Images as Things: Photographing and Filmingkastomin Papua New Guinea

This article discusses the use of film and photography in studying crafts associated with kastom (custom or tradition) in Manus, Papua New Guinea. It is argued that by engaging local people in directing our cameras we might produce images that are non-representational, images that will in their own right participate in social life, much like the artifacts whose making is discussed here. Rather than pointing to the limitations of still and moving pictures as compared to human perception, I argue that an image has the potential to synthesize and offer to its audience a multiplicity of meanings, precisely by not being anything like a perspective.