Archives, National Museum of Natural History

Women, Cameras, and Images

By David Haberstich

In recent years the Smithsonian Collections Blog has featured numerous posts about women photographers represented in Smithsonian collections. For instance, I’ve blogged about the photographers Katherine Joseph, Dawn Rogala, and Melody Golding, whose work is in the NMAH Archives Center, but now I want to highlight a much earlier Smithsonian effort to celebrate women in photography. The National Museum of American History (then the Museum of History and Technology) featured female photographic artists in a series entitled “Women, Cameras, and Images” in 1969-1970, initiated by Curator of Photography Eugene Ostroff. Although three of these photographers were famous, even legendary, and already included in general histories of photography, two were comparatively unknown at the time. Prints by all five are in the museum’s Photographic History Collection, acquired in conjunction with their exhibitions. This program was an early attempt to emphasize the contributions of women to twentieth-century photography via a series that combined three famous photographers, who utilized standard photographic techniques to achieve their unique personal vision, with two younger, relatively unknown artists who experimented with “obsolete” photographic processes, combined with hand techniques, to interrogate assumptions about the nature of photography. Indeed, Betty Hahn later challenged standard notions about photography (and the nature of her multi-media variations) in the very title of her book, Photography…Or Maybe Not. *

Betty Hahn (b. 1940), "Seasonal Rainbow Transition," gum bichromate with paint on paper, 1968. Photographic History Collection, National Museum of American History.

All four exhibitions were accompanied by poster-checklists and formal, if modest, openings. The first show in the series, “Women, Cameras, and Images I,” was a retrospective of Imogen Cunningham’s classic imagery. I well remember her sly humor and witty sarcasm at her opening: she was delightful, and it was especially gratifying for me after my failed attempt to meet her during a trip to San Francisco.

Imogen Cunningham (1882-1976), "Unmade Bed," gelatin silver photographic print, 1957, printed 1957, Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The second exhibition, “Women, Cameras, and Images II,” combined the work of Betty Hahn and Gayle Smalley. I had met Betty in graduate school at Indiana University and vaguely knew Gayle, who had graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology five years before I had. Their work was very different from that of the other three women, employing radically new approaches to the medium. Hahn was one of the first photographers to experiment with “obsolete” photographic processes, including gum-bichromate, and combined photography with textiles, sometimes adding hand-work, such as paint, needlework and embroidery, which in her words represented a homage to the unsung women who traditionally practiced such stereotypically feminine “crafts.” Independently, Gayle Smalley combined photography with hand printmaking techniques. Hahn’s and Smalley’s prints were colorful, semi-abstract, and often playful and humorous, heavily influenced by contemporary printmaking.        

Above: Gayle Smalley (left) and Betty Hahn (center) talking with Eugene Ostroff at the opening of their exhibition, 1969. Smithsonian photographer unidentified.

“Women, Cameras, and Images III” was devoted to the work of Berenice Abbott, whose long and influential career ranged from documentation of New York City to the development of techniques for  scientific photography, in which she was an important pioneer. Unfortunately, we lacked funds to bring her to Washington for the opening, and I think she never quite forgave me.

Berenice Abbott (1898-1991), "Night Aerial View, Midtown Manhattan," 1933, gelatin silver print. Photographic History Collection, National  Museum of American History.

Barbara Morgan was the artist of “Women, Cameras, and Images IV.” Noted for her photographs of Martha Graham’s dancers, a major component of the exhibition, she worried about the design of the show, and explained her concern with rhythm and flow in the placement and sequencing of the framed images. I was tempted to let her develop the layout or collaborate with me, but was warned not to permit her participation lest it delay the opening. It was a nail-biter for me as I hung the show, fearing that she didn’t fully trust my curatorial eye, but I needn’t have worried: she was pleased and pronounced it a huge success, telling me “You got it!” She had been honored previously in a similar retrospective solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, curated by my photo-history mentor, Peter Bunnell, and pronounced my design “better.” At social occasions for several years afterward she proudly introduced me as “the man who hung my Smithsonian show, you know,” and we had a lovely and rewarding friendship.

Barbara Morgan's photographs have been collected not only by NMAH, but also by the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and the National Portrait Gallery (NPG). This is also true for the work of Imogen Cunningham and Berenice Abbott. However, NMAH was the first Smithsonian museum to collect and mount exhibitions of their work. 

Barbara Morgan (1900-1992), "Martha Graham--Letter to the World--(Swirl)," 1940, gelatin silver print, printed ca.1980. Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Virginia Zabriskie. 

However, the series, which originally was intended to continue for another year, foundered and ended when some photographers objected to being “classified” or identified as “women photographers” within a special series, as if each photographer's work couldn't stand on its own merits. Similarly, I recall hearing certain women criticize the creation of Washington’s National Museum of Women in the Arts for what nowadays some might call bad “optics,” appearing to relegate female artists to a separate category rather than striving to integrate them in greater numbers into existing art museum awareness and practice.

Opinions, perspectives, and tactics intended to promote social change often themselves change with the times and the politics of culture, however. In 1970 we found that for some women photographers, the prospect of inclusion in a series of gendered exhibitions (curated by men) entitled “Women, Cameras, and Images” could be interpreted as more demeaning than celebratory, perhaps suggesting mere tokenism. Controversial “optics!” By contrast, the emphasis on equity in the 2020s has regularly employed group solidarity and separation as a logical, effective tactic to highlight marginalized groups and their members’ individual stories--for example, through Black History Month and Women’s History Month. I recently noticed a current exhibition at Lehigh University entitled “Hear Me Roar: Women Photographers II,” reflecting the similar strategy of the Smithsonian’s “Women, Cameras, and Images” exhibitions of the tumultuous late 1960s. I couldn't help smiling.

David Haberstich, Curator of Photography

Archives Center, National Museum of American History