Lifetime Achievement Awards are given to individuals whose body of work is recognized for its exemplary impact on the field of anthropology. When a Lifetime Achievement Award is given to someone whose work has been featured in the SVA’s Film, Video and Interactive Media Festival, the awardee will be honored at the Festival’s Award Ceremony.

Lifetime Achievement Award for 2009:
Richard Chalfen

Richard Chalfen’s Lifetime Achievement Award – Introduction by J. C. Scherer 12/2/09, American Anthropological Association, Philadelphia, PA

It is a pleasure for me to present Dr. Richard Chalfen with a Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Society of Visual Anthropology. What does it mean to be given a Lifetime Achievement Award? The individual has to be someone who has influenced the field through publications, the mentorship of students, and outreach to the larger community.  To be worthy of this award, the individual must possess the transformative ability to inspire, motivate and advance their ideas so that others build on them, and create a new body of knowledge.  We believe that Richard Chalfen has succeeded on all these goals.

Dick’s resume is awesome.  From his earliest years at the Annenberg School of Communication, at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his Ph.D., to his most recent years as Senior Scientist at
the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital in Boston, he has exemplified the dedication, originality and excellence that puts visual anthropology in the fast forward lane – a plus for those of us who believe in visual anthropology’s centrality.  His interdisciplinary interests in cultural anthropology, communication, American Studies, and Asian Studies have given him experience in field
work among native Americans, middle class American families, inner city teenagers in Philadelphia, Japanese Americans living on the West Coast and Southwest, and most recently, patients at Boston Children’s Hospital.  His work has encompassed the study of visual culture in mass media, indigenous media and home media, a field of study he conceived, organized and developed for both domestic and international contexts. He has studied and learned from ethnographic films, feature films, children’s film, family snapshots, tourist photographs, home movies/videos, and cell phone images.

Dick has taught and mentored students at Temple University in Philadelphia as well as in the Temple program in Tokyo, Japan. He most recently was a visiting fellow at the National Centre for Research
Methods in the United Kingdom.  He has produced three books, over 120 publications and edited professional journals including Visual Studies and, while in Japan, was the founding editor of Sensei. His encouragement of indigenous participation in visual studies extends back to 1966 and his work with Sol Worth and John Adair in the “Navajo Film Themselves Project.”  This emphasis in indigenous participation extends to his current studies of chronically ill patients in Boston who make videotapes that teach medical personnel what it means to live with such ailments as asthma, cystic fibrosis, spina bifida, sickle cell disease and, most recently, obesity.  A long time member of the Board of Directors for the Society for Visual Anthropology; he has also served as past present for the SVA.

In short, Dick has been a mentor, teacher, friend and greatly missed colleague at these anthropology meetings.  We reach out to him today with thanks for years of dedication, excellence and accomplishment in the field of visual anthropology.  It is for these reasons that the SVA is giving Richard Chalfen a well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award.

SVA Lifetime Achievement Award for 2009: Asen Balicki
(information coming soon)

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2008

SVA Lifetime Achievement Award for 2008: Karl Heider

The Society for Visual Anthropology proudly gives its Lifetime Achievement Award for 2008 to Professor Karl Heider. He holds a doctorate from Harvard University and is Carolina Distinguished Professor (Emeritus) at the University of South Carolina. Heider’s work encompasses broad areas as a researcher, filmmaker, teacher, and writer.

He has carried on extensive field study and filmmaking among the Dani of New Guinea as well as the Minang Kabav of West Sumatra. His current research interests include the cultural shaping of emotions. A book based on this research called The Wisdom of Rice: Emotion and Folk Psychology in West Sumatra is in preparation.

Heider’s many films include studies of aspects of Indonesian as well as specifically Dani expressive and material culture, technologies, and arts. Houses, batik, sweet potato farming, rice irrigation, shadow puppets, and dance are examples of his topics.

His work as a teacher comes to life in textbooks he has written for students and instructors, including Films for Anthropological Teaching, in its 8th edition with Carol Hermer, Ethnographic Film,in its 2nd edition and the innovative Seeing Anthropology, in its fourth edition with Pamela and Tom Blakely. He has taught an impressive list of more than sixty courses at noted centers of higher learning in the United States and overseas.

In addition to the volumes cited above, Prof. Heider co- authored Gardens of War. Life and Death in the New Guinea Stone Age with Robert Gardner, and wrote The Dani of West Irian: An Ethnographic Companion to the (Gardner’s) film Dead Birds. He also authored The Dugum Dani: A Papuan Culture of the Highlands of West New Guinea, the Grand Valley Dani, Landscapes of Emotion: Mapping Three Cultures of Emotion in Indonesia, and Indonesian Cinema as well as many other works.

The Society for Visual Anthropology is honored to give our award to a person of such accomplishments. He has served and will again serve as our president as well as a number of administrative and editorial positions within the American Anthropological Association as a whole, and who has been a constant source of support to workers in our field.

Mary Strong, SVA president

 

The John Collier Jr. Award for Still Photography

2008 Winner: Joanna Cohan Scherer for A Danish Photographer of Idaho Indians: Benedicte Wrenstead (2006).

The volume was published in 2006 by the University of Oklahoma Press. The Collier Prize is given every year or two for a “work that exemplifies the use of photographic research and communication of anthropological knowledge.”

Joanna Scherer has worked for many years as a photography expert on North American Indigenous images. Much of her labor contributed to the Handbook of North American Indians, an enormous and invaluable scholarly resource. This book is about a late 19th century woman portrait photographer from Denmark who migrated to the small town of Pocatello Idaho and set up a store- front studio. There she made images of people who lived in the town and its environs, many of whom were Shoshone- Bannock Indians. Scherer’s engaging prose and Wrensted’s luminous and well reproduced photographs appeal to both scholarly and general readers. Students of Native American cultures and documentary photography will appreciate the several ways in which the book makes contributions to both areas. Scholars and practitioners in visual anthropology will learn from the author’s careful study of historical context, micro- analysis of imagery and design, and deft use of the photo elicitation technique in her interviews with the image subjects’ present day descendants.

The author established very close relationships with the people she interviewed. Unlike so many field workers, she kept up these friendships long after her research ended, donating profits from this book to a young student from the Fort Hall Indian reservation. This is a beautiful volume, written with intelligence, sensitivity, and obvious care for the people with whom the author collaborated.

The John Collier Jr. Award for Still Photography is awarded periodically to a photographer whose work exemplifies the use of photography for research and communication of anthropological knowledge. The awardee can be nominated by any member of the SVA at any time. A letter of nomination and any supporting material should accompany a copy of the creative work submission. Once a nomination is received the Board appoints a committee to decide on its merits. A book or exhibit can be nominated for an award. Nominations for the Collier Prize should be submitted by June 30 of each year to any current member of the SVA Board of Directors. A letter of nomination should accompany a copy of the creative work submission. A committee of three, appointed by the SVA Board, will review the works and award-winners will be notified in advance of the annual AAA meetings so that they might consider attending. In addition to having their production presented during AAA, winners will receive a prize and a certificate of the award.

Past Winners of The John Collier Jr. Award for Still Photography: