Abstract/Summary

Although tourists and ethnographers take photos with different intentions and for different uses, the images they produce may be essentially similar. I explore this matter in reference to a photograph I took during research in Oaxaca, Mexico, one that is also commonly taken by tourists who visit the woodcarving workshops there. While this photo is persuasive within touristic discourses that frame Oaxaca as reflecting authentic indigenous culture, the story it tells within my ethnography is more complicated. In discussing the space between these stories, I suggest that photographs of craft practices may in turn reconstitute artisans’ practices themselves.