(Don’t) Look at the Camera - Text 3
These comments illustrate the ambiguity underlying projects for capturing images in wild lands for ethnographic, anthropological or scientific purposes. The author Fatimah Tobing Rony points out the same two-fold process instituted by Robert Flaherty when shooting his famous Nanook of the North (1922), recorded with the Akeley camera.[4] On the one hand, Flaherty imposed a falsified image of the Inuit living in the village of Inukjuak, in particular by delving into the romantic mythology of a people with no knowledge of Western technology or objects and no ability to learn how to use them,[5] even as many of these technologies (tools, clothing, etc.) were already a part of the daily life of this community in 1922. On the other hand, yet at the same time, Flaherty maintains a discourse corresponding to that of the anthropological myth conducted, according to Tobing Rony, through participant observation.[6] By carrying out a “collaborative” method of work with indigenous peoples – both those depicted by the image and those taking part in the recording or contributing suggestions to the script, among other activities – the film benefited from the legitimacy of material authentic enough to be anthropological.
This two-fold process, carrying out collaborative work thanks to a noble tolerance of technophobic primitiveness, is made clear when Flaherty remarks that “various of my Eskimo companions, during the extreme cold weather, operated the camera at times and loaded the retorts. This says a great deal for the camera’s simplicity, does it not?”[7] Flaherty’s rhetoric reveals a glimpse of the infantilizing way he looked at the people working with him, preferring to grant recognition to the Akeley camera than to its Inuit operators. Here the imaginary conception of indigenous naïveté is complete. With the same remark, Flaherty reminds us that the film shoot was carried out together, in a spirit of mentorship rather than in a professional relationship. Tobing Rony notes, however, that this supposedly collaborative quality of the film was never discussed in these terms by the residents of Inukjuak.[8]
