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John Collier (anthropologist)
Encyclopedia
John A. Collier, Jr. was an American anthropologist and an early leader in the fields of Visual anthropology
and Applied anthropology
. His emphasis on analysis and use of still photographs in ethnography
led him to significant contributions in other subfields of anthropology, especially the applied anthropology of education. His book, Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method (1967) is one of the earliest textbooks in the field and is still (revised 1986) in use today. He is also notable as someone who overcame significant learning and hearing impairments to succeed on a larger stage.
, was the son of Lucy Wood Collier and John Collier (reformer)
. His father is famous as the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs during the New Deal. John Jr. grew up largely in Taos, New Mexico and the San Francisco Bay Area in California. While living in Mill Valley, California, John suffered injuries in a car accident at age 8 that resulted in major brain injuries and associated learning disabilities and hearing loss that prevented him from successfully completing schooling beyond a third grade level, although he attended school sporadically into his teens. When it became evident that he could not perform in school, his family permitted to him spend considerable time, when in New Mexico, living with family friends at Taos Indian Pueblo. During the periods he was in California, he came under the influence of Capt. Leighton Robinson, a retired English master in sail, who provided training to John seamanship.
He was also informally apprenticed to the Western painter, Maynard Dixon
, who was then married to the photographer Dorothea Lange
. He spent considerable time in the Dixon/Lange household in San Francisco during his early and mid teens and was trained in a wide range of painting techniques and skills. When in Taos he also received informal training from the artist Nicolai Fechin
. This training largely ended in 1930, when he signed on as seaman in the four masted bark Abraham Rydberg for a voyage from San Francisco around Cape Horn to Dublin, Ireland, an experience arranged by Capt. Robinson. On his return from the voyage he continued to divide his time between Taos and the Bay Area, and in 1934 he established a home in Talpa, New Mexico, which would remain an important anchor place throughout his life.
In 1943, he married Mary Elizabeth Trumbull, who became a long term partner in his photographic and anthropological work. Their son, Malcolm Collier (not to be confused with the anthropologist, Malcolm Carr Collier born 1908), also became an anthropologist who eventually collaborated with his father on a new edition of Visual Anthropology (1986). Other sons include Robin Collier, Vian Collier, and Aran Collier.
The studio was not successful financially but his photographic skill increased significantly and in 1940 he returned to San Francisco, where he worked both independently and for a number of commercial photographic studios. In 1941, probably through the influence of Dorothea Lange, some of his work from New Mexico came to the attention of Roy Emerson Stryker who hired him to work for the Farm Security Administration
(FSA) as a photographer. Collier's 1941 employment by the Farm Security Administration
under Roy Emerson Stryker established his career in photography and he continued with the photographic unit when it was transferred to the Office of War Information (OWI). In mid 1943 he left the OWI and served in the Merchant Marine until late 1944, when Stryker hired him to work as a photographer for the Standard Oil Company in the Canadian Arctic and later in Latin America. While in Latin America in 1946, he took leave from Sryker's employment to collaborate with his wife, Mary E.T. Collier and with the Ecuadorian anthropologist Anibal Buitron on an ethnographic study of Otavalo, Ecuador.
After leaving Standard Oil at the end of 1946, Collier worked as a free lance photographer in New Mexico and New York. In 1950 he was hired by Alexander H. Leighton
of Cornell University as part of a multi-disciplinary team investigation of community mental health in the Maritimes of Canada. Leighton challenged Collier to formalize methodologies for the use of photography in social science research. Collier's efforts in this arena were in fact a collaborative production with Mary E.T. Collier, without whom translation of Collier's insights and discoveries into standard academic language would have been impossible. The work with Leighton laid the intellectual foundation for the later development of the methodologies for visual anthropology for which Collier is known.
Collier later worked for Cornell in the Southwest and independently recorded the Cornell Vicos project in Peru during 1954 and 1955. He then free lanced out of New Mexico before moving to California in 1959, where he began a long career as a teacher at San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Art institute.
Collier acknowledged the abiding influence of both Roy Stryker
and Alexander H. Leighton
on his own work in visual anthropology. George Spindler
, the founder of educational anthropology, chose Visual Anthropology for early inclusion in his series of basic books in anthropology. As Edward T. Hall writes in the introduction to the later edition of the text, the two Colliers (John Jr. and Malcolm) almost singlehandedly established visual anthropology
as an observational science in its own right. Although widely recognized as a fine photographer, he major accomplishment was his contribution to and work in visual anthropology
.
Collier spent a great deal of his professional life giving workshops on the use of photography in visual anthropology, in speeches and professional presentations, as well as in more traditional forms of anthropological writing.
Collier's own non-traditional education led him to an analysis and criticism of schooling in the United States, especially regarding the education of disabled children, Native American
children and others outside the mainstream. Recognition of his insights in this arena led to his joint appointment as a Professor of both Anthropology and Education at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University). In 1969 he turned to motion picture film to explore cultural conflicts in schools for Native students in Alaska as part of a major national study of American Indian Education. In this and later fil based research carried out in Arizona and California, he articulated fresh perspectives toward these groups which emphasized the positive importance of cultural diversity and approaches to schooling that would build on children's own cultural origins and energy.
In the fields of visual anthropology
and visual sociology
Collier is recognized as a major methodological pioneer, in particular for the development of "photo-elicitation" techniques in which photographs are used systematically in interviews to elicit information and insight. In the revised version (1986) of his 1967 text (co-authored with his son, Malcolm Collier), where he explores using photography as a research tool, he argues that many, including other cultural anthropologists, have been "blind" to what can be seen within the nonverbal sensibility. His chief contributions to anthropology include this view that seeing and representing the visual is as important as speaking or writing words. He challenged modern anthropological viewpoints that regard theory or conceptualization as the endpoint of ethnography or anthropological analysis. Instead, he believed that the very energy of a culture could be seen. Some have theorized that, due to his deafness, he developed his visual skills to a very high degree, as is reflected in his photography as well as in his writings. He was also not afraid to use anthropology to make recommendations, especially when asked to do so by study participants. His work has been referenced and his methods used, not only in visual anthropology and sociology but also in psychiatric and educational anthropology.
wanted to reject such forms of visual data as posed photographs, Collier cogently argued that all visual materials, snapshots of any kind, still reveal the something of the kinesthetics and the culture that produced them. So, an anthropologist might look at dozens of posed photographs to understand what constitutes "posing" in that time period and culture, as opposed to rejecting them. Collier also pioneered the use of the camera, in itself, as a method of entry into the field.
Collier died February 25, 1992 in San José, Costa Rica. Today, his photographs are archived at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque.
Visual anthropology
Visual anthropology is a subfield of cultural anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media...
and Applied anthropology
Applied anthropology
Applied anthropology refers to the application of the method and theory of anthropology to the analysis and solution of practical problems. In as much as anthropology traditionally entails four sub-disciplines--Archaeology, biological/physical, cultural/social, and linguistic anthropology—the...
. His emphasis on analysis and use of still photographs in ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
led him to significant contributions in other subfields of anthropology, especially the applied anthropology of education. His book, Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method (1967) is one of the earliest textbooks in the field and is still (revised 1986) in use today. He is also notable as someone who overcame significant learning and hearing impairments to succeed on a larger stage.
Early Life and Family
John Collier, Jr., born May 22, 1913 in Sparkill, New YorkSparkill, New York
Sparkill, formerly known as Tappan Sloat, is an affluent, suburban hamlet in the Town of Orangetown, Rockland County, New York, United States located north of Palisades; east of Tappan; south of Piermont and west of the Hudson River...
, was the son of Lucy Wood Collier and John Collier (reformer)
John Collier (reformer)
John Collier was an American social reformer and Native American advocate. He served as Commissioner for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the President Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, from 1933-1945...
. His father is famous as the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs during the New Deal. John Jr. grew up largely in Taos, New Mexico and the San Francisco Bay Area in California. While living in Mill Valley, California, John suffered injuries in a car accident at age 8 that resulted in major brain injuries and associated learning disabilities and hearing loss that prevented him from successfully completing schooling beyond a third grade level, although he attended school sporadically into his teens. When it became evident that he could not perform in school, his family permitted to him spend considerable time, when in New Mexico, living with family friends at Taos Indian Pueblo. During the periods he was in California, he came under the influence of Capt. Leighton Robinson, a retired English master in sail, who provided training to John seamanship.
He was also informally apprenticed to the Western painter, Maynard Dixon
Maynard Dixon
Maynard Dixon was a 20th-century American artist whose body of work focused on the American West. He was married for a time to American photographer Dorothea Lange.-Biography:...
, who was then married to the photographer Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration...
. He spent considerable time in the Dixon/Lange household in San Francisco during his early and mid teens and was trained in a wide range of painting techniques and skills. When in Taos he also received informal training from the artist Nicolai Fechin
Nicolai Fechin
Nicolai Ivanovich Fechin was a Russian-American painter known for his portraits and works featuring Native Americans. After graduating with the highest marks from the Imperial Academy of Arts and traveling in Europe under a Prix de Rome, he returned to his native Kazan, where he taught and painted...
. This training largely ended in 1930, when he signed on as seaman in the four masted bark Abraham Rydberg for a voyage from San Francisco around Cape Horn to Dublin, Ireland, an experience arranged by Capt. Robinson. On his return from the voyage he continued to divide his time between Taos and the Bay Area, and in 1934 he established a home in Talpa, New Mexico, which would remain an important anchor place throughout his life.
In 1943, he married Mary Elizabeth Trumbull, who became a long term partner in his photographic and anthropological work. Their son, Malcolm Collier (not to be confused with the anthropologist, Malcolm Carr Collier born 1908), also became an anthropologist who eventually collaborated with his father on a new edition of Visual Anthropology (1986). Other sons include Robin Collier, Vian Collier, and Aran Collier.
Career and Professional Development
In the early 1930s he served as an informal guide to the photographer Paul Strand while Strand was in the Taos region but he continued to attempt a career in painting and writing through the mid 1930s. Only after a brief, unproductive enrollment at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), where he took more painting classes, did he turn to photography. He was largely self trained, except for some instruction in studio techniques from Sara Higgins Mack. In 1939, after working for a period in San Francisco, he opened a photographic studio in Taos, using what had been Paul Strand's darkroom and studio.[1]The studio was not successful financially but his photographic skill increased significantly and in 1940 he returned to San Francisco, where he worked both independently and for a number of commercial photographic studios. In 1941, probably through the influence of Dorothea Lange, some of his work from New Mexico came to the attention of Roy Emerson Stryker who hired him to work for the Farm Security Administration
Farm Security Administration
Initially created as the Resettlement Administration in 1935 as part of the New Deal in the United States, the Farm Security Administration was an effort during the Depression to combat American rural poverty...
(FSA) as a photographer. Collier's 1941 employment by the Farm Security Administration
Farm Security Administration
Initially created as the Resettlement Administration in 1935 as part of the New Deal in the United States, the Farm Security Administration was an effort during the Depression to combat American rural poverty...
under Roy Emerson Stryker established his career in photography and he continued with the photographic unit when it was transferred to the Office of War Information (OWI). In mid 1943 he left the OWI and served in the Merchant Marine until late 1944, when Stryker hired him to work as a photographer for the Standard Oil Company in the Canadian Arctic and later in Latin America. While in Latin America in 1946, he took leave from Sryker's employment to collaborate with his wife, Mary E.T. Collier and with the Ecuadorian anthropologist Anibal Buitron on an ethnographic study of Otavalo, Ecuador.
After leaving Standard Oil at the end of 1946, Collier worked as a free lance photographer in New Mexico and New York. In 1950 he was hired by Alexander H. Leighton
Alexander H. Leighton
Alexander "Alec" H. Leighton was a sociologist and psychiatrist of dual citizenship . He is best known for his work on the Stirling County Study and his contributions to the field of psychiatric epidemiology...
of Cornell University as part of a multi-disciplinary team investigation of community mental health in the Maritimes of Canada. Leighton challenged Collier to formalize methodologies for the use of photography in social science research. Collier's efforts in this arena were in fact a collaborative production with Mary E.T. Collier, without whom translation of Collier's insights and discoveries into standard academic language would have been impossible. The work with Leighton laid the intellectual foundation for the later development of the methodologies for visual anthropology for which Collier is known.
Collier later worked for Cornell in the Southwest and independently recorded the Cornell Vicos project in Peru during 1954 and 1955. He then free lanced out of New Mexico before moving to California in 1959, where he began a long career as a teacher at San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Art institute.
Collier acknowledged the abiding influence of both Roy Stryker
Roy Stryker
Roy Emerson Stryker was an American economist, government official, and photographer. He is most famous for heading the Information Division of the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression and launching the documentary photography movement of the FSA.After serving in the infantry...
and Alexander H. Leighton
Alexander H. Leighton
Alexander "Alec" H. Leighton was a sociologist and psychiatrist of dual citizenship . He is best known for his work on the Stirling County Study and his contributions to the field of psychiatric epidemiology...
on his own work in visual anthropology. George Spindler
George Spindler
George Dearborn Spindler was a leading figure in 20th century anthropology and regarded as the founder of the anthropology of education. He edited a very large series of short monographs, turning nearly every significant ethnographic text of the 20th century into a shorter work accessible to the...
, the founder of educational anthropology, chose Visual Anthropology for early inclusion in his series of basic books in anthropology. As Edward T. Hall writes in the introduction to the later edition of the text, the two Colliers (John Jr. and Malcolm) almost singlehandedly established visual anthropology
Visual anthropology
Visual anthropology is a subfield of cultural anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media...
as an observational science in its own right. Although widely recognized as a fine photographer, he major accomplishment was his contribution to and work in visual anthropology
Visual anthropology
Visual anthropology is a subfield of cultural anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media...
.
Collier spent a great deal of his professional life giving workshops on the use of photography in visual anthropology, in speeches and professional presentations, as well as in more traditional forms of anthropological writing.
Major Projects, Contributions to Visual and Applied Anthropology
Starting with the work for Leighton in the Maritimes of Canada, Collier worked on a series of important projects. One of his more important efforts, still largely unpublished, was documentation of the still controversial "Cornell/Vicos Project." Directed by Alan Homberg of Cornell and Mario Vasquez of the Universidad de San Marcos, this project aimed to prepare the Indian community of Hacienda Vicos in the central highlands of Peru to survive successfully as a free and independent community. Collier carried out a complete visual ethnography of the community while also recording the operation of the applied project, making use of the full range of visual research methods he and Mary Collier had been developing since their first ethnographic effort with Anibal Buiton in 1946.Collier's own non-traditional education led him to an analysis and criticism of schooling in the United States, especially regarding the education of disabled children, Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
children and others outside the mainstream. Recognition of his insights in this arena led to his joint appointment as a Professor of both Anthropology and Education at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University). In 1969 he turned to motion picture film to explore cultural conflicts in schools for Native students in Alaska as part of a major national study of American Indian Education. In this and later fil based research carried out in Arizona and California, he articulated fresh perspectives toward these groups which emphasized the positive importance of cultural diversity and approaches to schooling that would build on children's own cultural origins and energy.
In the fields of visual anthropology
Visual anthropology
Visual anthropology is a subfield of cultural anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media...
and visual sociology
Visual sociology
Visual sociology is an area of sociology concerned with the visual dimensions of social life. This subdiscipline is nurtured by the , which holds annual conferences and publishes the journal, ....
Collier is recognized as a major methodological pioneer, in particular for the development of "photo-elicitation" techniques in which photographs are used systematically in interviews to elicit information and insight. In the revised version (1986) of his 1967 text (co-authored with his son, Malcolm Collier), where he explores using photography as a research tool, he argues that many, including other cultural anthropologists, have been "blind" to what can be seen within the nonverbal sensibility. His chief contributions to anthropology include this view that seeing and representing the visual is as important as speaking or writing words. He challenged modern anthropological viewpoints that regard theory or conceptualization as the endpoint of ethnography or anthropological analysis. Instead, he believed that the very energy of a culture could be seen. Some have theorized that, due to his deafness, he developed his visual skills to a very high degree, as is reflected in his photography as well as in his writings. He was also not afraid to use anthropology to make recommendations, especially when asked to do so by study participants. His work has been referenced and his methods used, not only in visual anthropology and sociology but also in psychiatric and educational anthropology.
Legacy
His theoretical and methodological contributions were many. While some visual anthropologists and semioticians, like Erving GoffmanErving Goffman
Erving Goffman was a Canadian-born sociologist and writer.The 73rd president of American Sociological Association, Goffman's greatest contribution to social theory is his study of symbolic interaction in the form of dramaturgical perspective that began with his 1959 book The Presentation of Self...
wanted to reject such forms of visual data as posed photographs, Collier cogently argued that all visual materials, snapshots of any kind, still reveal the something of the kinesthetics and the culture that produced them. So, an anthropologist might look at dozens of posed photographs to understand what constitutes "posing" in that time period and culture, as opposed to rejecting them. Collier also pioneered the use of the camera, in itself, as a method of entry into the field.
Collier died February 25, 1992 in San José, Costa Rica. Today, his photographs are archived at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque.
External links
- John Collier Jnr's New York Time Obituary
- John Collier (anthropologist)'s photographs, on Flickr
- Maxwell Museum's article, with a collection of Collier's photographs
- Ray Barnhardt (University of Alaska, Fairbanks), "John Collier, Jr.: Anthropology, Education and the Quest for Diversity", from the Alaska Native Knowledge Network