The “Authentic Evocation” in Ethnographic Photography as Art: Taking Lau Pok Chi’s Art Practice as an Example

Abstract

This article emphasizes the disciplinary problems of anthropology after the representation crisis, and the connected phenomenon of the intersection of the disciplines of art and anthropology, considering the art practice of the Chinese American photographer Lau Pok Chi, mainly his Cuban Chinese project, as an instance for showcasing the authenticity of photographic art as ethnographic practice and its value for the development of anthropology. After assessing the important motivation of the artist’s practice, which is rooted in his construction of self-identity, and the methods and principles of his “quasi-ethnographic” research, this paper recommends that the authenticity of such type of ethnographic photography also obtains from its exposure of reflexivity and the transcendence of the separation of “things” and “words”, which may further motivate the multiple explorations of the two-way intervention between these two disciplines.