Tradition in the Frame

In this original, beautifully written, and often moving monograph, Konstantinos Kalantzis has produced a lasting contribution to the anthropological study of contemporary Europe.  Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Tradition in the Frame explores with exquisite detail a number of timely themes—the social life of photographs, conflicting tourist and local images of Crete, the performance of gender stereotypes, and the complex tension between tradition and modernity. The author's ability to view the world through the eyes of natives and foreigners, and to deconstruct visual signs and symbols, is nothing short of stunning.  For anyone interested in Europe and the Mediterranean world today, this richly documented and theoretically sophisticated volume is a must read.

-- Stanley Brandes

This rich account, of empirical depth and theoretical elegance, gives us a fine-grained and nuanced exploration of the work of photographs in a Cretan community. Focusing on the temporal and spatial practices of photography, it gives a cogent account of the visual culture through which questions of identity, historical imagination, nostalgia, and constructions and performances of tradition are negotiated by 'insider Sfakians'' and 'outsiders'. In demonstrating the significance of the humble snapshot, postcard and poster within networks of cultural negotiation, this book provides an exemplary case study of the value of the visual as a prism through which to consider broader questions. Bringing together, as it does, questions of centre and periphery in relation to nation, to tourism and to contemporary politics, it is in the very best traditions of both ethnographies of Europe and of visual anthropology.

-- Elizabeth Edwards

Tradition in the Frame is a richly innovative ethnography focusing on the visual dimensions of modern Cretan mythmaking, and especially on the material reproduction and negotiation of time-honored stereotypes of warrior masculinity. Writing of a society that has largely shifted its economy from shepherding to tourism, Kalantzis incisively demonstrates how the realities of commercial exploitation and socio-political change re-frame familiar images of a society at once proudly central to the symbolism of national identity and yet also still reluctant to accept the merest hint of intrusive authority.

-- Michael Herzfeld

Kalantzis' marvellous and wise book, the product of meticulous ethnography and theoretically sophisticated analysis, documents photographic practices in Sfakia that create stereotypes and also undermine them.  "Thinking through the frame" and moving the debate on exoticism far beyond familiar binaries, this landmark ethnography of photography is filled with compelling description and powerful conceptual formulations that are both subtle and clear. Offering the reader wonderful evocations of places and people, this account of the fluid intersection of identity with media practices, where "tradition is demanded", is a major achievement by a key figure in Visual Anthropology. 

-- Christopher Pinney

In the face of a long tradition of 'iconophobia' in anthropology, Tradition in the Frame. Photography, Power, and Imagination in Sfakia, Crete by Konstantinos Kalantzis highlights the anthropological prospects opened up by the study of a society's images and the study of a society through images. Taking an insightful and critical ethnographic approach, the writer presents the ways in which the external gaze of folklorists, photographers, tourists etc who construct stereotypes and feed other people's imaginings of 'Sfakia' and 'the Sfakians' engages in dialogue with local perceptions of the self, national narratives and international expectations. These local perceptions challenge dominant idioms, suggest alternative interpretations and significations of photographic representations, and foreground 'tiny sparks of contingency' as per Walter Benjamin which resist any national, folklorist or urban imagination. The anonymous, atemporal 'Cretan', 'the shepherd', 'the picturesque villager' is recognized by the locals and transformed into a relative, a friend with a name and a specific history, recalling the philosophical political thesis of Ariella Azoulay on the revolutionary potential of photography. Photographs themselves become objects of reappropriation and they are activated through bodily performances as they become points of reference and imitation for new photographic portraits in the present, effectively connecting contemporary with ancestral bodies. Sounds, scents, tastes, memories, experiences of Sfakia are substantiated in images and the critical writing of Kalantzis, thus allowing 'tradition' to escape from 'the frame' and reminding readers that the visual is part and parcel of our multi-sensory experience of the world, always in dialogue with imagination, desire, and expectation in (and for) the past, the present and the future.

-- Eleana Yalouri

Kalantzis has produced remarkably detailed and perceptive ethnography (if that is a word that can still be used) of a very particular society in southwestern Crete, aspects of which, however, would be immediately recognizable to anyone who has spent time anywhere in Greece and would also, I think, be found in very many contemporary societies around the world: hence my graceless intrusion of expatriate London Australians, or Irish or Texans in this review. But good ethnographies always move us from a consideration of the particular to its resonances in society in general.

-- Roger Just * Journal of the Anthroplogical Society of Oxford *

The valuable theory produced by the book's in-depth ethnography of the complex milieu of tradition in Sfakia and the way it links to the meanings, limits and creative subversions in visual frames, can take many movements-directions as it joins together the anthropological study of Crete, gender, exoticism, nationhood, agency, and resistance.

-- Ilektra Kyriazidou * Entaglements *

Immediately upon reading Tradition in the Frame, the reader is transported to the mountains of the Aegean Sea where Kalantzis unfolds layer after layer of paradoxes and tensions and, as good ethnography should, works to explain how they are resolved and mitigated. . . . Those looking to explore how to incorporate visual methods in unexpected ways will find this book particularly useful; in fact, the dedication to the use of photography to explore the myriad tensions between past/present, traditional/modern, Crete/Greece, while situating this all within a larger framework of Europeanization is a welcome model.

-- James Hundley * Entaglements *

Based on fieldwork in Crete, Tradition in the Frame is an ethnography that turns the seemingly facile observation that tradition is important to Greeks into a fascinating exploration of how visuality, and photography in particular, shapes dynamics of power and people's understanding of themselves. . . . In its breadth and sophistication this book is an invaluable contribution to visual anthropology and to the study of modern Greece.

-- Sophie Stamatopoulou-Robbins * Journal of Modern Greek Studies *

In Tradition in the Frame: Photography, Power, and Imagination in Sfakia, Crete, Konstantinos Kalantzis explores the experiences of Sfakians in Crete to reflect on how tradition is made meaningful today and what this can tell us about the dynamics of localisation, globalisation, modernity and belonging in our contemporary world. This is a rich and enjoyable read that will be of interest to scholars and students looking for new, generative approaches to visual culture at the intersection of the local and the global,

-- Kristina Gedgaudaitė * London School of Economics Review of Books *

The tools that Kalantzis generously lays out for his fellow anthropologists will, no doubt, open up this conversation toward new horizons for there is indeed much to be seen beyond the edges of cultural convention.

-- Myriam Lamrani * Visual Anthropology *

The study of tradition, along with that of power, remain colossal concerns across the social sciences and humanities. Joining a significant lineage on these topics is Konstantinos Kalantzis' book, Tradition in the Frame: Photography, Power, and Imagination in Sfakia, Crete, which offers an ethnographically precise and broad-ranging analysis of the architectonics of power and tradition in and in relation to Sfakia, a mountainous coastal region in southwest Crete. . . . for its plethora of visual-ethnographic examples, engaging storytelling, and depth of analytical insights, Tradition in the Frame will be of great interest to students and scholars working across anthropology, photography, visual culture, and beyond.

-- Shireen Walton * Ethn