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"Cherchez le Chercheur" No. III Remember last week’s photograph? The ‘traditionalists’ were monitoring the performance of a cleansing ritual in front of the royal palace. Today you find the same crew posing for a group shot on the junction of a forest trail. Amongst them are the leading priestess (okomfo, smoking her pipe), junior priests and cult novices (in white cloth), and a chief’s spokesman (okyeame, holding the golden staff). And, difficult to ignore, a foreigner.

It seems rather uncommon for a fieldworker to have his picture taken with his ‘objects’. For the most part it is his duty to stand behind the camera. Who, then, makes him to be the object in the field? It is (or, it was in my case) local acquaintances and what one might call field assistants; or friends from home on a visit to the fieldworker’s remote world; or even journalists hunting for pictures of exotic cultures – but locating just another invader...

Expect next week’s entry with a photographic episode about a SPIEGEL journalist who run into the researcher in the field. Also check the ‘colonial version’ of the picture above, just for fun...

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