Visual Anthropology Review.

History is a selective process. We do not, cannot, and need not remember all who contributed to making the past. Most of what really happened will never be documented, and not all that has been recorded is important enough to be passed on. As perspectives change, new questions emerge. Occasionally, historical revisionism restores some unique characters previously neglected. Free souls roaming on the outer edges of the field, or perhaps even straying beyond, they capture our attention and invite a closer look. Such is the case with Edmund Carpenter. For more than fifty years, Carpenter has explored the borderlands between cultural anthropology, visual media, and tribal art. He ranks among a small cohort of forerunners in the anthropology of visual media. Indeed, he was probably the first professional anthropologist in the world to host a national television program, and one of the first scholars to focus attention on the revolutionary impact of film and photography on traditional tribal peoples. In 1948, he teamed up with Marshall McLuhan for a lifetime collaboration, breaking new ground in our cross-cultural understanding of modern media. He also headed the first anthropology department in which filmmaking formed a central component of the curriculum. And last but not least, he has authored many publications on culture and media and was instrumental in the production of numerous anthropological films (see Carpenter’s various publications under References). Considering Carpenter’s accomplishments, it is remarkable how rarely his work is mentioned in academic publications. And although he remains an elusive figure in the professional corridors of the discipline, we have tried to trace out his fascinating life history. This paper, the first publication to deal extensively with his oeuvre, offers a biographical sketch and brief review of his various professional contributions. However, given the scope of this visual anthropology conference, it does not concern his complex role as a collector of tribal art, his deep involvement with ethnographic museum collections, nor his contributions to prehistoric archaeology and tribal art. Instead, we direct our discussion toward an appreciation of his pioneering role in the development of visual anthropology, the anthropology of media, and communications studies. With this limited objective, we have marked out several key stages in Carpenter’s career, beginning with a sketch of his formative period as one of Frank Speck’s students specializing in prehistoric archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania (1940-1950). This is folEDMUND CARPENTER EXPLORATIONS IN MEDIA & ANTHROPOLOGY