Communication and Images of the Body in Huichol Photographs
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Some Results
One question I considered was whether the functions of photography transcend what is beheld by the modern eye, and whether a camera in the hands of a Huichol Indian—who is far removed from Western values and from the visual image—responds to an autonomous aesthetic. Bourdieu believes that “even when the production of an image is credited entirely to the automatism of the machine, the photograph taken continues to be a choice which involves aesthetic and ethical values.” (Bourdieu, 1979, p. 22). This suggests that we should be able to recognize a Huichol photograph.

Nevertheless, the camera itself also seems to impose certain defined practices, which are “stereotyped and less abandoned to the anarchy of individual intentions” (Bourdieu, 1979, p. 38). In my opinion, these stereotyped practices are related to the tendency inherent in photography to praise, to fix, to solemnize, and to eternalize.

I began by classifying all the photographs according to themes suggested by those young people themselves. Of the total 2700 photographs: 64.5% were of people. This overwhelming preference for people as a theme, is noteworthy. Bourdieu too found that, in a selection of 500 photos taken by french photographers, 74% were of people (Bourdieu, 1979, p. 61). This illustrates a similar tendency to prefer taking photos of people over any other theme.

The young Huicholes, with no experience of pictures in their daily life, without the habit of taking photos, or of looking at themselves in a mirror, nevertheless still used the camera for the same purpose as the first uses of photography, which quickly adopted the function of producing portraits. The daguerreotypes coming out after 1840 were a commercial success, precisely because of their application in the portraits of people.

In this paper, I am only going to discuss the photographs in which the human body appears.

This particular corpus of photographs of people, demonstrates a special management of space and of the human body within the margins of the photograph itself. The photographs are wide view exposures. Close-ups of human beings are almost non-existent. There were only two close-up photos of the human body in the whole corpus of 2700 photographs, and those photos were more probably taken because of the headphones the youngster was wearing rather than the actual face.

The general shots produced by these Huichol photographers have the virtue of clearly showing a context. People posing or in action, have been photographed in their surroundings. The photographer has taken pains to move the camera to the left or right, in order to capture a complete image: perhaps people in front of their homes, where the photographer has incorporated the end of the adobe or stone wall, thereby allowing us to see fields beyond; or where the photographer has tilted the camera upwards to include the mountains; or where the photographer has placed people in the vertex of the intersection of two walls or electricity lines, in order to capture both sides of the landscape. Where the photographer is inside a house he or she has opened the window to include the world outside; and where the photographer is outside, he or she has opened the door to incorporate the inside of the house.

The posed photographs have the person standing, facing the camera squarely, at a suitable distance, and wearing a serious, respectful expression. This is the pose characteristic of a Huichol photo, just as it is of other social groups. Taking photographs of each other behaving naturally is an effort that has often resulted, in the West, in theatrical poses, and anyway it is an urban attitude towards the camera. The Huicholes preferred a clear pose, that both demonstrates respect and demands respect. Standing poses, looking directly at the camera, are bodily forms that display the manners regarded as socially acceptable within their community.

In fact the frontal pose is linked to values which are much more widely shared. In relation to photographs of French labourers, Bourdieu mentions that in many societies an honourable man is he who “looks at others straight in the face” (Bourdieu, 1979, p. 128). It seems to be a formal attitude towards photography, far removed from the well-known smile that Edgar Morin considers one of the keys to photography in our modern, mainly Western cultures: “Smile. . . Put your soul in the window of your face” (Morin, 1972, p. 43), a maxim which serves to stimulate sentimentalism in the Western culture of pictures.

In the photos analyzed, only in one photograph does a child appear with his arm around the neck of another child, his other arm raised in a gesture indicating strength. It is not mere coincidence that this, the only picture showing a different pose, is the photo of a boy who also happens to be the only Mestizo person living in the community, sent there by his father, a labourer working on the Nayarit coast.

For the Huicholes—who are not familiar with the Close-up shot commonly used on television, in the cinema and in advertising—what might a dismembered body signify?

In their handicrafts of beadwork, embroidery and woollen pictures, the figures are always whole. The exception is when portraying the faces of their gods. “When you take peyote, you see the deer like this first, only its face,” Daniel Castro, a Huichol artisan, told me, indicating one of his woollen pictures. When humans approach the gods, they do so face to face. Perhaps that is why it is only the gods who appear without a body, never people, who—after all—always communicate using their entire body.

According to Edgar Morin, the era of the Close-up, which favours the human face, has transformed civilization. In the cinema, on television and in advertising, the face has acquired a unique, supreme authority, where all dramas are focussed and all the action happens. And what is the effect of this? An abnormal increase in the satisfaction of feelings, which—with all this exaggeration—are only impoverished and hardened.

In contrast to aestheticism, to the handling of moods on people’s faces, in nature, in things, in colours—in fact in contrast to all this exaltation of feelings as being characteristic of the visual culture—the wide view exposures taken by the Huicholes show contexts, meticulous descriptions and multiple details. Their framing technique, with austere poses, favours the seeing of complete worlds instead of simply feeling subjective impressions.

Studying the actual discourses of different social groups, we are able to observe that our ways of seeing are defined in the inter-relation of communicative technologies with all the diverse forms of communication each social group manages. Even if the camera imposes the vision of a Cyclops, the photographer still negotiates his or her own viewpoint in the photos taken. Photographs enable us to observe the tension between technology and the eye of the beholder. Photographs offer the possibility of distinguishing between what is the technological, homogenizing component, and what is the actual vision of the individual subjects as defined by their own communicative surroundings.

In a desire to comprehend more fully the visual culture of the West, it seemed appropriate to turn to the opposite extreme: subjects who live without media images. This particular exploration has revealed signs of an an-iconic vision, as well as indications of the features that arise from the discipline of the beholding eye in video-cultures. Developing this idea further, might usefully contribute to knowledge about communicative competences in oral cultures, and also to an understanding of the transformations of highly iconic contemporary cultures.

Footnotes

1. The Huicholes are one of the 54 indigenous ethnic groups who inhabit Mexico.
2. Called “kaliguey.”
3. Cactacea Mexicana, cactus which causes hallucinations when ingested, and which the Huicholes use in their rituals.

Paper presented at the 8th International Conference: COMMUNICATION and CULTURAL (EX)CHANGE, Baptist University, Hong Kong, July 24-27 2001.

Contact Dr. Corona at (saco10@infosel.net.mx) with questions or comments.

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