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Fieldwork and the Participant-Photographer: E.E. Evans-Pritchard and the Nuer Rite of gorot
Christopher Morton

To cite this Article Morton, Christopher(2009) 'Fieldwork and the Participant-Photographer: E.E. Evans-Pritchard and the

Nuer Rite of gorot', Visual Anthropology, 22: 4, 252 274 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/08949460903004896 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08949460903004896

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Visual Anthropology, 22: 252274, 2009 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0894-9468 print=1545-5920 online DOI: 10.1080/08949460903004896

Fieldwork and the Participant-Photographer: E.E. Evans-Pritchard and the Nuer Rite of gorot
Christopher Morton
Examination of Evans-Pritchards photographic record of the Nuer rite of gorot that he witnessed in 1936 raises important questions about the historical relationship between anthropological fieldwork and visual methods, and in particular photographys relationship to both methodological observation and participation within early 20th-century fieldwork practice. This article explores the question of why the photographs are characterized by a sustained engagement with two distinct stages of the rite, but why other aspects of the ceremony are not recorded. In order to explore this question, which was first prompted by a detailed engagement with the entire archive, the article proposes a model of Evans-Pritchard as participant-photographera model that understands his activity during the rite as being composed of periods of photographic engagement interposed with observation and note-taking.

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PHOTOGRAPHY AND PARTICIPANT-OBSERVATION This essay is intended as a contribution to recent research on the historical relationship between anthropological fieldwork and visual methods, and especially photographys relationship to the methodological preoccupations of an emerging social anthropology in the early 20th century.1 In particular I seek to address research questions posed by both Edwards [2001: 89] and Herle [2008: 75120] concerning photographys inherent relationship to both methodological observation and participation in early 20th-century fieldwork practice; but I also explore the extent to which the layering and accretion of archival meaning over time makes such questions problematic. The essay also seeks to redeem a promise made in my earlier commentary [Morton 2005: 400] to explore the

CHRISTOPHER MORTON trained in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, and carried out fieldwork in northern Botswana in 19992000. He was a postdoctoral researcher on the AHRC-funded project Recovering the Material and Visual Cultures of the Southern Sudan: A Museological Resource, during 20032005. He is now Head of Photograph and Manuscript Collections and Career Development Fellow at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. His current research focuses upon the historical relationship between photography and anthropological fieldwork, as well as working on archival projects with indigenous communities. E-mail: chistopher.morton@prm.ox.ac.uk 252

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relationship between Evans-Pritchards archive and his fieldwork practice in more detail. By here specifically discussing Evans-Pritchards photographs of the Nuer rite of gorot during his last six-week fieldwork trip of 1936, it will be necessary to keep open two streams of evidential awareness, that of the indexical image and that of the archive. This dual awareness is essential if we are to understand the notion of photographic evidence as an essentially historical construction, and to see the accrual of meaning as reaching beyond the photographic frame toward both archival and situational relationships. The essay seeks to extend Pinneys [2008] discussion of the shifting understanding of photographys intrinsic relationship to notions of evidence by arguing that photos, particularly in anthropology, have often gained their evidential activation from their situational contexts within an archivephotos are relational entities, embodying complex visual and technological relations with other images, both within a specific archive and beyond. Although attention to the relational and material nature of the photograph has long been evident in some writing on the history of anthropologys visual deposits [e.g., Edwards 2001: 88], elsewhere analysis has too often been restricted to the evidential possibilities of isolated and de-contextualized images [e.g., Wolbert 2000]. Much of the analysis of anthropologys visual deposits over the last 25 years or so has focused attention on the categorization, dissemination and collection of visual imagery in the late 19th century, especially in relation to the growth of research in the area of physical anthropology [e.g., Edwards 1990]. Most of the essays presented in the volume Anthropology and Photography [Edwards 1992]a turning point in the research, interpretation and publishing on the visual cultures of anthropologyare informed to some extent by theoretical models that had been developed in relation to text, for instance the work of Clifford and Marcus [1986] and Fabian [1983], which provided a stringent critique of the processes through which anthropology had traditionally made its object and articulated its disciplinary authority. In relation to photography, the methodological and analytical focus engaged with, on the one hand, a broadly Foucaultian configuration of surveillance, gaze and objectification [Foucault 1979; Green 1984; Tagg 1988], and on the other, the influence of linguistic semiotics in the reading of images [Barthes 1977; Street 1992]. Photography, because of its analog and indexical naturea trace of light reflected off the colonial bodyand given the manner in which it had been objectified, reified and controlled within the disciplinary archive, constituted a potent and fertile field for such analyses. More recent work, however, has sought to modify the overly deterministic tendencies of analyses that privileged colonial power relationships. Geismar has even suggested recently a role for historical photographs as creative actors within, not merely representations of, the development of anthropological ideas [2006: 524]. This noticeable shift in current research directions has had an important influence upon recent writing on the historical relationship between photography and anthropological fieldwork, and indeed photography has been used as evidence to question the legitimacy of long-held assumptions about the existence of a sudden methodological shift towards a more participatory form of fieldwork, as instilled by Malinowski in his students at the London School of Economics from the 1920s.

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Herle [2008], for instance, has recently analyzed the archive of John Layard (18911974) whose fieldwork on Malakula began in 1914, the same year as Malinowskis, and traces the influence of A. C. Haddon in the photographic activities of both anthropologists. Haddon had written a long appendix on fieldwork photography in the 1912 edition of Notes and Queries in Anthropology, and we know of the influence of this text on Malinowskis fieldwork from diary entries such as [t]hen I wrote my diary and tried to synthesize my results, reviewing Notes and Queries . . . Read some more N&Q and loaded my camera. Then I went into the village [Malinowski 1967: 30]. The text of the 1912 edition of Notes and Queries makes it clear that photography was seen as a crucial tool for a more responsive and participatory method of fieldwork, arguing that for anthropological work a snap-shot camera is quite indispensable; many incidents must be seized as they occur. Some people will not consent to be photographed and must be taken instantaneously, without their knowledge [Freire-Marreco and Myres 1912: 268]. The suitability of a mobile snap-shot camera for the seizure or capture of incidents can be compared to the concern with more scientific photography (physical types, artifacts), for which a stand camera was considered more appropriate: a certain number of typical individuals should always be taken as large as possible, full face and exact side view; the lens should be on a level with the face . . . [1912: 269]. As Herle notes, it is perhaps surprising given the influence of both Haddon and Notes and Queries on Layards fieldwork that an attention to such scientific-reference photography is absent from his archive. Herle suggests that one reason for this may be the influence on Layards theoretical interests of W.H.R. Rivers, whose emphasis upon the genealogical method of investigation had less use for physical-type imagery. Layards archive, Herle argues, thereby already suggests a transition from a more typological to a more sociological mode of enquiry, in which the developing observational style at times breaks through to a much more participatory and experiential mode [Herle 2008: 95]. This process is also shown to a certain extent in the archive of another early fieldworker, Diamond Jenness, working in the DEntrecasteaux Islands in 19111912 [Edwards 2001: 83105]: his albums show an evident tension between personal impression and scientific expression and his photos demonstrate a nascent observational model and non-interventionist quality that challenge the stereotype of pre-Malinowskian fieldwork as distanced and non-participatory [Edwards 2001: 89]. Ironically, despite our greater knowledge of Malinowskis photographic output [Young 1998], the relationship between his photography and fieldwork methodology remains unexplored in any great depth. Young asserts that, in his emerging functionalism, Malinowski was subconsciously anxious to photograph the context of social activity rather than the detail, which resulted in a methodology that privileged the middle distance [Young 1998: 19]. Although his diaries show an ongoing concern with photography throughout his fieldwork, there is little sense of a nascent participatory style of photography in his archive. Instead, Edwards argues, Malinowskis photographic methodology exemplified a realist discourse of unmediated observation, given authority through the fieldworkers embodied eye . . . Malinowski does not appear to use photography as a site of interaction with his indigenous subjects in a way many anthropologists of the period did. That is, photography

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served as a crucial tool of his observation but not of his participation [Edwards 2000: 600]. These studies highlight the importance of the whole-archive approach to analysis, in which an entire extant body of work is considered in the context of historical developments in the discipline, using photographys indexical nature to reinterpret previously assumed fieldwork relationships. As Edwards argues, the intention that directed Jennesss image making created a specific form of anthropological gaze, and this intention, meshed with the evidential, articulates a meaning to be communicated. However, inscription outlives intention by the very nature of the photograph, and thus we have the beginning of a refiguration [Edwards 2001: 89]. In this formulation, photographys indexicality transcends both the ethnographers intention and subsequent communication of ideas, and retains an infinite recodability, legitimizing its later use as evidence in often radically altered cultural contexts, such as alternative (and often indigenous) histories. For me, the usefulness of this approach is only tempered by an awareness that the recodability argument often in fact seeks just to replace one set of evidential readings (reinterpretation) with another (ethnographic intention), reconsolidating rather than questioning anthropologys relationship to the indexical nature of the image. Are Layards photographs evidence of a more sociological and participatory approach to anthropological fieldwork? What is the evidential basis for asserting that Jennesss photos do not show the tension of intrusion by a fieldworker [Edwards 2001: 89]? The value of any archival reinterpretation is of course limited by its ability to offer a nuanced and reflexive critique of the evidential basis upon which it rests. The problems surrounding evidential value and archival reinterpretation are particularly acute in the case of an archive such as that of Evans-Pritchards. During the process of cataloguing the approximately 4000 photographic objects in the collection, it became clear that the photography of his first period of fieldwork in late 1926, among the Ingessana of Blue Nile Province in the Sudan, was sometimes markedly different from that of his subsequent Zande fieldwork. Among the Ingessana, Evans-Pritchard took a number of physical-type photographs, usually both profile and full-face, occasionally using his coat for a backdrop [Figure 1]; whereas such scientific-reference imagery is entirely absent from his Zande photographs, though they were taken on the same expedition to the Sudan. Although Evans-Pritchard took a large number of Zande portraits they are all characterized by a less scrutinizing style and a more distanced position; and although often repetitive (such as the series of portraits of the sons of Prince Rikita) each image allows for significant personal and cultural inflection [Figure 2]. On the surface, a cross-section through such an archive could be taken as evidence for a shift in Evans-Pritchards fieldwork methodologya development represented in the retreating focal depth of the imagesfrom scientific scrutiny to relaxed portraiture, from an approach where context is intentionally excluded to one where context crowds in. Following Edwardss formulation that intention, meshed with the evidential, articulates a meaning [loc. cit.], we might interpret a progression in Evans-Pritchards intention for photographic inscription as well as communication of meaning, suggesting that the Ingessana photos demonstrate the characteristic concerns of more limited survey

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Figure 1 Ingessana man, photographed using a coat as a backdrop. Tabi Hills, Blue Nile, Sudan. Photograph by E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Nov.Dec. 1926. (Courtesy of Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. PRM 1998.344.7.2).
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Figure 2 Portrait of Awagi wiri Rikita, a son of Prince Rikita. Yambio, Western Equatoria, Sudan. Photograph by E.E. Evans-Pritchard, probably 1927. (Courtesy of Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. PRM 1998.341.500.2).

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ethnography, whereas the Zande portraits are redolent of social relationships established over time, and thereby are an indirect product of the longer-term fieldwork method. Tracing our development from the surface of the image, it could be argued that Evans-Pritchards archive demonstrates vividly the identity crisis of British anthropology during the 1920s, with radically different notions of what constituted a scientific approach laid bare in the photographic record.2 The evidence for this interpretation is complicated by the written record, which in fact indicates not a linear progression in Evans-Pritchards methodology, nor an identity crisis, but the co-existence of parallel ethnographic investigations with differing methodological concerns, one of which was being undertaken on behalf of his supervisor C.G. Seligman. The written record for instance states that Evans-Pritchard did in fact carry out physical measurements during his Zande fieldwork [Seligman and Seligman 1932: 496], and that although not taken according to accepted methods, six of his Zande portraits were cropped and enlarged to provide a comparison of Zande types in Seligmans survey of the Sudan [1932: pl. LVI]. Evans-Pritchard later wrote that on his first expeditions to the Sudan he had taken around . . . callipers and a height-measuring rod . . . to please my teacher Professor Seligman. I have always regarded, and still regard, such measurements as lacking scientific value, even being almost meaningless; but so it was at that time [1973: 242]. Evans-Pritchards Ingessana photographs can in one sense be understood as those of a research assistant, operating according to the needs of Seligmans project. This example demonstrates the inherent problem of using photographys indexicality as unproblematic evidence in any archival reinterpretation, since there is a tendency to replace one set of naive assumptions about the evidential value of photographic inscription with another. The reinterpretation of focal depth in Evans-Pritchards Ingessana and Zande portraits shows how a preconceived analytical structure can heavily influence our reading of intention, evidence and meaning in historical photography. Further, it excludes other possibilities, such as the agency of Azande in shaping the photographic record, as well as the apparently contradictory existence of parallel and contrasting fieldwork methodologies (such as survey and participantobservation) rather than a smooth, or even abrupt, Malinowskian revolution.

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GOROT I now want to consider further the question of evidence and interpretation in the photographic archive, in relation to two further abstractions, those of seriality and partiality, by which I refer to the relational situation of a photograph to others in a series, as well as the interpretive problems that surround the fragmentary narrative of the photographic series. The most obvious example of the relationship between photographic seriality and the methodology of participantobservation in Evans-Pritchards entire collection, or for that matter any that I am aware of, is the series of 12 images (probably taken in 1927) devoted to the initiation of Kamanga as a binza (witchdoctor), where Evans-Pritchard embodies the role of the participant-photographer in a dramatic fashion, standing on the edge of the ritual grave where he ritually acts as sponsor of the initiate,

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throwing offerings into the hole, while at the same time taking images of the ritual sequence [Figure 3]. However, it was not until his purchase of a Rolleiflex camera sometime in the early 1930s that Evans-Pritchard began to photograph sequentially in any systematic way, the most extensive being his record of the rite of gorot. In 1936, after carrying out a brief survey of the Luo of western Kenya,3 Evans-Pritchard spent seven weeks in western Nuerland, his fourth and final piece of fieldwork among this Nilotic group. Most of this time (5 weeks) was spent in Nyueny, the home village of a youth called Nhial whom Evans-Pritchard had employed on both his first and second expeditions to Nuerland in 1930 and 1931. The long-term connection with Nhial meant that, as in 1935 when he visited the home village of another former servant Tiop (at Mancom at the mouth of the Nyanding River), he was able to conduct fieldwork as a friend of the family [Evans-Pritchard 1956: 35]. This binding of the ethnographer into Nuer social relations had been something entirely lacking in Evans-Pritchards longer and yet ultimately frustrated expeditions of 1930 and 1931. This shift in social acceptance also had a dramatic impact upon Evans-Pritchards photography. Whereas the political situation in 1930 meant that he had abstained from photographing a single cow [Evans-Pritchard 1937: 242], as a result of the mistrust caused by punitive strikes against Nuer herds by the colonial administration, his photographs from both 1935 and 1936 show that he was at liberty to photograph within the cattle pens of his hosts. Although relatively brief, the improved access to Nuer social and ritual activities that he enjoyed in 1936 meant that the

Figure 3 Zande abinza (witchdoctors) gathered around the ritual burial of an initiate (Kamanga, Evans-Pritchards servant). Yambio, Western Equatoria, Sudan. Photograph by E.E. Evans-Pritchard, probably 1927. (Courtesy of Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. PRM 1998.341.163.2).

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information he gathered then came to dominate his subsequent analysis published in Nuer Religion.4 According to Evans-Pritchards published account [1956: 217218] the Nuer rite of gorot was carried out by female diviners (tiet) to ensure the fertility of a couple married at an unusually early age. It involved the suffocation of an ox by blocking its orifices with grass, the cooking and feeding of some of its meat to the young couple, the circling of the couples hut by the wifes young brother with the boiled hump of the ox on the end of a spear, and the smearing of blood and butter on the body. When cataloguing these photos it became apparent to me that, although subsequently disassociated within the archive, Evans-Pritchard had taken 30 photographs (3 films) around the time of this ceremony,5 one of which was published in Nuer Religion [1956: pl. 3]. According to him, gorot is very different to most Nuer sacrifices since the ox was not stabbed through the heart but suffocated, no invocation to God was made before it was carried out, and since female diviners (tiet) were involved when senior male family members were more usual. Although it bore similarities to sacrifices to the python-spirit in which she-goats were sometimes suffocated after the manner of a python, and as also probably having been adopted from the neighboring Dinka, Evans-Pritchard was unsure of how to consider it aside from it being a notable aberration, admitting that I cannot explain the symbolism, if it has any [1956: 218]. Just what the gorot rite did symbolize within Nuer religious practice formed the basis of a heated debate between T.O. Beidelman and John Burton and William Arens, in the correspondence pages of the journal Man between 1969 and 1976 [Beidelman 1969, 1976a, 1976b; Arens and Burton 1975; Burton 1976], in which Evans-Pritchards description and published photograph of the gorot rite were drawn on as evidence on both sides. Beidelmans original comment was a brief suggestion that the symbolism of gorot was to contain the taint transferred within the animal . . . that the sacrificial animal absorbs the polluting aspects of the couple who were married somewhat irregularly, and that this taint is then mastered by being consumed as flesh [Beidelman 1969: 290]. Arens and Burtons later objection to Beidelmans analysis [Arens and Burton 1975] was that gorot should not be understood as a sacrifice at all, and that Evans-Pritchard makes this point.6 They further argue that Beidelmans propositionthat the taint of an unusual marital union is being mastered through the consumption of the oxs fleshis not in accord with any evidence of Nuer ritual practice, which usually privileges the position of sacrificial blood in the removal of taint or evil. The two then appeal to the evidence of Evans-Pritchards published photographs of Nuer ritual to argue that it is typical of sacrifices . . . for the participants to shave their heads and affect special bodily ornaments. However, a glance at a photograph of the ritual in question indicates that here this is not the case [Arens and Burton 1975: 314] [Figure 4]. In formulating their own interpretation, they again turn to the published image: The photograph of the gorot ritual . . . depicts forcing grass into the orifices of the ox. Unlike Nuer sacrifices, in which there is a preference as to which side the animal should fall, in this instance it is actually positioned on its left side [1975: 314]. According to Arens and Burton the oxs death by suffocation and the spitting-out of the ox meat were symbolic of a youthful marriage that, although consummated, had not produced

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Figure 4 Sacrifice of ox by suffocation, published as Plate III in Evans-Pritchards Nuer Religion [1956]. Nyueny village, southern Sudan. Photograph by E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1936. (Courtesy of Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. PRM 1998.355.296.2).

offspring. Other elements of the gorot rite symbolized the desired statethe production of a child. Beidelmans defence [1976a: 119121] focuses upon the definition of sacrifice within Nuer religious practice as well as the distinction between magic and religion, but he also returns to Arens and Burtons point about the ritual preparedness of people depicted in Evans-Pritchards photographs:
A. & B. observe that Nuer shave their heads and wear special ornaments when involved in sacrifice and note that this is not the case in a photo of gorot, arguing that this demonstrates that gorot is not a form of sacrifice (1956: plate 3). Photographs are sometimes deceptive, yet in all the other photos of sacrifice in this same book, most of the protagonists appear unshaved and adorned in no special manner (plates 8, 9, 10, 11) . . . [Beidelman 1976: 120]

The question of context hangs over not only the published image of gorot but over all the other images in Nuer Religion, and yet the appeal to its veracity and indexicality as an unmediated window onto Evans-Pritchards vision of Nuer ritual continues. This debate over the significance of gorot demonstrates an ongoing ambivalence in anthropologys relationship to the archival image, in which both truth and deception are equally possible outcomes of the interpretive process.

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SERIALITY AND PARTIALITY IN THE ARCHIVE It appears that Evans-Pritchard took three films of photographs at the time of the gorot rite at Nyueny village.7 One of the films focuses upon the suffocation of the ox [Figure 5], another the young boy circling the hut of the young couple with the oxs boiled hump [Figure 6], and a third film contains portraits of seated participants and onlookers as well as possibly the distribution of cooked meat [Figure 7]. The text description of the gorot ritual in Nuer Religion, however, includes additional elements such as the distribution of cooked ox meat to the married couple and other kin, as well as ritual activity within the hut by the female diviner. Evans-Pritchards photographic record of gorot then is marked by an attention to the seriality of two elements of the rite, and yet by partiality in its record of the overall event. One reason for the partiality of the record may lie in the proxemics [Hall 1968] of Evans-Pritchards involvement with eventsthat certain areas or elements of the rite were not judged appropriate to photograph, or since some events took place within the hut of the young couple, which Evans-Pritchard does not seem to have entered. However, most other elements not photographed, such as the smearing of butter on the participants, happened outside and presumably for all to witness. Instead the record is marked by intense photographic engagement with two elements of the ritual activity, and complete non-engagement with other elements. Just why Evans-Pritchard was careful to record two aspects of the rite visually and not to build up a representative series of the overall rite is a question that has no definitive answer, and yet it provides important evidence about the role of photography in his fieldwork. Film 7 This group of eleven images [Figure 5] shows the suffocation of the ox as part of the gorot rite, perhaps the most ethnographically significant aspect of this particular rite, since it differs from the invariable Nuer method of sacrificing an ox by piercing the animals heart with a spear. This part of the rite was described by Evans-Pritchard thus:
An ox was thrown and its forelegs and back legs tied in pairs. It was then slowly suffocated, grass being first pushed up its anus with a stick, and then into its mouth and nostrils (Plate III). During its sufferings the husband and a youth of his age-set, the wife and a maiden of about her age, and a small boy and a small girl sat on its flank. After a while they rose and the oxs throat was slit. [1956: 217218]

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As earlier discussed, the abnormality of this method of killing for the Nuer, in addition to the lack of any consecration of the beast or invocation to God before killing it, are central to the interpretation of the rite within Nuer religious practice. The repetition of views of the killing method in this sequence indicates a desire to record something of ethnographic rarity, and yet also since an especial awareness of Nuer sacrificial method in form of the presentation, consecration, invocation and immolation of a beast was to be central to Evans-Pritchards

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Figure 5 Eleven prints identified as Film 7 within Evans-Pritchards Nuer photographs, showing the suffocation of an ox as part of the Nuer rite of gorot (original sequence not identified, however). Nyueny village, southern Sudan. Photographs by E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1936. (Courtesy of Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. For accession numbers, see Note 5).

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Figure 6 Nine prints identified as Film 4 within Evans-Pritchards Nuer photographs, showing the circling of the young couples hut as part of the Nuer rite of gorot (original sequence not identified, however). Nyueny village, southern Sudan. Photographs by E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1936. (Courtesy of Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. For accession numbers see Note 5).

analysis of Nuer religious thought [1956: 215]. Although frame numbers are not recorded, the photos demonstrate his movement within the ritual arena: he begins to photograph from where onlookers are gathered, getting gradually closer in his desire to record the technique of suffocation, until he is finally standing next to the female diviner (tiet) and is able to record the stuffing of grass into the oxs anus. He then moves round the assisting senior male family members to record the insertion of grass into the oxs nostrils. Although the suffocation techniques form a series of images across this film, there are no images recording the sitting on the ox by the husband or other ritual participants, an element that

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Figure 7 Ten prints identified as Film 9 within Evans-Pritchards Nuer photographs, showing mostly portraits taken at the time of the Nuer rite of gorot (original sequence not identified, however). Nyueny village, southern Sudan. Photographs by E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1936. (Courtesy of Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. For accession numbers see Note 5).

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forms an important part of not only Evans-Pritchards description but also subsequent interpretation of the rite [Beidelman 1969: 290; Arens and Burton 1975: 314]. The proxemics of his movement within the ritual arena are of interest here, since the sequence demonstrates his movement from a more distanced position (of lower social status or relevance to the couple involved) to one very close to the activity itself (highest social status or connection to the couple). This movement through social and ritual space was of course occasioned by his desire to record close detail of the suffocation, but it also evinces a tolerance by the social group of his movement into the heart of the ritual arena, something made possible by the transformation over five years of his relationship to this community through his servant Nhial. Both the immediacy and performative flow of the suffocation event are perhaps why Evans-Pritchard takes so many similar images of the suffocation, revealing a heightened concern with capturing in a cinematographic manner the temporal flow of events. Most fieldworkers have probably also experienced this repetitious element with their own fieldwork photography, with some significant situations leading to numerous exposures in an attempt to circumscribe the experience, or perhaps rather to capture it from the all-too-rapid flow of experience. In other words, by considering the seriality of the field archive, we get an intimation of Evans-Pritchards relationship to photography itself and the manner of his engagement with the medium during key events during fieldwork. Film 9 The series of nine images identified as Film 9 [Figure 6] relate to the circling of the young couples hut with the boiled hump of the suffocated ox. Evans-Pritchard describes it as follows:
The door of the hut was then closed and the butter was placed on the fire. While it was melting, a boy, the wifes brother, circled the hut outside with the boiled hump of the ox on the point of a fishing-spear. When he stuck the hump through the first window of the hut the diviner asked what will you give me? and someone in the hut answered that she would give a brown calf. The action was repeated at the other windows of the hut, the answer referring to either a brown or black calf. Then the door was opened and the diviner hung round the wifes neck the stomach lining of the ox and the skin of its umbilicus to which brass rings and part of its tail had been attached. [1956: 218]

In comparison to the ritual elements surrounding the suffocation aspect of the ritual, in this series of photos Evans-Pritchard seems to attempt to construct a visual sequence, beginning with the female diviner standing outside the hut, leading the boy around the windows, and finally the opening of the door and the feeding of pieces of meat to the couple. In several of the images he does not have a direct view, but instead we gain a vivid impression of his position within a gathered group of onlookers, with family members all around him. All the images are taken from a position adjacent to the door of the hut, suggesting that he did not follow the boy as he was led around the hut by the female diviner. Although he records the female diviner offering meat to the couple, there is no photo of

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the tiet placing the ritually important parts of the ox around the wifes neck, suggesting that his view of this stage was impeded by other onlookers who were beginning to gather closely around the doorway at this point.

Film 4 The series of ten images identified as Film 4 on the print reverse [Figure 7] is a mixed group of portraits taken around the homestead at the time of the gorot event, as well as views across the courtyard. They may have been taken during the wait for the rite to begin, but one of the images shows a group of youths and others gathered on the spot where the ox was killed, with what may be the indistinct form of the ox on the ground visible between them, suggesting that these images were perhaps taken at some point after the suffocation. Three of the images were taken with the Rolleiflex resting on the groundwhich Evans-Pritchard props up and turns slightly to the left in order to take a portrait of a youth sitting nearby. In only one of the other portraits is the subject seemingly aware of the photographers attention, that of a smiling youth. This print has been marked by a printer for cropping on the right side, but evidently was not used since it does not seem to appear in any of Evans-Pritchards publications. These images vividly demonstrate the use made of the Rolleiflex to take photos in an inconspicuous manner, by lining up the portrait by looking down into the top-viewer and taking the image from chest-height, angling the camera upwards for the portrait of the man with the ivory arm-ring, and downwards towards a seated man with an ornament tied at the back of his head. All of the images in this film are of people seated or standing in the homestead, and their peripatetic nature also resonates with the waiting, perhaps impatience, of the ethnographer. Evans-Pritchard described Nuer ritual as a rather lengthy affair, and for a European rather tedious to assist at. He has to sit in the sun for several hours listening to addresses that are difficult for him to follow. Some of the sentences may be inaudible, the speaker speaking too low or having his back turned to the audience, who may also be talking among themselves [1956: 209]. It would be easy to over-interpret this film in the context of its evident connection with the gorot event. It seems clear that Evans-Pritchard did not use this film to document Nuer social activity preceding or proceeding from a rite, but rather to take the opportunity as an accepted part of the gathered group to take some close portraits, something hitherto difficult during his earlier periods of Nuer fieldwork. Given that scenes of ritual action entirely fill the two further films, there is the possibility that these portrait images were actually taken in the long build-up to the gorot event, and that he took these portraits in order to finish one film and have a new one ready for the rite to come that might require quick and repeated exposures. Although I am reluctant to over-interpret this film of peripatetic portrait taking, their inherent visual excess allows us to witness far more than Evans-Pritchard intended of the occasion, especially those onlookers less central to the rite itself.

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SERIALITY, PARTIALITY AND COLLECTIVE WITNESS The notion of seriality in still photography is one that stresses the dynamic relationships between images, a dynamic that retains the fetishistic power of the still and the argumentative capacity of the moving [Pinney 1990: 42]. One of the most interesting explorations of the relationship between the evocative power of the still photograph and its relational and filmic potential is Chris Markers La e [1962], a film which invites consideration of the still photograph and the Jete construction of a cinematographic narrative and meaning. Two of the most interesting published examples of seriality in anthropology or documentary are Bateson and Meads Balinese Character [1942] and Agee and Evans Let Us Now Praise Famous Men [1941], two works that have their roots in projects carried out in 1936the same year as Evans-Pritchard photographed the rite of gorot. 1936 was the year of Mead and Batesons first visit to Bali and of Agee and Walkers original assignment for Fortune magazine. Both these projects involved collaboration in order that both textual and visual narratives were developed alongside each other, something only possible to a partial extent for the sole fieldworker. Bateson for instance wrote that:
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We usually worked together, Margaret Mead keeping verbal notes on the behaviour and Gregory Bateson moving around in and out of the scene with the two cameras . . . For work of this sort it is essential to have at least two workers in close cooperation. The photographic sequence is almost valueless without a verbal account of what occurred, and it is not possible to take full notes while manipulating cameras. The photographer, with his eye glued to a viewfinder and moving about, gets a very imperfect view of what is actually happening, and Margaret Mead . . . had a much fuller view of the scene than Gregory Bateson. [1942: 4950]

Batesons model of ethnographic collaboration involving a bilateral approach to the visual and textual record of events leaves the sole fieldworker in a precarious position, unable to be both photographically engaged and an overall observer in a position to take full and meaningful notes. The existence of partial series in Evans-Pritchards record of gorot would then be explained in a relatively commonsense waythe ethnographer can either be photographically engaged or taking notes, but this leads to some sequences and some gaps. This model would then understand his sequence of photos of the ox suffocation and the circling of the hut as two periods during which he was photographically engaged and with the intent of recording a sequence of events, and during other elements of the rite he was engaged with observing and note-taking. Since none of Evans-Pritchards fieldnotes has survived it is not possible to trace the pattern of his observational activity from this source. So far I have discussed two explanations for the co-existence of partiality and seriality in Evans-Pritchards record of gorot, both of which emerge from a close reading of the archive itself. The first suggests that since the photograph is a product of a camera operated by a fieldworker, the archive is necessarily shaped by the proxemics and spatial dynamic of the fieldwork encounterfor instance that images of the gorot rite that took place in the hut interior are not evident since Evans-Pritchards entry into the young

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couples hut would not have been considered appropriate, or that photographing the couple eating meat together would have been to record something considered humiliating, since married couples did not eat in each others presence. The second explanation considers that photographic engagement and note-taking or observation are essentially different forms of fieldwork that the lone fieldworker cannot hope to combine coterminously. This explanation would thus see the partiality of Evans-Pritchards record of gorot as the inevitable result of his successive attempts to combine photographic engagement alongside detailed note-taking and observation. I want to now briefly consider a third approach to understanding the partiality of the gorot series, one that pays more attention to the agency of the group in shaping the archive, since it directly relates his photographic engagement to the engagement of the social group gathered to witness the ceremony. Taking another look at Films 7 and 9 [Figures 5 and 7], what seems to emerge is a strong sense of the collective nature of the gorot ceremony, with family members gathered closely around, some assisting at points, and others watching. The importance of collective witness and group involvement is a common feature in Nuer religious practice, especially sacrifice, which often involves numerous relatives who travel considerable distances to attend, and which ends with the distribution of meat among the relatives. The group witnesses that a sacrifice has been carried out as part of the collectives obligation to spirits; they witness which direction the beast falls after sacrifice, and they gather to hear the lengthy invocations that precede it. Evans-Pritchard as participant photographer is also part of this dynamic of collective witness, moving with onlookers as they witness different aspects of the ceremony. In these two films the nature of his photographic engagement seems to sway with the collective witness of the group, shown by the presence of other onlookers on either side of the frame. The images of the circling of the hut by the youth with the boiled ox hump in particular demonstrate that the sociospatial dynamic of the earlier suffocation element of the rite, where onlookers sat patiently nearby to watch, had transformed into a more participatory and informal rite, in which Evans-Pritchard had to jostle for position to gain a view of the scene. The importance of the active witness of kin is often an intrinsic part of the efficaciousness of ritual, and it is during these periods of concentrated and focused, almost structured, participation and witness by the wider group that EvansPritchard seems to become photographically engaged, rather than a more detached observer. The model of the participant-photographer forming part of the collective witness of the group is also evident in other published ethnographic series of rituals, such as Turners photographs of the Ndembu ritual of isoma, where the couple being treated stand in a ritual hole whilst the ethnographer takes his place alongside the officiants and other kin members gathered to witness and sing the kupunjila or swaying song [Turner 1969: Figs. 17]. From this perspective, the agency of the collective group in shaping the activity of the participantphotographer and the resulting archival record is key. The ethnographers engagement with events is often guided by the engagement of the witnessing group, and his photographic engagement forms part of the way in which the collective witness of the group is dynamically involved with events as they unfold.

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THE SIGHT OF THE FIELD IN THE ARCHIVE We know that Evans-Pritchard used his Nuer photographs as a source of ethnographic data when re-examining his Nuer notes some twenty years later, while preparing Nuer Religion [1956]. In the chapter Spear Symbolism, an examination of the importance of left=right symbolism in Nuer religious thought and culture, he argues that the Nuer invariably train the left horns of their favorite oxen, whereas they erect sacred poles to the right of their shelters. His turn to the archive for confirmation however proved less than helpful: All deformed horns in the photographs are left horns. Some branches in them, however, are to the left of the windscreens, but Nuer erect branches for practical purposes as well as for religious reasons, and I do not think it is possible to distinguish between them by sight [Evans-Pritchard 1956: 235n]. But the sight of the field in the archive, although indexically related to the notion of sight-as-witness, has remained an ambiguous source of evidential value in the re-interpretation of anthropological data gathered through note-taking. The reinterrogation of the field archive, premised upon photographys indexicality as a store of cultural data less affected by fieldwork intentionality, is also understood here, to use Pinneys [2008] phrase, as both cure and poison both the source for reinterpretive evidence and yet also constrained by its inability to record the contextual transformation of a practical object (a pole for hanging personal items) into a ritual one (the sacred pole, associated with God, the spirits of their lineages and also with its ghosts) [1956: 234]. Sight is here recast as an essentially limited sense, distanced from experiencea scrutiny imposed upon the visual field at one remove from the sort of understanding gained from cultural immersion. As a reinterpretive sense, it becomes separated from the notion of witness as a key ethnographic method, a point to which I will return. The importance of sight-as-witness to the method of participant-observation was the subject of one of Malinowskis letters from the field to Layard, urging him that I find the first rule: see it yourself. Dont be satisfied with what the missionary and settler, nor even what the native tells you. See it; live through it. I find this is the main thing.8 Throughout his published writing Evans-Pritchard also compares the authority of his having witnessed an event directly to that of earlier writers whose information was mediated by another[w]hat I record, he wrote in the Preface to Nuer Religion, I witnessed myself or is information given spontaneously [1956: v]. Yet he elsewhere notes that the notion of witness, the passive being-there of the ethnographer, is only the prerequisite to the more scientific activity of anthropological observation, since one has to learn what to look for and how to observe [1952: 81]. The discrimination of the trained ethnographers eye, he writes, cannot be compared to the indiscriminate viewfinder of the camera: The work of the anthropologist is not photographic. He has to decide what is significant in what he observes and by his subsequent relation of his experiences to bring what is significant into relief. For this he must have, in addition to a wide knowledge of anthropology, a feeling for form and pattern, and a touch of genius [Evans-Pritchard 1952: 82]. There is of course an inherent irony in this statement, since both a feeling for form and pattern and a touch of genius are

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qualities more usually applied to photographers than anthropologists. Although his employment of the term photographic to mean the indiscriminate capture of information negates the discriminatory processes involved in field photography, we take his point. What it also raises is the question of the relationship between the direct observation and witness of the ethnographer, photographic engagement with events at the time, and the subsequent usage of the field archive in later writing. Evans-Pritchards textual description of gorot occupies less than two pages in Nuer Religion, and as with much ethnographic writing about ritual, there is a very linear progression of meaningful elements in the description. Within this linear description, each stage is given equal weight in a thishappened-then-this-happened manner; there is no sense of greater and lesser ritualized activity, gaps or secondary social events or contexts. It is a structured procedure, but nonetheless not abstracted from the particularity of the event witnessed. This is heightened by retrospective inserts such as the husband told me afterwards that this was the most humiliating part of the rite [1956: 218], which introduces a participants reflection and judgement into the flow of ethnographic description. There is an effortless and constant shift of the balance of ethnographic authority between Evans-Pritchard and informant in the text. The authority of the anthropologist in determining the structured linear sequence of ritual has been addressed by Morphy [1994] in his discussion of the filming of ritual events, where he identifies both the false concreteness of cultural events and the posteriority or retrospect nature of ritual interpretation which is then presented as a priori experientially. The process of building-up observational notes, subsequent commentary and cross-commentary, all characteristic of Evans-Pritchards ethnographic method, can then be contrasted with the immediacy of his photographic engagement with ritual events and the subsequent textual evocation of the immediacy of participation in the published account. Geertz [1988] has described Evans-Pritchards writing style as one of creating textual transparencies in which the visualizable is given prominence in the way in which social and cultural life is translated to the reader. According to Grimshaw [2001], Evans-Pritchard accords a central role to vision as an observational technique, a strategy by which society may be seen, thus indicating a certain conception of scientific knowledge. The anthropology of Evans-Pritchard, she argues, is built upon the idea of illumination. The world is ultimately knowable. It is rendered transparent through the exercise of the light of reason [2001: 66]. As Grimshaw also argues, it was perhaps the Malinowskian attention to sight and vision in ethnographic enquiry that ultimately led to the demise of the camera and other scientific instrumentation within anthropology [2001: 54], as tools associated ironically with a lack of vision of the social field, focused instead upon the surface of appearance.

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CONCLUSION In presenting the case study of Evans-Pritchards field photographs of the Nuer rite of gorot, I have asked several questions: why is the archival record

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characterized by a sustained engagement with two distinct stages of the ceremony, and why are other aspects of the ceremony not represented? In order to explore these questions, which were first prompted by a detailed engagement with the entire archive, I have proposed a model of Evans-Pritchard as participant-photographera model that understands his activity during the rite as being composed of periods of photographic engagement interspersed with observation and note-taking. I have discussed a number of ways in which the episodic nature of this photographic engagement may be understood: from the perspective of a Batesonian concern with the incommensurability of visual and textual approaches to fieldwork; as being influenced by technical or other practical considerations, such as the movement from exterior events to those taking place inside the couples small hut; and finally as being influenced to some extent by the agency of the gathered group, whose role in the active witness and participation in ritual events can be seen to have helped shape the archival record. The sight of the field in the archive, the process of reinterpreting textual notes alongside the photographic record in subsequent analysis, was also considered in the light of debate over the symbolic meaning of the gorot rite, as well as Evans-Pritchards comments in Nuer Religion about the inability of Nuer photos to record the contextual transformation of everyday objects into ritual ones by sight alone; an insight which suggests the need for more research into the relationship between vision, evidence and the archive in anthropology.

NOTES
1. An earlier form of this article was presented as a paper in the panel Photographic Mediations (32d), convened by Ju rg Schneider and Frank Wittman, at the first European Conference of African Studies organized by the Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies, held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, June 29 to July 2, 2005. A revised version was also presented at the WennerGren-sponsored workshop entitled Revisiting the History of Visual Anthropology, convened by myself and Elizabeth Edwards at the 9th Royal Anthropological Institute International Festival of Ethnographic Film, Oxford, 18 Sept. 2005. I would like to thank all those who made useful comments at these presentations, and in particular David Odo. My thanks are also due to Katrien Pype for her additional comments. 2. Evans-Pritchards training in anthropology at the London School of Economics in the midlate 1920s epitomizes the differing notions of the scientific basis of anthropology at this timefor his supervisor Charles Gabriel Seligman (18731940) anthropology was an empirical and descriptive discipline closely connected to the human sciences; yet he was more influenced by the radically different science of functionalism taught by Malinowski, with its emphasis upon direct and unmediated observation, linguistics and textual analysis. 3. See http:/ /photos.prm.ox.ac.uk/luo for a full catalog of Evans-Pritchards photographs relating to his Luo fieldwork of 1936. 4. Evans-Pritchards, Nuer fieldwork was composed of four expeditions: 1930 (about 14 weeks at Yoinyang, Pakur, Muot Dit); 1931 (five months at Nyanding River, Yakwach and Kurmayom); 1935 (roughly six weeks at Yakwach and Mancom); 1936 (seven weeks in western Nuerland among the Leek (Lek) Nuer, mostly in Nyueny). See

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5.

6.
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7.

8.

Johnson [1982] for an account of Evans-Pritchards relationship with the Sudan administration who funded his Nuer fieldwork. Professor Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard (19021973) donated all of his southern Sudanese field photographs to the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, in 1966. See http://southernsudan.prm.ox.ac.uk for a full online catalog of EvansPritchards southern Sudan photograph and object collections held at the Pitt Rivers Museum. The cataloging of the Evans-Pritchard collection was made possible by a grant from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to Jeremy Coote and Elizabeth Edwards in 2003, for a project entitled Recovering the Material and Visual Cultures of the Southern Sudan: A Museological Resource. The accession numbers of the gorot photographs illustrated in this paper areFilm 4: 1998.355.26.2, 1998.355.73.2, 1998.355.74.2, 1998.355.75.2, 1998.355.76.2, 1998.355.77.2, 1998.355.78.2, 1998.355.92.2, 1998.355.132.2; Film 7: 1998.355.239.2, 1998.355.296.2, 1998.355.307.2, 1998.355.315.2, 1998.355.316.2, 1998.355.317.2, 1998.355.320.2, 1998.355.346.2, 1998.355.446.2, 1998.355.532.2, 1998.355.535.2; Film 9: 1998.355.87.2, 1998.355.126.2, 1998.355.137.2, 1998.355.238.2, 1998.355.264.2, 1998.355.358.2, 1998.355.410.2, 1998.355.587.2, 1998.355.631.2, 1998.355.637.2. Although Evans-Pritchard does claim that what I witnessed should not be regarded as a sacrifice at all [1956: 217], he titles the published image of gorot as Sacrifice of ox by suffocation [1956: 68]. Although his use of the word sacrifice in the image caption was probably a convenient shorthand, it also adds to the ambiguity of his interpretation. In the fullest account Evans-Pritchard gives of Nyueny village [1990 (1951): 1217] he states that: The village is spread along the arc of a sandy ridge for about a mile and a half. It comprises three hamlets, Nyueny, Dakyil, and Kamthiang, and about a mile to the north of it lies the hamlet of Dhorpan, the occupants of which used to form part of the main village. In 1936 the population of Nyueny was reckoned to be about 130 souls, distributed in twenty-six homesteads [1990 [1951]: 12]. Letter from Malinowski to Layard dated 9 June 1915 from Samarai, Papua. University of California at San Diego, Mandeville Special Collections Library, John Willoughby Layard Papers, Box 10, Folder 6. Quoted in Herle [2008: 78].

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Edwards, Elizabeth 1990 Photographic Types: in Pursuit of Method. Visual Anthropology, 3(23): 235258. 1992 Anthropology and Photography 18601920. Elizabeth Edwards, ed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2000 (Review of Malinowskis Kiriwina:. Fieldwork Photography 19151918 by Michael Young.) American Anthropologist, N.S. 102(3, Sept): 600602. 2001 Raw Histories: Photographs, Anthropology and Museums. Oxford: Berg. Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan 1937 The Economic Life of the Nuer: Cattle (Part 1). Sudan Notes and Records, 21(1): 3277. 1952 Social Anthropology. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press. 1956 Nuer Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1973 Some Reminiscences and Reflections on Fieldwork. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 4(1, Hilary): 112. 1990 [1951] Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Fabian, Johannes 1983 Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Foucault, Michel 1979 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Alan Sheridan, trans. New York: Pantheon Books. Freire-Marreco, Barbara, and John L. Myres (eds.) 1912 Notes and Queries on Anthropology. London: Royal Anthropological Institute. Geertz, Clifford 1988 Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Cambridge: Polity Press. Geismar, Haidy 2006 Malakula: A Photographic Collection. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 48: 520563. Green, David 1984 Classified SubjectsPhotography and Anthropology: The Technology of Power. Ten8, (14): 3037. Grimshaw, Anna 2001 The Ethnographers Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, Edward T. 1968 Proxemics. Current Anthropology, 9(2=3): 83108. Herle, Anita 2008 John Layards Photographs on Malakula: From Observational to Participant Field Research. In Moving Images: John Layard, Fieldwork and Photography in Malakula since 1914. Haidy Geismar and Anita Herle, eds. Pp. 73120. Adelaide: Crawford House Press and University of Hawaii. Johnson, Douglas 1982 Evans-Pritchard, the Nuer, and the Sudan Political Service. African Affairs, 81(323, April): 231246. Malinowski, Bronislaw 1967 A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Morphy, Howard 1994 The Interpretation of Ritual: Reflections from Film on Anthropological Practice. Man, N.S. 29(1, Mar.): 117146. Morton, Christopher 2005 The Anthropologist as Photographer: Reading the Monograph and Reading the Archive. Visual Anthropology, 18(4): 389405. Pinney, Christopher 1990 Colonial Anthropology and The Laboratory of Mankind. In The Raj: India and the British 16001942. C. Bayley, ed. Pp. 252263. London: National Portrait Gallery. 2008 The Prosthetic Eye: Photography as Cure and Poison. In The Objects of Evidence: Anthropological Approaches to the Production of Knowledge. M. Engelke, ed. Special Issue of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, S33S46.

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Seligman, Charles G., and Brenda Z. Seligman 1932 Pagan Tribes of the Nilotic Sudan. London: Routledge. Street, Brian 1992 British Popular Anthropology: Exhibiting and Photographing the Other. In Anthropology and Photography 18601920. Elizabeth Edwards, ed. Pp. 122131. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Tagg, John 1988 The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Turner, Victor 1969 The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Wolbert, Barbara 2000 The Anthropologist as Photographer: The Visual Construction of Ethnographic Authority. Visual Anthropology, 13(4): 321343. Young, Michael 1998 Malinowskis Kiriwina: Fieldwork Photography 19151918. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

FILMOGRAPHY
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Marker, Chris e. Paris: Argos Films. l962 La Jete