AAA is pleased to share the following entries for the “Practice” category in the 2011 AAA Photo Contest. Voting by AAA members begins the October 6 and will be open through October 14. Directions for voting (along with login information) will be emailed to current AAA members. Voters will see thumbnails of the photos in the ballot and will vote for their top choices in each category.
To get a better look at the Practice photos, please peruse this gallery. To see a photo in its entirety, just click on the photo you wish to view. Be sure to also check out the People, Place and Process entrants too.
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- Caption: Members of Gitmaxmak’ay Nisga’a Society gather on an empty lot in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, to bless their new canoe. State of the art fiberglass, the canoe will help teach youth on an 80km canoe journey to visit surrounding villages. During the ceremony, the Gitmaxmak’ay Dancers have filled the air with drum beats and song while chiefs used their breath to give the canoe life – a practice that has endured for thousands of years. Integrating new traditions, elder Betsy Smith shatters a champagne bottle over the canoe in a display of ritual that seamlessly weaves ancient practices with modern conveniences and adaptations. Title: Blessing the Canoe June 4, 2011 Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Photo courtesy Jennifer Wolowic
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- Caption: During research conducted in Buryatia, on the Olkhon Island on the Lake Bajkal (Russia), we had a chance to observe the work of Buryat shamans, mostly the ones belonging to a Tengeri group, as the ones on the picture, but also the ones that practice their art in tiny villages and do not want to talk to strangers. Our research was made possible by the fact that our country’s history is similar to the history of Buryatia and people, including shamans, wanted to talk to us as they would not talk to researchers from other parts of the world. We were tracing the recent changes in shamanistic practices in Buryatia. Title: The sun shines through the drums of Buryat shamans taking part in a Tajlagan ritual. Photo courtesy Aleksandra Wierucka
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- Caption: Animal skulls are hung from a gourde tree by a Vodou (voodoo) devotee. In Haiti, lwa (spirits) can reside in trees, rocks, streams, household roofs, and other objects. The devotee may serve the spirit residing in this tree in various ways, including animal sacrifices and offerings of food and drink. Several different species of trees occupy important roles within Vodou. Some have strictures against cutting, while others have strictures against planting. Title: Vodou Tree. Photo courtesy Andrew Tarter
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- Caption: A Haitian farmer displays cedar seeds. In much of rural Haiti, cedar is planted at the entrance to household courtyards to protect against malevolent spirits. The wood is prized for coffin making, as it is purported to protect against Zombi (zombies) or other entities. It is also valued for its capacity to produce strong wood planks that fetch a higher price than charcoal, but require the tree to remain standing for longer periods of time. This farmer collects and grows cedar trees as part of his household’s varied livelihood strategy. Title: Tree Seeds. Photo courtesy Andrew Tarter
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- Caption: When she read anthropologist Robert Netting’s work on smallholder agriculture as a graduate student, Elizabeth VanDeventer had no idea that she would ever be a smallholder herself. In 2002 she and her family moved to Nelson County, Va., to raise grassfed beef and pastured chickens, selling directly to local consumers. Her Davis Creek Farm is one of several thousand “new American farms.” It is like Netting’s smallholder farms in its labor intensity, high skill level, ecological sustainability and low reliance on external inputs; it differs in its focus on a specialized market for local, humanely raised meats. Here she moves cattle among paddocks in a rotational grazing system. Title: New American Farmer: Rotational Grazing (rural Virginia, summer 2011). Photo courtesy Glenn Stone
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- Caption: When she read anthropologist Robert Netting’s work on smallholder agriculture as a graduate student, Elizabeth VanDeventer had no idea that she would ever be a smallholder herself. In 2002 she and her family moved to Nelson County, Va., to raise grassfed beef and pastured chickens, selling directly to local consumers. Her Davis Creek Farm is one of several thousand “new American farms.” It is like Netting’s smallholder farms in its labor intensity, high skill level, ecological sustainability and low reliance on external inputs; it differs in its focus on a specialized market for local, humanely raised meats. Here she comforts a heritage breed calf that needed treatment for an eye problem. Title: New American Farmer: Comforting a Calf (rural Virginia, summer 2011). Photo courtesy Glenn Stone
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- Caption: My Fulbright-funded project was related to collecting and understanding Thai memorial books, which are booklets containing biographical and personal information about the deceased as well as a wealth of cultural information. Quickly, I learned that the books that I thought would be extremely valuable had a mixed value for local people. They were kept by family members, but otherwise were basically thrown in the trash. When I asked about the books, I was often sent to recycle bins, old cabinets, or junk rooms like the one pictured here. The process of producing the books may be more meaningful for Thais than the books themselves. Title: Trash vs. Treasure (Roi et, Thailand, January 9, 2011). Photo courtesy Kathryn Stam
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- Caption: “Master of Dances” Luiz Laureano da Silva examines a hundred-year old Baniwa feather crown in the Goeldi Museum collections in Belém do Para, Brazil. Master Luiz and other Baniwa consultants visited the Goeldi in November of 2010 to study the important ethnographic collections made by Theodor Koch-Grunberg in the Upper Rio Negro in 1903-1905. Their visit was part of a project in “Ethnomuseology” that I am leading with support by the Brazilian National Research Council, permitting indigenous groups to re-discover their cultural heritage preserved in museum collections. With support from the Brazilian Culture Ministry, Luiz is working to revitalize Baniwa musical traditions and festivals, marginalized by missionary intervention and other cultural changes over the century since Koch-Grunberg’s historic visit. Title: Crowning Heritage: Baniwa revisit Koch-Grunberg Collections at the Goeldi Museum, November 2011. Photo courtesy Glenn Shepard
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- Caption: Every year, an estimated 2 million people immigrate to the United States, and around 400,000 people are deported out of the country. U.S. methods of deportation usually consider little more than the individual’s immigration status and therefore have been criticized for their non-humanitarianism. A renewed push for U.S. immigration reform has risen in recent years. The National Immigration Reform March took place in Washington, DC on March 21, 2010. Over 200,000 people attended in support of the march, completely filling the National Mall. Signs, such as that in the picture, represent the words and confusion of the frequently forgotten young voices involved. Title: An Appeal for Reform (Washington, DC – March 2010). Photo courtesy Corinne Seals
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- Caption: It was a sunny afternoon in the ethnically “mixed” city of Haifa, Israel, when I spotted a local artist painting a surrealistic portrait on the wall of a back alley. He was being photographed by another young man, and I decided to photograph them both. A few months later, the tranquility of a similar scene was disrupted. This time it was after dark. Two different local artists had been detained by the police for painting on another wall in the same neighborhood. They had painted “SOLIDARITY” in artistically rendered Hebrew, Arabic, Russian and English. Night, I then realized, is when political messages are painted, and when public interventions like this one, are denounced as subversive. Title: Day and Night of Subversion. Photo courtesy Regev Nathansohn
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- Caption: We have been studying how mobile pastoralists in the Logone floodplain in the Far North Province of Cameroon manage common-pool grazing resources since 2008. Every year when we return to the field we bring posters that summarize the results from our previous field period. The posters help us explain how we use the data collected. Here Oumarou Kari, one of our research assistants, is showing a map with transhumance routes that link rainy and dry season grazing areas. Title: Communicating research (Far North Region, Cameroon, March 2010). Photo courtesy Mark Moritz
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- Caption: This photography seems to beg to ask: In what space and time is this taking place? Is this a Rembrandt? A Delacroix? Or is it photography? While the bird’s eye view participate in questioning the form, for the acute eye, this “arret sur image” reveals objects and actions conjugated at the present tense superposing past and actual practices where transit locals, nomads and tourists. Time is being stopped in a multi-layered storytelling of immaterial quality. The place is “Jemaa el Fna,” declared by UNESCO Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. In my visual anthropology practice, I am particularly interested in drawing from interstice places where emerge and overlay more than one reality. Title: Place Jemaa el Fna—Arret sur image. Photo courtesy Maryse Morin
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- Caption: This photo captures Vaitahu residents setting up for the annual copra chopping contest held on Bastille Day. Since the Marquesas Islands are an extension of French Polynesia, residents of the islands celebrate the day with food, games, song, and dance- island style! This game is highly representative of the village’s culture, as copra, or dried coconut, is the main export of Vaitahu. In this contest, two-person teams (usually men) compete to see who can chop open 100 coconuts, husk them, and cut out the coconut meat the fastest. The winning team receives community-wide recognition throughout the festivities and retain the winning title until next year. Title: Copra Chopping Contest, Bastille Day, Tahuata. Photo courtesy Wendy Leicht
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- Caption: Players from Acatic (wearing the black and red of the professional team Atlas of Guadalajara) and Tigres (donning the yellow and blue of the professional team Tigres of Monterrey) contest for the ball on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Oklahoma City. These two teams play in La Liga Latina y Americana, a Latino recreational futbol league that offers a social space for the expression and performance of cultural identities for these men, many of them migrants from Mexico and Central America. In La Liga Latina y Americana, how one plays the game, the team names chosen, and the jerseys worn reflect aspects of identity for futbolistas currently living and working in the United States. Title: Up in the Air: Identities in Flux. Photo courtesy Keith Kleszynski
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- Caption: A young Yezidi woman removes freshly-baked bread from an earth oven in a village in the Semel District of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Making bread in the old way is one of the most important practices learned by Kurdish adolescent girls living in rural settings. The woman and her family were guests of a tribal chief who allowed them to stay in his village afer they fled a blood feud in their home village in the Shingal (Sinjar) area. She was happy to be photographed, but because of her family’s situation did not feel comfortable having her name published. Title: If Only You Could Smell this Photo! Baking Bread in an Earth Oven in Kurdistan, Iraq, 10 December 2010. Photo courtesy Diane E. King
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- Caption: Dancers spend a year preparing by sewing sequins and adornment on their costumes to catch the sun’s light, and are judged by the quality, weight, and cost of their costumes as well as the symbolic significance of the designs. As these unmasked supporters walk side by side with the dancers, it is clear how the masked dancers take on another persona, an identity linked to myth and tradition. The stories are lived anew each year by the dancers and for that period of ritual time and space, they become the mythical beings by staying in costume and masked for the duration of the pilgrimage. Many dancers learn to dance when children and participate for long periods of their lives. Title: Behind the Masks, Qoyllur Rit’i pilgrimage, Southern Peru. Photo courtesy Andrea Heckman
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- Caption: The annual pilgrimage of Qoyllur Rit’i is sacred for people living around 20,800′ Ausangate peak in Southern Peru. Groups of supporters, called a comparsa, hike 3,000′ with the dancers carrying huge candles, costumes, food, musical instruments, and large crosses among other ritual objects. The dancers perform for up to one week in frigid alpine temperatures where they become the mythical characters they portray. Capac Qolla means “rich merchants” and these dancers have ornate costumes they prepare for one year. Ukukus, or the mythical bear characters stand all night on the glacier to have the honor to bring down a large chunk of ice to melt and drink with their dance groups. Title: Capac Qolla Dancer, Qoyllur Rit’i pilgrimage near Ausangate, Peru. Photo courtesy Andrea Heckman
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- Caption: In Orselli village in the rural region of the Yuntdag in western Turkey, a new practice imported from the cities, the sixth month henna, is now well-established among village women. They pray, smear henna on the baby’s hands and feet, and share a meal prepared by the mother and her female relatives. Women take home a small packet of henna to share in the experience of “burning” a hand with the red plant dye, bringing them together on many levels in a fellowship of women. There is no parallel practice for boy babies though it could be regarded as a parallel to a boy’s circumcision. Title: Sixth Month Henna. Photo courtesy Kimberly Hart
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- Caption: Women in Orselli village in the rural region of the Yuntdag in western Turkey have began to visit the graves of dead relatives on Arife Gunu, the last day of Ramazan. Until this shift in practice, women never ventured into the cemetery, rather it was a male duty. The practice though is hotly debated. Some women claim that women never should visit graves because of their inherent dirtiness, while others express fear of the spirits who roam the graveyards. Men take a neutral stance, allowing women to work out their practices amongst themselves. Title: Tenzile Praying. Photo courtesy Kimberly Hart
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- Caption: The Demir Baba tekke is located in a national reserve near the city of Isperih (Kemallar) in northeastern Bulgaria. The site has been a sacred place since the time of the Thracians and now continues to be such among Heterodox and Orthodox Muslims and Eastern Christians. After entering the site, in one of the walls of the shrine, the visitors face two small holes about 1.65 m. high from the ground. They may try to target these two holes with their thumbs while their eyes are closed. These two holes symbolize “the eyes of the witch or evil.” By inserting thumbs into them, one ensures bad luck will keep away from him/her. Title: Evil eyes at the Demir Baba tekke, Isperih, Northeast Bulgaria, July 2009. Photo courtesy Cengiz Haksoz
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- Caption: In the walking-out ceremony Cree children of about one year of age perform the symbolic act of walking out of the tent. As they go onto the boughs carpet laid before them, the children perform various tasks that they will be called to perform later in their adult life. This ceremony still contributes to define their identity despite the radical changes in the Cree life-way. Here, Anette-Daisy Trapper waits in the arms of her mother before performing the ceremony in Mistissini, northeastern Quebec. Title: Walking Out. Photo courtesy Francois Guindon
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![Caption: A young boy in Punjab goes through the Sikh rite of passage into manhood as his maternal uncle ties his first turban during the Dastar Bandi [Turban Tying] ceremony. Title: Dastar Bandi - Turban Tying Ceremony. Punjab India, 2010. Photo courtesy Harjant Gill](http://www.anthropology-news.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Gill_Harjant_photo1_Harjant-2-215x127.jpg)
- Caption: A young boy in Punjab goes through the Sikh rite of passage into manhood as his maternal uncle ties his first turban during the Dastar Bandi [Turban Tying] ceremony. Title: Dastar Bandi – Turban Tying Ceremony. Punjab India, 2010. Photo courtesy Harjant Gill
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- Caption: A human rights worker takes photos amidst the monumental ruins of Guayaquil’s oldest prison, decommissioned in the ’60s. His figure is slightly offset within the image, foregrounding the vines, the overgrown trees, and the creeping decay of structural abandonment. In Ecuador, a state of emergency was declared in 2008 to alleviate prison overcrowding at nearly 300% with the construction of more cellblocks and max-capacity confinement centers. My photograph, however, suggests that not only overcrowding but even prisons should come to an end, complementing my ethnographic practice of “prison abolitionist research”—helping to document the untold injustices of mass incarceration. Title: “Forgotten States of Emergency” (August 6th, 2011, Guayaquil, Ecuador). Photo courtesy Chris Garces
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- Caption: A row of shamans chants in unison at the opening of a tailgan, a public sacrifice and festival performed annually or seasonally at a sacred site to renew solidarity between a community and its local spirits. This tailgan, organized at Bukha-Noyon, a sacred site in Tunkinskii District, Buriatiia (Russia) as part of the symposium and festival “Psychophysiology and Social Adaptation of (Neo)Shamans in the Past and Present,” attracted artists, shamans, scholars, and tourists from around the world and offered participants the possibility of ‘addressing shamans channeling the spirits of the ancestors with your questions and problems.’ (August 2010) Title: Shaman Show (Buriatiia, Russia, August 2010). Photo courtesy Brian Donahoe
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- Caption: Dinka Agaar systems of justice still utilizes routine flogging, confinement, and confiscation of property. These men were chained together during a political conflict and photographed while we administered vaccines. Title: Dinka in Chains. Photo courtesy Jeffery Deal
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- Caption: In July 2011, the U.S. Navy and Ocean Technology Foundation undertook an underwater archaeological survey in the North Sea utilizing divers and cutting edge remote sensing technology in an attempt to locate the remains of Bonhomme Richard. The vessel, captained by John Paul Jones, went down off Flamborough Head following its famous engagement with HMS Separis in 1779. U.S. Navy divers, under archaeological direction through live video-feed, conducted several dives using surface-supplied gas at depths exceeding 200 ft. The image illustrates the lowering mechanism suspended off the side of USNS Grasp, as well as the team effort required to successfully launch each dive. Title: US Navy divers being lowered over the side of USNS Grasp, in search of the Revolutionary War vessel Bonhomme Richard (North Sea, July 2011). Photo courtesy Alexis Catsambis
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- Caption: Namkaran ceremony in Hinduism usually takes place presently before the baby is three months old. This is the first time the baby will hear its name forever living to its identity. The mother symbolically purifies the baby by washing its head with water and the father gives a mixture of milk and honey in the mouth. Standing in front of this small Nair family anyone could see how caring the parents are for their progeny. The father was so gracious and delicate; his feelings for his daughter were seen in his dedication to this rite. Title: Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India (July 1, 2011). Photo courtesy Sarah Arth
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- Caption: I took this image while collaborating with research participants to document their every-day lives in a “Direct Provision Centre” where they await verdict on their asylum claims. Children accompanied us throughout the centre as their mothers (or “Aunties”) and I photographed different aspects of their lives. The photo depicts a quiet moment between two friends when they developed a spontaneous game. In discussing the image with participants, the photo sparked dialogue about the separation of families and the need for reunification, and the struggles of living within an imposed and isolating system in which much is outside of residents’ control. Title: Direct Provision Centre, Ireland. Photo courtesy Darcy Alexandra
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