Images, senses and applications: engaging visual anthropology

In this article I discuss how visual anthropology methods are advancing in a present-day environment where applied, activist, public and interdisciplinary anthropologies are increasingly central. In earlier work [Pink 2004, 2006, 2007a] I outlined the field of an applied visual anthropology, and discussed the potential of visual methods and media in the production of a public anthropology [Pink 2006]. Here I build on this to suggest how recent visual anthropology practices might both contribute to and resolve issues relating to contemporary debates in applied and public anthropology and the relationship between scholarly research and social intervention.