72 Ana Isabel Afonso with Manuel João Ramos Chapter 5 New graphics for old stories Representation of local memories through drawings Ana Isabel Afonso Illustrations Manuel João Ramos Words and drawings This paper reflects on the possibilities of articulating drawing with text, as an expressive joint form of representation in anthropology – a topic that has been viewed unevenly by different national anthropological traditions. There is a long-term tradition of anthropologists working with artists to produce museum displays, as emphasised by (amongst others) Bouquet (2001) and Price (1989). However empirical case-studies that directly address the pos- sibilities of using drawings in anthropological research are rare, both in regard to the nature of drawings themselves (i.e. as acts and products), and in the way they may be combined with text. Rather, recent publications under the general theme of visual anthropology (Grimshaw 2001, 2000; Ruby 2000; El Guindi 1998; Banks and Morphy 1997) have been largely concentrated either on film or on photography, as privileged forms of visual representation. Nevertheless, some exceptions to this trend can be found, which, albeit scarce, represent the potential of the use of drawings and paintings to elicit and analyse anthropological data. A good example is the work of Hildred Geertz (1994) based on the Balinese paintings and sketches that Mead and Bateson intuitively requested and collected from local peasants during their stay in Bali (1936–8). It is interesting to note that although this was intended as a study of the painters of one of the villages where Mead and Bateson conducted fieldwork, during the process of acquiring the pictures important data on local life and culture was also produced: Bateson and a Balinese assistant, I Madé Kalér, made over two hundred pages of notes on the pictures bought, recording each painter’s comments and stories in his own words. In addition, Mead and Bateson designed a lengthy questionnaire that was used by Kalér to interview twenty-three of the main artists. They asked about their economic life, education, experience with foreigners, how they learned to make pictures, and how they usually marketed them. (Geertz 1994: 121) WIC05 2/11/04, 2:12 PM 72