November 15, 2019

Brent Luvaas, PhD, associate professor in the Drexel University Department of Global Studies and Modern Languages, was awarded the 2019 John Collier Jr. Award for Still Photography for his book “Street Style: An Ethnography of Fashion Blogging,” published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Academic. The award is given by the Society for Visual Anthropology to a publication or multimedia production that “exemplifies the use of still photographs (both historical and contemporary and contemporary) for research and communication of anthropological knowledge.”

For five years, Luvaas chronicled street fashion around the world — from Fashion Weeks in Jakarta and New York to street style here in Philadelphia — on the blog Urban Fieldnotes. A visual and socio-cultural anthropologist interested in digital technologies, Luvaas used his blog as a basis for the book, which pairs full-page photographs with ethnographic detail to trace the evolution of street-style photography.

In 2016, Luvaas embarked on a new photographic project encompassing a broader view of street photography, which he shares on Instagram @streetanthropology. His ongoing Street Anthropology project was profiled in the 2017 issue of Ask magazine.

The director of Drexel’s minor program in anthropology, Luvaas has also taught a popular street ethnography course for several years. This winter, he will be teaching a graduate course on Technologies of the Visual (CCM 803).