The Ones That Are Wanted ― Communication and the Politics of Representation in a Photographic Exhibition

"The Ones That Are Wanted is a tour de force by virtue of the variety of expertises that Corinne Kratz brings together as photographer, researcher, curator, evaluator, and analyst of the exhibition and its reception. The book sustains its focus on the Okiek, pursues a coherent set of issues in depth, grounds the argument in a rich empirical account, and expands out to theoretical and ethical issues that transcend the immediate case. Kratz's theoretical sophistication pertains not only to the ethnographic study of culture, but also to the politics of representation and the particular nature of photography and exhibition as media."--Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, author of Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage

"Corinne Kratz establishes a new benchmark for visual anthropology, and more generally for the photographic exhibit and the photographic essay forms. She not only brings together extraordinary photography with intimate knowledge of the individuals, rituals, and history of costume changes. She has the Okiek comment, providing an experiential insiders sensibility to the exhibit. And finally, she puts the exhibit into motion, ethnographically observing the exhibit's reception by very different audiences. It becomes a polyvocal communicative performance piece transcending our usual notions of photographic books and exhibits."--Michael M.J. Fischer, co-author of Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences

"An exciting and groundbreaking work involving the innovative use of photography in cross-cultural discourse, that brings with it advances in method, theory and interpretation in visual anthropology."--Howard Morphy, Director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Australian National University, and author of Aboriginal Art (Art & Ideas)

Corinne A. Kratz is Associate Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at Emory University and the author of Affecting Performance: Meaning, Movement, and Experience in Okiek Women's Initiation (1994).