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By Root 957 0

twelve instructions followed, covering everything from how to secure government clearances to the need to summarize all data in charts. “Photos needed from Kajar,” she once wrote, going on to list forty-three. To say the questionnaires she administered to villagers and village officials were comprehensive would be an understatement. Geography, demography, technology, labor investment, purchasing, output, distribution, capital, returns, cash expenditure patterns, assistance from outside agencies, history, land tenure, agricultural yields, trading: Those were a few of her areas of interest. Her notes from a single day of fieldwork in Kajar might include the price and sources of scrap iron; rates of pay for bellows workers, hammerers, and the smith; an accounting of one smith’s expenditures and revenues; types of charcoal used; an inventory of fifteen blacksmithing tools; discussions of marketing practices, the function of the cooperative, cooperative dues, the availability of credit, seasonal shifts in labor supply; and observations on child labor, women’s roles, diet, and land use. “Difficult person to interview,” she reported in her notebook after a routine interview in Pocung. “Interview cut after 3 or 4 hours with poor results.” Her six pages of notes on a conversation with Garrett Solyom about field photography covered shutter speeds, film speeds, filters, lens paper, liquid lens cleaner, processing, storage of negatives, and a lot more. “The smaller the F stop, the wider the aperture,” Ann noted. “Need a fast lens.” Solyom, who had bought his photographic equipment with a gift of one thousand dollars from Dewey, had learned his technique from his father, a game biologist. “Look with your entire being,” his father had told him. “Sit still. Things will begin to happen because you’re not there.” The advice that Ann chose to write down had a practical cast. “Ask yourself before each photo: What am I trying to show in this photo?” she wrote. “Don’t decapitate people.”

Yes, don’t decapitate. Ann’s descriptions of her informants were precise, affectionate, and not without humor. “Pak Atmo is a small, shrewd, comical man, fond of a good joke,” she wrote in her notes, describing the head of the biggest hamlet in Kajar. One man was “shy, vague, pleasant”—and utterly without business sense. Another struck her as “open, good-hearted, modest and sexy.” After interviewing one man, she scribbled parenthetically, “Wife a bit of twit.” After a visit from a team of German engineers: “Much nonsense talked.” She regaled Dewey with details of one Pak Harjo Bodong: “Roughly translated, ‘Father Harjo with the Long Belly Button,’ though I never had the courage to really ask why,” Ann wrote in a letter. “Pak Harjo Bodong used to be the most famous dalang in the Wonosari area. He also used to be a famous thief and was in jail four times when he was young. Now he is . . . a pillar of the community and lives there with his twelfth wife (he is her tenth husband). They are both in their seventies and quite a sketch. We enjoyed many evenings at their house hearing stories about the old days, and I got a free course in the wayang to boot!”

Pak Sastrosuyono, the head of the blacksmithing cooperative and Kajar’s leading entrepreneur, became one of her most important informants—a man of average build with “an intelligent-looking face and a habitual expression that could be described as slightly worried or puzzled-looking,” she wrote in her dissertation. “Although one hears many stories about Pak Sastro from other villagers, some of them bordering on the fantastic, he seldom talks about himself or his accomplishments. When he does, he tends to downplay those accomplishments. If asked to discuss the extent of his property, his wealth, his financial contributions to village ceremonies or improvement projects, etc., he always gives underestimates. In part, this can be attributed to Javanese culture, which places a high value on personal modesty and abhors bragging. In part, however, it is probably due to a realistic assessment of his situation in the village.