Anthropological lens - looking closer at the metaphor

Sometimes the expression, "anthropological lens" or "lens of anthropology," is offered when describing, interpreting, or analyzing a subject by using some of the hallmarks of an anthropological approach: first-person point of view, usually small or interpersonal scale, longitudinal span of time, lots of room for context of language, culture, material culture, environmental particulars, and some attention to the observer's own limitations in the matter.

anthropologists use lenses to document, study, and present; but also figuratively

Perhaps there is is something to see when extending the "lens" metaphor when it comes to engaging in the world as an anthropologist. The most common intention or meaning for mentioning "the anthropological lens" is to alert the reader that now the discussion will dwell on things that anthropologists see when they approach a situation or subject matter (context, point of view, effects of physical, social, linguistic, and symbolic/ideological elements in the person's experience). But extending the idea of a lens, there are wide-angle, normal (human visual experience), and telephoto focal length lenses, each with differing angle of view.

Lenses are built according to the camera's dimension, including its film (or digital sensor) size for recording the image. So for the 35mm film camera a 55mm lens might produce an image that resembles normal human visual experience, neither compressing the distance (magnifying the far away subject) nor shrinking the subject into a wider context. But fitting that same 55mm lens onto a digital camera with a sensor that is only 2/3 the surface area of an individual frame of 35mm roll film means that the lens is producing proportionately more magnification than it does on the film. Therefore the sensor "crops" the middle of that circle of light focused by the lens. In this case the 55mm is perceived by the smaller digital sensor as the equivalent of 85 or 90mm (slightly telephoto magnification).

Even for the same sort of camera there may be several varieties of lens to choose from, newer ones built with the aid of computer calculations and computer assisted polishing and glare-reducing treatments to produce a clearer and brighter result than the older glass. Taking the 55mm lens example for a 35mm film camera (or its equivalent in the world of digital cameras) there could be a newly configured one, the older and maybe heavier one, another specifically meant for macro (close-up) pictures, and one designed for low-light or artful (bokeh) blurring of background. Some have a built-in gyroscope to reduce motion-blur by the photographer's jiggling (image stabilization). A perculiar sort of sense first developed for movie cameras and later sometimes adapted for still photography is the anamorphic lens (recorded 1.33x the width of a scene in 1.0x the available space of the recording film or sensor to be played back or reconstituted for normal perception). Other ways to extend the characteristics of the lens itself include screw-on filters designed to reduce glare, minimize atmospheric haze, correct for specific types of light source (bluish light can be correct to something resembling daylight colors), or reduce the amount of light that reaches the film or sensor. Doing so forces a slower shutter speed, thus capturing some blur of movement; or else attains the correct light exposure instead by making the aperture wider than otherwise would be if not for the neutral density filter (thus narrowing the in-focus depth; its depth of field).

Another distinction among lenses is the different functionality of interchangeable lenses versus fixed lens (permanent mount), and the difference between a lens that has just one measurement (focal length, such as 55mm 'normal' or 20mm wide-angle, expressed relative to 35mm film cameras) and a zoom lens. The optical magnification is expressed by comparing the smaller number to the larger one; for instance, a zoom lens of 100mm to 200mm doubles (200mm is 2x the 100mm, base number). By comparison 25mm to 125mm is a magnification of 5x. In addition to the zoom lens magnification, there is the range of focal lengths that are included: if 55mm is 'normal' then a zoom lens of 25mm to 100mm ranges from wide to moderate telephoto, but a zoom lens of 85mm to 200mm starts at slightly telephoto to full telephoto. By looking at 'normal' the magnification can be understood: 200mm is about 4x the 55mm reference number.

Still another consideration is monocular (camera lens) versus binocular (dual lenses offset to produce stereoscopic imagery). The decades around 1900 saw a wide interest in stereo-photography (stereography). Home subscription to one of the purveyors would bring a monthly selection of scenes from faraway lands, strange events, and news of the day. The twin images would set in a viewing frame for the person's brain to take in the left image and right image and reconstitute the three dimensional subject with full depth perception enjoyed. Modern cinema-goers sometimes watch feature films produced for viewing in 3-D when seen wearing specially filtered "sunglasses" (one eye in blue filter, one eye in red filter).

In summary, when extending the lens metaphor used for looking at a situation like an anthropological social analyst or documentarian does, then there are several dimensions to lenses: size suited to a particular camera body, filtering accessories affecting the image that the lens focuses, magnification (wide, normal, telephoto, specialty), and the effects of aperture on how much of the scene is sharply seen or is blurred incidentally or with artistic intentionality. Closely related to the optics of the lens itself is the matter of composition: what is foregrounded, what is included and excluded in the frame (how wide or narrow the frame is), point of main focus (sharpest part of the image), and exposure decision (producing blurs by accident or on purpose, exposing so the shadow detail is shown even at the expense of bright areas overexposed; or the reverse - careful to record the bright parts of the subject, even at the expense of losing the things shadowed).

In conclusion, "the anthropological lens" is a figure of speech to signal that a long vision and wide but personalized viewpoint particular to anthropology is being invoked by the author. The several attributes of lenses can be explored alone and when coupled to cameras to compose pictures for study, record-keeping, or presentation to others by publication in print or online. Extending the "lens of anthropology" by way of these several attributes shines a light on the variability (not monolithic) of anthropologists' accounts: sure they are recording social observations, but some filter differently to others. Some use a wider angle of view than others. Certain lenses are fixed and applied to all subjects, while others freely change lenses from wide to telephoto, according to the scene. Special situations call for long-exposures that layer movement of several subjects; or time-lapse (compressing long periods into speeded up presentation) or the reverse by slow-motion (moving pictures at high speed to capture the subject in the briefest fraction of a second).

The result is that any two social scientists trained in the traditions of anthropology (Anglophone, Francophone, or any of the many other scholarly communities for anthropology; see World Council of Anthropology Associations) could have congruent or could have very different representation of a particular moment and subject. That does not make one more valuable than the other; indeed, having two visual channels contributes to a compound (stereophonic, stereoscopic) rendering of the subject, whereas a single view from a single fieldwork season and from a single publishing language will give a less vivid account. So, in the same way that lenses affect the compositions produced by them, the same is true of the anthropologist's training and professional path of experiences. Each practitioner's anthropological lens is capable of producing well composed and well focused imagery. No single lens will capture a given subject fully, but being aware of the several attributes that distinguish one lens from another illuminates the ways in which the image presented to the public comes to be shaped.