KRIS L. HARDIN

Photographs by MICHAEL KATAKIS


Photographs have long been an important tool of cultural anthropologists. A quick survey of the anthropological literature shows visual images being used to provide records of change, to record important events or activities, and to elicit commentaries from informants about performance, costume, or other areas of interest. Increasingly in the last 20 years, however, anthropologists have begun to question the veracity of their visual records and to explore the ways that culture, interests, and personal experience shape the interpretation of visual images. These questions have led to a reexamination of what "documentary" means and how we judge a photograph and its ability to help us understand other worlds (see MacDougall 1991 and Ruby 1991, for example). We have come to realize that photographs and their interpretations often tell us more about the photographer or viewer or, when published, the editor, designer and writer than they do about those who are actually photographed.


The Illusion of the Image

How many times have you heard the statement---A picture is worth a thousand words"? With pictures there is what Michael Katakis has called the "illusion of the image"; one sees what is happening as real and true, and yet that truth can only be an interpretation. John Berger writes (1972) that interpretations of visual images, like interpretations of literature and speech, are shaped by the experiences of the interpreter, his or her culture, goals, interests, and training in ways that remain relatively absent and unexplored. He also writes that 'The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled" (1972:7). If this is the case then people's interpretations of visual images will change as their experiences compound in the normal course of everyday life.

The ways that experience and background affect the interpretation of visual images were brought home to me after working with photographer Michael Katakis during a field trip to the Kono area of eastern Sierra Leone in 1988. Soon after returning to the United States it became clear that Catalos had made an extraordinary collection of photographs, yet anthropologist and photographer saw the photographs and the potential of publishing or exhibiting them in very different ways. As an artist, Katakis felt that the photographs stood on their own as visual images and that ethnographic commentary should be minimal. Katakis's stance is an example of what Kratz has called the -family of man" view, which posits that "the humanistic message of the photographs would be obvious, conveying unity within the diversity of humankind" (Kratz n.d.). As an anthropologist with a commitment to cultural specificity~ I felt it would be a disservice to those photographed to encapsulate them in our world without trying to share some of what is interesting and unique about Kono history and life. Karp (1991) and Kratz (n.d.) characterize these differing points of view as assimilating and exoticizing.

Seen together our positions (Katakis's reliance on similarity and mine on difference) reflect two diametrically opposed approaches. In their extreme forms each of these positions is problematic. On the one hand, emphasizing similarity flattens out cultural difference in ways that lead to a homogeneous view of humankind. This view cannot acknowledge the existence and thus the effects of inequalities or cultural and historical difference. Emphasizing similarity also leads to the interpretation of what is perceived as different as the representation of marginality, pathology, or dysfunction. On the other hand, emphasizing difference, as my training as an anthropologist seems to foster, has the potential of exoticizing other lifeways to the point that translation or communication between cultures becomes a conceptual impossibility.

After months of sporadic discussions of our different approaches to the photographs it was clear that neither Katakis nor I had changed our positions, although each of us probably came to respect the view of the other more than before. However, the problem of how to publish or exhibit the photographs still remained. If each view was "right" under certain circumstances (specifically depending on our goals and training), we could assume there were other views that were equally right, equally worth representing. From that realization grew the idea of incorporating a third voice and focusing publication of the images on exactly the issues we had been debating. We returned to Sierra Leone in 1993 to discuss the photographs with Monica Mondeh-Gbegba, a Kono health worker familiar with the area where the photographs were originally taken.

We had several goals in comparing the three commentaries on the photographs. First, we hoped that by presenting viewers with multiple commentaries they would begin to ex lore their own biases about photographs and other visual images. Second, in addition to exploring biases about photographs in general, we hoped that viewers would begin to question their biases and assumptions about Africa in particular. If visual images of an African community are interpreted in ways that are related to training and personal experience, then what are the sources of this experience? Is ones interpretive stance related to attitudes about African Americans in this country? to stereotypical views of Africa that were predominant during the colonial era? to the stories that Christian missionaries brought from Africa as a way of encouraging contributions to the missionizing process? to the often sensationalistic coverage of Africa found in the United States media? to romantic images of a pristine and primitive Africa untouched by the ravages of time and globalization, as in recent films such as Out of Africa? Each of these threads, and there are numerous others as well, provides us with a position that, once internalized, not only influences the way we interpret what we see but also schools us to see in ways that uphold these predispositions. Rather than gaining new insights into the world around us, we tend to reproduce the world we already know or as we would like it to be in the images we see. Here our own interests and personal goals rind expression, although we may be unaware of the way these affect perception. By finding and comparing the patterns that reveal these interpretive stances in others it is perhaps easier to explore the ways in which our own interpretations might be shaped.

Third, we were interested in exploring what the multiple interpretations of photographs means for questions of power and representation. Does allowing for the voice of those represented affect the viewer's power to define the meanings of images? Does it allow those portrayed to have more of a say in how they are perceived by the outside world? These are ultimately questions about whose interpretation counts, and how we negotiate or mediate among the varying interpretations people have. Another question that must be asked in this regard is what use photographs are to the social scientist if the way we see them is so closely tied to individual experience and history.


The Kono

The photographs seen here were taken around the town of Kainkordu in Sierra Leone (Fig. 11). Kainkordu is the headquarters of Soa Chiefdom, one of 14 Kono chiefdoms. The Kono in this rural area are primarily subsistence farmers, although large numbers of men and young people are likely to migrate to the nearby urban centers of Koidu and Yengema to work in diamond mining or marketing. Increasing numbers of young people migrate to Koidu or Freetown (Sierra Leone's capital) for school. The primary crop for Kono farmers is rice, but cassava, yams, potatoes, and other vegetables are also grown. Some farmers also grow coffee and groundnuts (peanuts) as cash crops.

As in many other rural towns in the Kono area, services in Kainkordu are relatively limited. There is no electricity or running water. The town has an elementary school and rudimentary health care facilities, with several government-trained nurse-midwives and a government dispenser. The Kono are patrilineal and patrilocal, which means that inheritance of land and title passes from fathers to sons and that upon marriage wives tend to move into the households of their husbands where they spend their time raising children and laboring in their husband's rice fields. The Kono say they migrated from the highlands of Guinea to their present location, probably about 500 years ago. Scholars say this migration probably occurred in the aftermath of the fall of the great Mande empires of what is now Mali and northern Nigeria. (For a more complete description of the Kono see Hardin 1991)


The Photographs

We selected the photographs in two ways. Katakis was interested in those that he thought would make the best images for future publication or exhibition. 1 was interested in presenting a variety of views of Kono, life. We selected 25, although only 10 are included here. (The complete set will appear in our book Three Voices: Images and Reflections from a West African Town.) Once they were chosen we worked separately as if we were writing captions for an exhibition of photographs, I as an anthropologist and Katakis as an artist. When we arrived in Sierra Leone, we asked Mondeh-Gbegba to add her commentary. We had decided not to share our captions or really discuss the project (except to choose the photographs) until all three sets of commentaries were completed.

On the following pages you will see the photographs, coupled with the three sets of commentaries. Following the photographs I will discuss how interests and experiences have played into the ways that each of us responded to the images,

Figure 1
MM-G These children are trying to use something in place of a camera. One should encourage such children. But the parents didn't give them shoes. They have forgotten that they will get worms. All this comes out of poverty. These children need help for a better life.

KLH Young Kono boys have relatively few chores to do for their mothers or fathers and they spend most of their time wandering the town in the company of playmates their own age. One of their pastimes in 1988 was following Michael Katakis as he took photographs.

MGK These young boys had followed me for days. 1 would raise the camera to my eye and take my pictures, 1 would hear laughing from behind me and quickly turn and they would always scatter, disappearing behind a tree or building. After a few weeks of this dance 1 turned to the laughter and found these fellows looking at me through their homemade lenses.


Three Voices

When working with Monica Mondeh-Gbegba in Sierra Leone, I began by collecting a life history in the hopes that 1 would be able to connect some of the particularities of her captions to events and interests that shaped her interpretations. Mondeh-Gbegba is Kono, although riot from the chiefdom where the photographs were taken. She was born in 1955 and completed several years of high school before marrying. Her husband, Daniel, has worked in various capacities with foreign missionaries throughout much of their married life, Together they have seven children. Mondeh-Gbegba has lived in Koidu, the second largest city in Sierra Leone, for most of her adult life. Last spring she moved to Freetown, the capital of the country, to escape fighting between rebel and army forces in the Kono area. She has passed several certificate courses that enable her to provide various kinds of health care at the community level. Her familiarity with Kainkordu comes from her work over a period of years with a mobile health clinic that traveled to the area once a week to provide treatment and education. In 1992 she and her husband began working to construct Mondeh-Cbegba's own clinic in Koidu, While she knows many of the families in the Kainkordu area, she knows personally only two of the individuals whose photographs appear here.

After collecting her life history 1 asked Mondeh-Gbegba to briefly discuss each image as if she were writing a caption for a photograph in a book. (I used the analogy of a book instead of an exhibition because Mondeh-Gbegba was more familiar with the book format.) 1 suggested that she consider the photographs in terms of what they might tell an outsider about Kono life or what she might want someone to know about the Kono area. We worked in English. 1 edited her taped captions (some of which were quite lengthy) to shorten them to a length comparable to those written by myself and Katakis. in editing I tried to preserve both a sense of her voice, as well as the range of topics she touched on to describe each photograph.

There are several clear patterns in the captions provided by Mondeh-Gbegba. Her commentaries circle around the topics of health care (Figs. 1, 3, and 7), the needs of those photographed (Figs. 1, 3, and 4), and poverty (Figs. 1, 5, and 9). This selection of topics certainly reflects Mondeh-Gbegba's training as a health professional. To some extent it may also reflect the suggestions I gave her about constructing her captions (what the photographs tell an outsider about Kono life or what she might want someone to know about the Kono area). Given these instructions, Mondeh-Gbegba's captions also reveal something about her perceptions of the public she was addressing. in many African countries Europeans and especially Americans are perceived as being wealthy and potential benefactors who might be willing to fund a health clinic, purchase school books or otherwise provide assistance in rural African areas.

Mondeh-Gbegba's interests in viewing images in particular ways comes out clearly in her discussion of Figure 7. While she knows the woman portrayed personally, she does not name her. By saying the woman is just a nursing aide she differentiates herself and her degree of training from that of the aide. She also makes it clear that this is a local clinic rather than a government-run enterprise, which further separates Mondeh-Gbegba from the woman in the photograph. In contrast, for Figure 2 (the portrait of Chief Faiduo) Mondeh-Gbegba names the person photographed and by doing so associates herself with a powerful member of the community in a way she was reluctant to do with the woman in Figure 7.

Overall, Mondeh-Gbegba, even though she is Kono, presents a distanced view of most of the photographs. While this may be somewhat due to my instructions, it is also clear that she is interested in separating herself from most of the scenes of rural life portrayed in the photographs. As an educated urban dweller her life experiences have been very different from those of the farmers found in rural communities such as Kainkordu. Mondeh-Gbegba's training and wage employment, for example alleviate the necessity of doing small scale trading, and while she may have learned to spin thread at some point early in her life, it is not a practice she continues. She also has very little experience farming. Mondeh-Gbegba tends to depict rural Kono as poor, and to see local modes of production and ways of doing things as examples of poverty or of the need for medical care and training and other kinds of assistance. By emphasizing the need for health care she not only calls attention to the needs of many rural communities throughout Africa, but she underlines her own particular forms of knowledge and expertise. The interpretive stance of difference aids her in this enterprise. It allows the construction of an image of herself as more like those she perceives to be viewers of the photographs and captions (specifically non-Kono and probably non Sierra Leoneans, as per my instructions) than those portrayed.

My own captions to the photographs also present a distanced view, but in a slightly different way and for slightly different reasons. Again, these can be related to personal experience. I was born in the Central Valley of California in 1953. 1 do not remember a time when 1 was not aware that there were probably many ways of doing the same thing. 1 have a suspicion this view was fueled, if not fostered, by the fact that I reached high school as the sixties were coming to a close. I was too young to take an active role in many of the protests of that era, but 1 certainly grew up well-versed in anti-establishment rhetoric and the search for alternative lifestyles. I started college as an art student but switched to anthropology after my first year, partly because 1 found the questions that anthropologists ask about value, creativity, and art more intriguing than the practice of art itself, but also because anthropology seemed to provide the perfect arena within which to explore the varieties of human experience. My first trip to the Kono area of Sierra Leone was from 1982 to 1984. 1 made return trips in 1988 and 1993. Another important piece of the biographies presented here is that I married Michael Katakis in 1987. What bearing this has on the captions presented here is difficult to assess. It did, however, make for more lively discussions of how to publish or exhibit the photographs.

The distanced view that is apparent in my own captions to the photographs comes from a tendency to show how single actions or scenarios are related to more general cultural patterns. This stems directly from my training as an anthropologist, with its emphasis on relating the actions of individuals to culture or social groups. Only in two cases did 1 allow individual names into my captions (Figs. 2 and 7). But even then 1 did not talk about my relationships with those photographed, even though 1 knew both individuals quite well, nor did 1 add information that would help viewers to see the tragedies, successes, or other personal characteristics of those photographed. This type of distanced view can also be traced to personal interests in that as a cultural anthropologist I would be unemployed if cultural differences were not somehow salient and worthy of study.

Katakis's captions are patterned in yet another way. He focuses overwhelmingly on the ways in which what is portrayed mirrors his own experiences (Figs. 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 and g). He also considers the quality of the light (Fig. 5), the skill it takes to photograph people as they live their daily lives (Fig. 3), and the ways in which those photographed coped with the hardships in their lives (Figs. 4, 8, 9, and 10). Katakis's emphasis on similarity is in some part related to the length of time he spent in Sierra Leone (two months), the fact that he did not speak Kono (the local language) or the English-based creole that many younger people now speak, and the fact that lie has not been trained to explore cultural patterning. As a result he had little other than his own experiences on which to base his descriptions of others. As we have seen, this is a common way of interpreting the unknown. We scan our own past experiences to understand the new.

Katakis was born in Chicago in 1952. His father emigrated from Greece to the United States shortly after World War 11. His mother was the daughter of Greek immigrants. As he was growing up the household stressed assimilation into American life rather than the preservation of Greek traditions. In his late teens he left Chicago to pursue a music career in southern California that led to several years of' touring in the United States and abroad. When he tired of the touring required by the music business, he went back to school and completed a masters degree in psychology. As he puts it, somewhere along the way he picked up a camera and began photographing. Katakis is uncomfortable being pigeon-holed as a photographer or artist for he has also published several articles and edited a volume of essays on topics related to current social issues. He has made two trips to Sierra Leone, in 1988 when the photographs were taken, and in 1993 to work further with Monica Mondeh-Gbegba.

When I asked Katakis about his captions, he attributed this tendency to relate his photographs to his own experiences to two influences in his life. As the son of a Greek immigrant he found himself somewhat betwixt and between, not Greek and not American. He sees much of his younger life as a search for similarities between himself and his friends and classmates, in order to deny the differences that an immigrant background often imposes. In later years Katakis has traveled extensively, and these travels have often taken him to places where English is not spoken. His strategy for getting around in such situations is to use pantomime and laughter, concentrating on similarities of gesture and expression to communicate.

The tendency to emphasize similarity also shows up in the kinds of photographs Katakis took. 1 was struck by the fact that he had no photographs of agricultural labor among his approximately 2,000 photographs. Agriculture is obviously an occupation that is of primary importance to rural Kono. It was certainly part of most people's daily activities during the months of July and August while he was in Sierra Leone. Katakis, however, chose not to photograph this dimension of Kono life, probably because he had little basis for understanding it or relating it to his own life.


Conclusions

This article points out some of the ways that background, training, and interests affect the interpretation of visual images. The question remains, however, Whose story counts? It is a difficult position to take, but from the above exploration I can only answer that they all count in some way, because none of them can stand alone. A quick comparison of the three texts for any of the photographs presented here demonstrates this. while all of the stories count, they have drawbacks, but these are only readily apparent within a comparative frame, such as that attempted here. Visual images cannot be viewed free of interest or simply as fact. What becomes important, then, is knowing how to judge an interpretation of a photograph. Ordinarily, when faced with only one caption, we do this by matching the interpretation to our own expectations and we delve into past experiences to help us decipher a particular image. Knowing something of the biography of the viewer or interpreter suggests another avenue to explore, namely what interests they have in presenting information in certain ways and what kinds of information they have at their disposal to present. Following this approach, viewers may become more aware of the resources they use to interpret visual images and the ways that stereotypical, illusionary, and often inaccurate images tend to outlive their creators and become resources for constructing how audiences think about a certain place or issue.

The last topic I want to pursue has to do with the implications of this work for social science. Anthropologists, in particular, have been exploring the idea of multiple voices as a way of circumventing the problems of bias. Some believe that you get closer to a kind of truth by using several voices or letting the "informants" speak, either by themselves or alongside the researcher. Such productions can be deceiving in two ways. First, no individual can speak for a group. My view of the photographs was considerably different from Katakis's, just as Mondeh-Gbegba's view differed from that of someone else I might have worked with. Second, in projects such as the one presented here, there is always someone at the helm and their interests will be apparent, although perhaps subtle, in what photographs are selected, how the editing is done, and how the questions are asked. It does not matter if that person is from the group being photographed. Instead, 1 would suggest that using multiple voices is an important Strategy for developing the tools that allow individuals to question or be aware of the biases inherent in the interpretation of visual imagery or in interpretation in general.


Acknowledgments: The photographic archive on the Kono now numbers approximately 4,000 images taken between 1982 and 1993 by Katakis and myself. Photographs in this article were taken by Michael Katakis during a 1988 fieldtrip which was partially funded by The University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Local commentaries on the photographs were collected during a field trip in 1993, which was also funded by The University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Bibliography

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