There are a lot of stigmas and stereotypes when it comes to anime and comic conventions. But let me tell you, those stereotypes are embraced to their fullest and truly accepted in such an open minded environment like convention cultures.
This gallery is a collection of both natural and edited photographs that I gathered between attending the 2015 East Lansing Shuto Con, and the 2015 University of Michigan Anime Convention. That semester, I had been putting together a ethnographic photo-essay for my introductory anthropology course.
We had been given the assignment of finding a culture or group of interest to us, spending time with them, asking questions, collecting observations, taking photographs and ultimately using this information to create a photographic essay on our experiences.
I chose to spend time in convention culture because cosplay, anime, comics and cartoons have always been something I’ve enjoyed partaking in with my older brother. However, I am not very connected with the culture, and I wanted to investigate the effects of stereotypes in these environments, because I truly believe that stigmas are what you make them. And in this case, cosplayers made them pretty badass.
So here are some of the pieces I used in my final project to portray the accepting, diverse and open minded culture of anime/comic conventions.