Visual staging of cultures as foreign or spectacular — often colonial-inflected. Critically problematic: stereotyping over authentic representation.
When you want to depict a culture on film that is not your own, the danger quickly arises: you dress it in a garment it doesn't wear. Ethnographic cinema has made precisely this mistake for decades—and in part, still does. The camera became the tool of a gaze that didn't want to understand the unknown, but rather to exhibit it, to exoticize it, to make it something else, something spectacular.
On set, this concretely means: you choose framing, music, and editing rhythms that convey a specific message—often unconsciously. The colonialist's gaze sits with the camera, even if you don't realize it. This is evident in the overemphasis on ritualistic or exotic elements, while everyday, human moments are omitted. The music is made dissonant and foreign, even though it is perfectly normal for the people there. The people themselves become objects of observation rather than subjects with their own voice and perspective.
Critical reflection on this practice is relatively new in filmmaking. Only from the 1960s-70s onwards did filmmakers—including and especially those from cultures previously only depicted—begin to use the medium to create counter-representations. They showed: what was previously staged as exotic is simply everyday life. The perspective was the problem, not the place. For you as a cinematographer today, this means: if you film a culture that is not your own, you must constantly question yourself. Who owns the camera? Who is telling the story? Who is being made an object of observation, and who remains invisible? Are the ritualistic or spectacular moments authentically important to the story, or are you staging them because they feel visually interesting?
The practice today boils down to a simple rule: work with the people in front of the camera, not against them or past them. Get feedback. Ask questions. This has nothing to do with censorship—it has to do with craftsmanship integrity. The ethnographic gaze was a disease of early cinema. You no longer need to suffer from it.