Photovoice In: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research

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Photovoice In: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research

By: Deborah Barndt Edited by: David Coghlan & Mary Brydon-Miller Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research Chapter Title: "Photovoice" Pub. Date: 2014 Access Date: December 27, 2018 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd City: London Print ISBN: 9781849200271 Online ISBN: 9781446294406 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446294406 Print pages: 621-623 © 2014 SAGE Publications Ltd All Rights Reserved. This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

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SAGE Research Methods

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Photography has become one of the most ubiquitous forms of communication in the twenty-first century, given the predominance of the visual in Western culture, the proliferation of visual media (e.g. ads, TV and the Internet) and the increasing accessibility and globalization of digital visual technologies. It is thus understandable that photographic tools would become central to participatory processes of action research. In particular, for projects that aim to engage marginalized populations in challenging oppression and developing both the personal and the collective capacity to act for social change, photography can offer an alternative form of representation, an active process of participation and a powerful expression of experience and social issues. Two photographic practices have emerged as popular tools in participatory research projects: Photovoice and Digital Storytelling. The latter is discussed in a separate entry. Photovoice puts cameras in the hands of those who traditionally might have been identified as the ‘research subjects', offering them an opportunity to be active participants in the research process, inviting them to ‘voice’ their experiences, perspectives and analyses through the photographs that they take. By ‘shooting back’, ordinary people democratize the visual media and challenge the role of ‘experts' and ‘professionals' in the arts, research and education.

Historical and Epistemological Roots The context within which photography was invented in the mid nineteenth century shaped its early use and impact. Developed by wealthy Europeans in the midst of the colonial period, cameras were initially used to document privileged lives and foreign travels to exotic lands, focusing on ‘the spectacle of the other’. They became tools in the racialized classification of humans under European imperialism, reinforcing notions of scientific racism. Photographs also soon replaced drawing in the rising role of advertising to promote industrial capitalism and the consumer culture. The technology of early cameras made them awkward, expensive and inaccessible to ordinary people; they were clearly the domain of the elite and the professionals. The capacity of photographs to show actual traces of reality also fed dominant epistemologies of positivism and the elevation of the ‘objective’ nature of reality promoted by Western science. Photographs were used as evidence, and there was little awareness of who was behind the camera, the photographer's perspective or interests. In the early twentieth century, reformist photographers such as Jacob Riis capitalized on this objective power of images to document the horrific living and working conditions of new immigrants to the USA; his aim was to raise public consciousness about poverty and catalyze social and political action. The Farm Security Administration photographers in the 1930s and 1940s had a similar mission: to document the real conditions of poor communities in the midst of the Depression; these classic social documentary images became emblematic of social inequities and were used to press for social reform. But the cameras remained in the hands of the professionals, the practice required considerable financial support and training and the subjects did not benefit from their images. Photographers' claim to objectivity was debunked in the latter part of the twentieth century by postmodern Page 2 of 7

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thinkers and artists, who vigorously challenged the ‘objectivity’ of positivist Western science and any notion of ‘truth’ that photographs could portray. Rather, they framed photos as frozen moments reflecting the subjective ‘point of view’ of the photographer and particular regimes of truth. While for some, this recognition spelled the death of documentary photography, for others—in both the art world and the world of social action—the acknowledgement only expanded the scope of the practice; Mirrors and Windows, a pivotal 1978 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, embraced both the artist's sensibility (mirror) and the world she explores (window), or the subjective and the objective power of photographs. Within the world of social research, there was also a developing sense of the self-reflexivity of the postpositivist researcher. Early developments of participatory research, influenced by the popular education pedagogy of the Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire, encouraged researchers to acknowledge their nonneutrality and their own power in terms of social identity, organizational identity and political identity. The recognition that all research is ideological and reflects power dynamics led to new tools that attempted to address the inequities between the researcher and the researched. An international network of participatory research within adult education, techniques developed by development practitioners in Participatory Rural Appraisal projects and the global emergence of Participatory Action Research (PAR) all aimed to democratize the research process while also integrating research, education and action. The democratization of research tools drew naturally on community-engaged artistic practices such as popular theatre, music and the spoken word and, in multiple forms, the use of photographs and video. The early Participatory Research Network of the International Council for Adult Education, for example, involved literacy teachers in Nicaragua and English as a Second Language (ESL) students in Canada in producing photo-stories, based on the daily lives and struggles of the students and appropriating a popular cultural form more common in Latin America and the Mediterranean countries, the foto-novella (a kind of soap opera in comic book form). This process built explicitly on Freire's codification of ‘themes' of the students' or research subjects' lives, but the photographic production process was still in the hands of the researcher/educator. The social upheavals of the 1960s also gave rise to experimentation with participatory photography and filmmaking. Appalshop in the USA and the Challenge for Change programme of the National Film Board not only produced socially critical films but also involved grass-roots communities in their production; marginalized youth were taught to produce their own visual statements. Committed social photographers such as Wendy Ewald gave cameras to Appalachian youth to document their daily lives and counter the negative stereotypes perpetuated by the dominant media and social welfare programmes. Within the academy, in the later twentieth century, there was also a critical rethinking of both research practices and the use of photographs. Subfields of visual anthropology, responding to anti-colonial critiques, and visual sociology, influenced by post-structuralism, organized associations and conferences focusing on visual research practices. For activist scholars, influenced by feminist, anti-racist and indigenous methodologies, the participatory use of photographs and video offered a new way of honouring the voice of the research subject, troubling historical power dynamics and promoting collaborative knowledge production. They depended less on verbal or literacy skills and led to other ways of knowing; arts-informed research was Page 3 of 7

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slowly recognized in an academic context that has historically privileged text-based learning. The other major influence on the democratization of photo-based research has been the accelerating development of digital visual technologies. Not only are cameras more accessible, more affordable and of higher technical quality, but the evermore ubiquitous cell phone takes pictures. Cameras are thus at almost everyone's fingertips, facility with digital media is equated with citizen participation and the possibilities seem endless. The Internet and other social media are overflowing with creative visual productions coming from the ground up. The ease with which images can be shared on the Internet broadens both the scope and the impact of these tools; local stories can be shared across the globe, linking people, projects and political actions.

The Practice of Photovoice Origins and Influences Though participatory photography in research has a long history, the origin of an explicit practice called Photovoice is most often associated with the work of Caroline Wang and her colleagues in health research, starting with a pioneering study in China in the 1990s and now widely adapted for projects with marginalized populations addressing all kinds of social inequities. Wang identifies as theoretical and practical influences Freire's use of ‘codes' in processes of conscientization, feminist theory's acknowledging the subjective (the personal is political) and making visible the invisible and the participatory practices of early community photographers such as Jo Spence in the UK and Wendy Ewald and Jim Hubbard in the USA. Wang associates Photovoice with PAR, emphasizing the empowering process of community people documenting and reflecting on their communities and the power of these images to influence individual and community action. She suggests that the technique can be used for different purposes—from specific processes such as participatory needs assessment, asset mapping and participatory evaluation to the deeper goals of developing community capacity to act and to influence policymakers.

Phases Photovoice projects usually follow three major phases: preparation, production and use. The first phase includes recruiting a target audience of policymakers and/or community leaders; selecting Photovoice participants, facilitators and photographer mentors and discussing the Photovoice concept and method, including issues of ethics and informed consent, before training participants in the technical use of the camera. In the production phase, participants are given sufficient time to take photos, sometimes around an initial suggested theme related to the specific research; emphasized in this stage is the ‘voice’ side of Photovoice: group discussion and interpretation of the images. Participants may be asked to select one or two significant photos, then to frame stories around the photos, following a Freirean decoding process, which moves from collective description of the images to connecting them to their own experiences, codifying them Page 4 of 7

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into themes, exploring the root causes of the problems represented and proposing action for change. The third phase involves selecting a format to share the photographs with the community and with policymakers and community leaders; if these relationships have been established from the beginning, there is a greater likelihood that the images will be fed into a more public policymaking process.

Examples The technique has been used globally and for a wide range of issues. Wang's early research in rural China in the 1990s trained 62 village women to document the conditions affecting their health, such as lack of access to clean water; the photos from their participatory needs assessment became a catalyst for action, making the issue a priority for community leaders. Wendy Hussey involved five self-identified female-to-male transsexuals in the USA to examine their experience in accessing health care, to document the needs of the transgender community and to recommend policy changes and educate providers; they collectively identified six themes from their dialogue around the photos and insisted on being at the policymaking table, as visible agents for change.

Ethical Issues Critical to any discussion of Photovoice are the ethical and political issues raised by its use. First of all, with the aim of social change, the process is explicitly political, and there are always power dynamics at play between Photovoice participants from marginalized communities challenging inequities, the project researchers/facilitators and the community leaders and policymakers they are trying to influence. Given that photographs cannot ensure anonymity, careful attention is given to ethical procedures of informed consent by participants, photo release forms by their subjects and a consent form if images are to be published. A group discussion of ethics is essential, brochures and letters explaining the project are recommended, and participants are encouraged to give photos back to the people they have photographed. In some cases, honoraria are offered to participants or to those whose images are published, though remuneration can also affect the dynamics.

Limitations and Critiques Critics have charged Photovoice projects with being tokenistic, creating false hopes and being naive about the political struggles needed to address deeply structural issues at the root of many problems documented by participants. While these critiques can be made of any PAR aimed at social change, the use of photos can exacerbate classic tensions between product and process, aesthetics and ethics, private and public, individual and collective, outsider and insider, ownership and use and education and action. In a culture that is enamoured with technology, there is also the danger of a kind of technicism, where the tools trump the content or process. Often its success depends on the particular purpose of the project, whether it is mainly to empower Page 5 of 7

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participants within a community or if it is to have a broader policy impact. There are also questions about who initiates and leads the process, as the facilitator is never neutral and participation is never completely equal. Practitioners offer tips to facilitators about the importance of creating a climate for respectful dialogue, acknowledging their own non-neutrality while also not imposing their own agendas, adapting to the context and rhythms of the participants and being willing to learn from mistakes. The ubiquity of cameras and photographs in the digital age ensures that various practices of Photovoice will continue to emerge in diverse contexts, feeding the democratization of research and education, as well as a growing community media movement. Deborah Barndt http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446294406.n274

See also • Digital Storytelling • Freire, Paulo • Participatory Action Research • storytelling

Further Readings Barndt, D. (2000). Naming, making and connecting: Reclaiming lost arts: The pedagogical possibilities of photo-story production. In Edited by: P.Campbell & B.Burnaby (Eds.), Participatory practices in adult education (pp. 31–54). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Edited by: Barndt, D. (Ed.). (2011). VIVA! Community arts and popular education in the Americas. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Cole, A., & Knowles, G. (2008). Handbook of the arts in qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Collier, J., & Collier, M. (1986). Visual anthropology: Photography as a research method. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Ewald, W. (1985). Portraits and dreams. Danbury, CT: Writers & Readers. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum. Edited by: Hall, S. (Ed.). (1997). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. London, England: Sage.

Spence, J. (1995). Cultural sniping: The art of transgression. New York, NY: Routledge. Wang, C. (1997). Photovoice: Concept, methodology, and use for participatory needs. Assessment Health Page 6 of 7

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Education and Behavior, 24(3), 369–387. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/109019819702400309 Edited by: Wells, L. (Ed.). (1997). Photography: A critical introduction. London, England: Routledge.

Websites PhotoVoice: http://www.photovoice.org Stories for Change: http://www.storiesforchange.net

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