In this entrée to visual anthropology, we explore how documentary film conveys experience, difference, and conflict through the senses, and we study how data visualizations reveal imperceptible, unexpected, and abstract structures of social life. We assess their styles, modes of production, and realist truth claims as well as their capacities and constraints for doing anthropology. As inspiration, we study works by indigenous media makers that bring together visible and invisible ties among people, nonhuman species, and forces of nature. Our aim is to enlarge the creative possibilities for analyzing and representing today’s pressing issues.
