Timothy Asch, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Visual Anthropology at the University of Southern California, was born July 16, 1932 in Southampton, New York. He attended private boarding school at the North Country School in Lake Placid, New York and the Putney School in Putney, Vermont. His education then led him to the interest of still photography, where he served apprenticeships with Minor White, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. After that he was forced to join the service for the Army during the Korean War. When he returned from Korea he went to Columbia University and graduated with a B. S. in Anthropology in 1959. He later went back to school and got an M. A. from Boston University’s African Studies Program. In his studies at Columbia University, under the radar of the teacher by the name of Margaret Mead as a teacher's assistant; her influences engrossed upon himself to assess potential use of visual media for instruction. He was intrigued by this field, and that’s probably why he made this his life long passion and career. (Timothy Asch in Memoriam)
He began his career in ethnographic film by working 1959-62 as an editor on John Marshall’s South African films at Harvard’s Peabody Museum. In the 60’s he worked on documenting the educational experiments that led to the first anthropology curriculum for elementary schools. In 1971 Acsh teamed up with Napoleon Chagnon in Venezuela to film an axe fight that Chagnon and Asch filmed in the village of Mishimishimabowei-teri where the Yanomams Indians are based. The film was called Yanomamo Interactive: The Ax Fight: contains a wealth of new ethnographic ad other data and promises to be a novel and exciting tool for the teaching of undergraduate and graduate anthropology and also for anthropological research. These films have been used in university classrooms throughout the world and have won numerous prizes and awards for their outstanding work on this collaboration of minds. (Yanomamo Interactive CD-ROM Introduction)
In 1975, he worked in partnership with his wife, Patsy Asch, to collaborate with anthropologists in Afghanistan, Indonesia, and elsewhere, creating a body of ethnographic films widely used for education and research. Their films have won numerous international awards. Timothy Asch’s energy and enthusiasm in encouraging educators to use film contributed to a pedagogical shift from merely showing films to incorporation them into instruction as part of lectures and class assignments of written study guides. Overall Timothy Asch has contributed to the field of ethnographic films and anthropology an enormous amount. His work has and still to this day inspires many people. (Timothy Asch in Memoriam)
Yanomamo Interactive, http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/axfight/, (February, 2000)
Timothy Asch in Memoriam, http://cwis.usc.edu/dept/elab/welcome/resume/aschobit.html, (February, 2000)
Written By: Matt Paterson