According to Oxford Bibliographies, “Visual anthropology can be broadly understood as the anthropological study of the visual and the visual study of the anthropological… Since the early twenty-first century, the boundaries have expanded further, partly through changes in technology (expensive celluloid film technology giving way to cheap high-quality video and digital processes, the rise of the Internet) but more through changes in theory and the opening up of new lines of intellectual inquiry.”
At the opening of his exhibition of photographs titled The Nagas at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Pablo Bartholomew said: “This is visual anthropology,” adding that
he had completed this huge exercise of documentation almost 30 years ago — between 1989 and 2000 — at a crucial juncture of the history of the Nagas, when, thanks to the evangelism of the missionaries, Christianity was gradually pushing animism out of the lives of this ethnic group. The Christian missionaries had arrived in the 1800s. The Nagas were native to the wild terrain along the Patkai mountain range in Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam as well as a section of Myanmar.
Bartholomew was not content with recording only the Naga way of life being swallowed by time. He contrasted it with the transformation of more than 30 tribes down the years, although some of the old customs coexisted with the new. What impelled him to take up this challenge was the stories he had heard from his father, the pioneering art critic and artist, Richard Bartholomew, about how he had left behind his home in what is now Myanmar as the Japanese troops invaded the land. On his way
to India, he had encountered the friendly Nagas.
Pablo Bartholomew had undertaken the project before the arrival of digital technology and he used slow speed 50 ASA and 100 ASA film which has “very fine grain”. These colour slides were scanned and the resultant prints, with their warm reds that stood out against the darker hues and the golden yellow of the children’s choir, were true to life. Western attire, which the Nagas wear today, has none of the swank of the original elaborate headdresses trimmed with hornbill feathers, shawls and neckpieces they wore earlier. The wife of a chieftain wears a headdress made of bark folded and tied over the head. Above the bark is tied a band of beads and coins. However, the heavy necklaces of varicoloured beads cannot hold a candle to the elegant conch shell necklace worn by an important woman. One important lady stands proudly with an exposed breast. The men with their strong physiques were even more splendidly accoutred. To quote the caption: “They adorned the headdress with hornbill feathers, a brass dish and fringes of human hair. The jawpiece is made of wood embedded with red and white seeds.” (picture)
Bartholomew drove through this embattled territory in his rugged Gypsy. The Indian army was at war with secessionist groups here. Procreation, birth and death were accepted as part of the cycle of life. The villages were a cluster of huts without any electricity. The heavily tattooed headhunter stood for a way of life that was banned by the British but is still central to Naga culture. But giant rough-hewn wooden furniture — some were on display at the exhibition — are still prominent features of the homes
of chieftains.