State of the Ethics in Visual Anthropology SARA PERRY AND JONATHAN S. MARION Rooted in anthropologists’ long-standing roles as producers, users, and disseminators of images, this brief article takes the pulse of ethical considerations related to visual media in the discipline. Reflecting on the intent, content, and im- plications of the Society for Visual Anthropology–sponsored visual ethics discussion sessions at the 2007–9 American Anthropological Association meetings, we seek here to situate these events in the context of recent disciplinary engage- ments with image-based responsibilities and to assess their relationship to comparable endeavors in allied fields. Our considerations come together in a discussion of why, how, and to whom visual ethics matter. Ultimately, we put forward a series of tentative proposals for the Society for Visual Anthropology’s future navigation of these issues. [Key words: anthropological responsibility, imagery, visual data, visual ethics, visual media] D ecember 2009 marked the third consecutive year of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) annual meetings at which the Society for Visual Anthropology (SVA) has hosted discussion-based sessions dedicated to the topic of visual ethics. 1 Signifi- cantly, 2009 also witnessed the publication of two unique Anthropology News In Focus series on both visual ethics (April 2009) 2 and codifying ethics (September 2009), as well as the final approval of the AAA’s revised Code of Ethics (AAA 2009). This convergence of interests within the discipline overallFwhich is arguably also mirrored in cognate fieldsFleads us to pause here to reflect on the intent, implications, and future of the SVA’s ongoing eth- ics forums. We suggest that such reflection is especially important given that the AAA’s new ethics code does not yet attend to matters of visual media. This is in spite of the fact that anthropologists are major producers and circu- lators of graphic products, not to mention enduring witnesses to the pictorial creations of others. Problemati- cally, anthropological practitioners generally still have little means to account for the impact of such creations on our disciplinary histories and intellectual/professional trajectories (but see, among others, Grimshaw 2001; Hammond et al. 2009 for recent explorations), and few tools to bolster visual competency across the field as a whole. In fact, one might argue that we have been left with limited practical resources to guide us in negotiating the moral complexities of visual communication. Accordingly, we appreciate the SVA’s visual ethics roundtables as among the few communal forums avail- able to anthropologists for meaningfully working through these complexities. We review here the history of the roundtable events, their organization, and the character of recent contributions to them. We briefly seek to compare these sessions to current initiatives in related disciplines, and to suggest parallels between the visual ethical challenges of practitioners across the anthropological field. Ultimately, this article aims to provide introductory commentary on some of the clear concerns that underlie responsible visual practice in an- thropology and, in so doing, act as a springboard for future exploration and navigation of the issues. Visual Ethics Discussions at the 2007–9 AAA Annual Meetings The current series of ethics dialogues was initiated in 2007 in the form of two SVA Special Event lunchtime ses- sionsF‘‘Ethics and Examples: A Discussion Regarding Visual Ethics’’Forganized by one of the authors (Marion). Faced with conflicting interests regarding the uses of his photographs of competitive ballroom dancers, Marion conceptualized these sessions as active conversations about on-the-ground, in-progress research concerning visual media. Presenters were asked to provide (1) brief open-ended examples that did not lend themselves to simple ‘‘do’’ and ‘‘do not’’ dichotomizations, and that could thus serve as (2) focal cases for collaborative de- liberation of real-world ethical matters faced by anthro- pologists working with visual data. 3 Audience and speakers alike were encouraged to question individual approaches to the visual, challenge each other to think about the ramifications of imagery, and consider potential Visual Anthropology Review, Vol. 26, Issue 2, pp. 96–104, ISSN 1058-7187, online ISSN 1548-7458. & 2010 by the American Anthropological Association. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-7458.2010.01070.x.