This article is a critical review of the last 20 years of the development of visual anthropology in the United States and United Kingdom. It is argued that there are three approaches to the field – visual anthropology as ethnographic film, as the cultural study of pictorial media and as an inclusive anthropology of visual communication. The development and expansion of scholarly journals, training programmes and increasing general acceptance of this branch of cultural anthropology bodes well for the future. The anthropologist as image-maker and scholar of the visible and pictorial world is becoming increasingly commonplace.