Ilisa Barbash

Ilisa Barbash is an American visual anthropologist, documentary filmmaker, and author. She is the Curator of Visual Anthropology at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

Career Barbash’s work focuses on ethnographic filmmaking and visual anthropology. She co‑directed Sweetgrass (2009), which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and received critical acclaim. Her earlier film, In and Out of Africa (1992), explores the African art market and questions of authenticity and cultural ownership.

In print scholarship, Barbash is the author of Where the Roads All End: Photography and Anthropology in the Kalahari (2016), which won the John Collier Jr. Award for Still Photography from the Society for Visual Anthropology. She is also a co‑editor of To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes (2020).

Barbash has taught courses in ethnographic film production and theory at institutions such as San Francisco State University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Colorado Boulder.

Filmography In and Out of Africa (1992) – co‑director, producer Sweetgrass (2009) – co‑director, producer

Selected bibliography Where the Roads All End: Photography and Anthropology in the Kalahari (Peabody Museum Press, 2016). – author To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes (Aperture, 2020). – co‑editor Cross-Cultural Filmmaking: A Handbook for Making Documentary and Ethnographic Films and Videos (University of California Press, 1997). -co-author The Cinema of Robert Gardner (Berg Publishers, 2007.). – co-editor