Written by: Stefania Tarasut on September 13, 2013

As I was reading through Doing Visual Ethnography, I was reminded of a picture that was taken of me in Honduras this past summer. The picture was posted in a slide show, which was later shown to our congregation.

It wasn’t long after the pictures were posted that people started commenting on how hard I must have worked… they were impressed by my construction skills. Their perception of me changed based on this picture alone. I went from them assuming that I was weak and fragile to strong and capable. All this based on one picture. What they didn’t know was that that was the first and only time that I picked up the rake… and it was only for the sake of the picture that I even attempted. I spent all my time in Honduras doing VBS and talking to people.  Church members made a lot of assumptions based on their perception and interpretation of this picture. Their assumptions were very different than reality.

This reading made me realize just how biased I am and everyone is. We see life through the lens of our own experience and assumptions. We impose this on people and assume that they are on the same page with us but it’s not true. A picture doesn’t give you the whole picture… it’s just a minute or a second of a person’s story. That’s not enough to claim that you know someone or something. We assume that people see things like we do, but the western lens is very different than the rest of the world.

At one point she says “The ways in which individual ethnographers approach the visual in their research and representation is inevitably influenced by a range of factors, including theoretical beliefs, disciplinary agendas, personal experience, gendered identities and different visual cultures.” (P.29) The interesting thing is that we really don’t think about these things when we interact with other cultures. Somewhere in the back of our minds we understand this to be true, but we are rarely aware of the lenses through which we look at people and circumstances.

As a people, we are constantly bombarded with images and video clips that claim to “show the whole picture” but a picture is just a picture. We ascribe meaning to an image depending on who we are. The self is a lot more instrumental than we think. The self determines so much more than we are comfortable with admitting.

If I had to pick one take-away from this entire book is the need for discernment and wisdom. Things are not always what they seem but that doesn’t mean that they are not worth looking at, valuing and loving.

About the Author

Stefania Tarasut