"And so we remain with the pictures and, in the recesses of our memory, with the story of the whole expedition and of the individual situations. Hopefully, we can extract these memories as we look over the images, and also begin to analyze the images themselves in such a way that this collection can take on new meaning and be given to future generations of our own family, of the Fungai-Korama families and of other Maring who lived in the eastern end of the Simbai Valley, and to students in the ever-developing discipline of anthropology. To this end I intend to proceed through the contact sheets, roll by roll, and through my field notes, in order to reconstruct what happened. Simultaneously, I will record the insights which occur to me concerning Maring cultural patterns, my patterns of seeing, and points of visual anthropology."

Allison Jablonko July 22, 1996

This bold program unfolded gradually.  From 1996 to 1999 we went over the first 20 rolls of film, correlating the images with notes made in the field. Simultaneously, we captured our memories of the early days of the expedition in seven short narratives to start the "Our Stories" section of this web site.  Eight particularly interesting observations relating to visual research were also chosen. These first results were published when the web site went online in 1999.

	Introduction
	In the Field
	Photographs as Field Location
	Fictitious Chronologies
	The Photographer's Categories
	Visibility: Optical and Cultural
	First Encounter: Roll 001
	Dialogue with a Young Musician

Over the next 13 years Allison concentrated her attention on the archival strand of the project, keeping the hard copy of the files in loose-leaf binders whose covers happened to be yellow. Thus, the cumulative record was nicknamed "The Yellow Book."

In 2010 the archival strand was finally completed together with "The Photo Event Log." This is a spread sheet indexing all the rolls of film, the events that had been filmed, and the chapters of "The Yellow Book" where the specific rolls and events had been discussed.

The full Photo Event Log is 12 pages long.  It will soon be included here.

In 2011 Allison turned her attention back to the web site and will soon start adding new chapters to this section on Visual Research.

TO BE CONTINUED....

 

         
 

    Copyright © 1999-2011 Allison Jablonko. All Rights Reserved.