Introduction: The power of vision and voice

The ways in which film and photographic mediums can be incorporated within ethnography is a continuing challenge for anthropologists. The papers within this special focus on visual anthropology provide different examples of the inclusion of visual components in ethnography from current research at the Australian National University. The visual can be used as a process of enquiry during different phases of anthropological research: as a research tool during fieldwork, as a means of analysis, and as a way of ‘visualising anthropology’. The objective of this special focus is to explore the range of possibilities in the use of alternative mediums as a means of ethnographic expression and the implications for the academic experience from fieldwork to finished thesis.