Source: Harald Prins, 785-532-4966, prins@k-state.edu
News release prepared by: Michelle Hall, 785-532-6415

Thursday, January 23, 2003

K-STATE PROFESSOR RELEASES DOCUMENTARY ON PIONEER OF VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY

MANHATTAN -- Harald Prins, professor of anthropology at Kansas State University, has co-authored a new film on the pioneering visual anthropologist Edmund Carpenter.

The documentary, "Oh, What a Blow That Phantom Gave Me!" was recently released by Media Generation, West Hills, Calif., and was made possible by a grant from the Rock Foundation in New York City. Prins worked on the 55-minute film with John Bishop, adjunct associate professor of world arts and cultures from the University of California-Los Angeles.

"Oh, What a Blow," focuses on Carpenter's role in the development of visual anthropology and media ecology; he explored the borderlines between ethnography and media for more than 50 years and was the first professional anthropologist to host a national television program. He was also the first to focus attention on the revolutionary impact of film and photography on traditional tribal peoples. Much of Carpenter's fieldwork took place in the Canadian Arctic and Papua, New Guinea.

Carpenter also headed the first anthropology department in which visual media formed a central component of the curriculum (California State University-Northridge, 1957-67) and, through collaboration with Marshall McLuhan, broke new ground in the cross-cultural understanding of modern media. Carpenter is now recognized as a pioneer in the emerging field of media ecology.

Prins first met Carpenter in the late 1970s when Prins became a List Fellow at the New School for Social Research in New York City and participated in a doctoral seminar Carpenter taught. Almost 20 years later, Prins did a follow-up interview with him in New York City, where Prins found out about 400,000 feet of ethnographic film footage Carpenter and his wife Adelaide de Menil had shot of recently contacted tribes people in Papua, New Guinea.

"I realized how much and how precious this visual record was," Prins said. He contacted Bishop, who he also knew admired Carpenter's work, and they filmed Carpenter during a week of intensive interviews in spring 2000.

"Most of the time since then was spent on editing the old and new footage, until our documentary was completed a few weeks ago," he said.

Prins said he thought creating the documentary was important because of the ever-increasing dominance of visual imagery in global communication.

"Cameras possess unique practical value as means of cross-cultural communication," Prins said. "Visual images are especially effective in transmitting important information difficult or even impossible to convey in words. Visuality is not subject to the same problems of translation as speech.

"A pioneer in exploring the cross-cultural impact of modern media, Carpenter (and McLuhan) was one of the first to warn us that modern communication technology offers us a Faustian deal: we don't control the media, they control us," he added. "Through this film, John Bishop and I hope to share Carpenter's unique perspective on this fascinating but dangerous world we have now created for ourselves."

Prins is a Dutch anthropologist who has published extensively. Also professionally trained in filmmaking, he has consulted on numerous films, juried documentary film festivals and recently served as president of the Society for Visual Anthropology and as visual anthropology editor of the journal American Anthropologist. He has done extensive fieldwork among indigenous peoples in South and North America and much of his writing focuses on Algonquian Indian culture and history.

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