These records document the history and activities of the Society for Visual Anthropology. The collection consists of the files of past presidents, most of whom served in various capacities on the organization's board. Consequently, the files of each individual may cover periods outside his or her presidency, and duplication of files may exist acros...

The papers of Jay Ruby document his writings, research, and professional activities as well as the history of visual anthropology.

Edmund Snow Carpenter (1922-2011) was an archaeologist and visual anthropologist who worked extensively with the indigenous peoples of the Canadian Arctic as well as Papua New Guinea. With his colleague and close collaborator Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), he laid the groundwork for modern media theory. Carpenter is also known for his work as an ethnographic filmmaker and as a collector of Paleo-Eskimo art. The Papers of Edmund Carpenter, circa 1938-2011, document the research interests and projects undertaken by Carpenter in the fields of cultural anthropology, ethnographic filmmaking, media theory, archaeology, and indigenous art.

James Faris (1936 – present) is an American cultural anthropologist and epistemologist who received his PhD from Cambridge University in 1966. He conducted fieldwork in the fishing settlement of Cat Harbour, Newfoundland, among the Nuba of Southeastern Kordofan in the Sudan, and among the Navajo in the American Southwest. His research specializations include cognitive anthropology, art and aesthetics, ritual, social organization and reproduction, anthropological linguistics, and visual anthropology and critical theory and representation. The James Faris Papers, 1960-2014, primarily document his fieldwork with the Nuba peoples of Southeastern Sudan. His papers also include materials related to representation of the Nuba peoples and various controversies in visual anthropology and documentary film that related to Leni Riefenstahl and her filmmaking among the Nuba. During the 1960s Faris was drawn into activism against the Vietnam War while at the University of Connecticut and his papers contain ephemeral materials on radical anthropology and racism from that period. The collection consists of field notes, correspondence, photographs, sound recordings, films (including scripts and transcriptions), videos, book and papers drafts, and news and magazine clippings.

An interview with Robert Mangold conducted 2017 November 16, by Christopher Lyon, for the Archives of American Art, at Mangold's studio in Washingtonville, New York.

The John Marshall Ju/'hoan Bushman Film and Video Collection contains full film and video projects (outtake material), film production elements and edited films and videos, audio tapes, still photographs, negatives, transparencies, slides, published and unpublished writing by John Marshall and others, study guides for edited films, Nyae Nyae Development Foundation and Advocacy files, maps, and production files that include letters, shot logs, translations, transcriptions, editing logs, treatments, and proposals spanning from 1950-2000. This material comprises Marshall's long-term documentary record of the Ju/'hoansi of the Nyae Nyae region of the Kalahari Desert in northeastern Namibia. A great deal of the film and video footage focuses on one particular extended family, that of Toma Tsamko, whose ancestral home is at /Gautcha, an area with a large salt pan and a permanent waterhole. The life stories of some family members are captured in the footage; appearing as children in the 1950's, middle-aged parents in the 1980's, and pensioners in the final years of visual documentation. The Marshall Collection also documents other Ju/'hoansi living in Nyae Nyae and elsewhere, their relationships with neighboring ethnic groups, and national politics that affected Ju/'hoansi. Marshall also documented the local political body (the Nyae Nyae Farmers' Cooperative, or NNFC), the foundation he started (the Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia, or NNDFN), and the ways in which both groups worked with and were affected by international development organizations and foreign aid during the 1990's.

Collection contains negatives, slides, and color transparencies taken by Evan Schneider or his father Gilbert in Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger, Algeria, Kenya, Tanzania, and the Sahara, from 1947 to 1999. Also contains vintage silver prints, manuscripts, letters, writings, articles (self-published and other), 16 mm film, CDs, and high-resolution digital...

Includes speeches by S. Dillon Ripley, Richard Fiske, Paul Taylor and a blessing by the Supreme Patriarch of Thailand.

This accession consists of motion pictures created by, acquired by, or about the Smithsonian Institution and its staff. Highlights of the collection include footage related to the Charles Lindbergh transatlantic flight and the Lindbergh baby; footage of Native American sign language; footage from archeological expeditions in Arizona, Colo...