Paul T.W. Baxter: Photographing the Other-Than Human

This article revisits the work of the late anthropologist, Paul T.W. Baxter, re-reading his photographs and writing on pastoralism in northern Kenya through the prism of
contemporary interest in anthropology in the ‘other-than-human’. It contextualises
Baxter’s work within a wider school of anthropology of pastoralism, and his
photography within wider photographic practice in anthropology and in the region
of Kenya where he worked in the 1950s. We argue that his work – and that of
others of the structural-functionalist era – offers rich detail that can be mined by
later anthropologists with different theoretical interests and influences. In particular,
his photographs speak – albeit partially – to a wider intertwining of human and
animal lives in northern Kenya of the 1950s beyond his own focus on pastoralist
livelihoods, an intertwining that resonates with current work on human–animal
sociality