Photovoice Research in Education and Beyond

A Practical Guide from Theory to Exhibition

Amanda O. Latz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317529880
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Recherche dans l'éducation

Photovoice is a form of participatory action research, which has been gaining use and momentum since its inception in the mid-1990s. Within the enactment of this methodology, research participants are invited to document aspects of their lives through photography and then provide written or oral accounts of the images they create. Designed to situate participants as experts on their lives and their experiences, photovoice is a powerful and visceral approach to policy change efforts.

In this book, the photovoice methodology is conceptualized as being comprised of eight steps: identification, invitation, education, documentation, narration, ideation, presentation, and confirmation. Each of the steps is explained and expanded upon, and insights are drawn from the extant photovoice literature and the author's personal experience. In addition, attention is given to the history of photography and inquiry, theoretical underpinnings and aims of the methodology, ethical considerations, methods and procedures, approaches to data analysis, and photovoice exhibitions. Finally, the author has attended to some aspects of photovoice that have historically been left unattended, such as: building a conceptual framework for a photovoice study, viewing the photovoice exhibition as a site of inquiry, and thinking through the ways in which ever-evolving photography technologies can and should impact decision-making throughout the photovoice process.

While many texts exist that touch on and/or address photovoice, this is the first book solely dedicated to the entirety of the photovoice methodology — from theory to exhibition. Built as a practical guide, readers will find a wealth of information, resources, and advice within this book. Educators, students, and academic researchers will find this an accessible and compassionate text, one that will be a trusted companion while on the photovoice project journey.

1
Photography and Inquiry

A Vignette

We were sitting in a dark, smoky bar. I knew I would need to shower before bed. It was 2010, and the county had not yet banned smoking in bars and restaurants. One of my colleagues, another doctoral student, and I were sitting, sipping on a couple Belgian ales. She and I would routinely have intense conversations about our classes, things we were reading, and the research we aimed to carry out. My dissertation topic was the focus that evening. We disagreed. I was certain I should be studying community college faculty and how they typically teach classes that house significant levels of diversity in terms of everything, but specifically students’ college readiness, cognitive abilities, and interests. This topic stemmed from my own experiences—and struggles—as an adjunct faculty member within the community college setting. But like I said, she disagreed.

She had good reason. Every time I talked about teaching at the community college, I talked about my students—how smart they were, how hard they worked, how many struggles they were battling, and winning. I marveled at them. Wanting to come into solidarity with them, I always yearned to understand them better. They were always on my mind; I was always thinking of ways to support—and challenge—them. They told me their stories in person and in their papers. My curiosity never waivered. And while my students told me their stories, I wanted their stories to be known to a broader audience. That only I knew their stories was not enough. I wanted everyone to know these stories. If more people understood these students, I felt certain the stigma surrounding the community college could be—at least in some small way—dismantled. I wanted that to happen.

Regardless, I was still stuck. What in the world was I going to do for this dissertation? Moving from my comprehensive exams to my dissertation proposal was excruciating. I did not want to write a dissertation proposal because I did not have any idea what I wanted to study. Actually, I thought I did. But I slowly realized that while I was passionate about faculty and teaching at the community college, I was most passionate about students—my students. I stalled my process, taking extra classes and writing creative nonfiction. I slowly came around to my eventual study. Over time, I realized that a dissertation—my “magnum opus,” as one of my participants referred to it—was as good a container as any to hold some of my students’ stories.

When you are embarking on a dissertation—or any study, for that matter—having a clear, focused, and discernable topic—with all the other requisites, of course, like research questions and a problem and purpose statement—is one thing. Settling into a methodology is another thing entirely. And it is also important to note that methodology is just of one many elements of a study’s overarching conceptual framework, which also includes but is not limited to epistemologies, theoretical perspectives, and other notables regarding researcher positionality. There are methods as well. How will you actually collect data? What are the logistical steps involved? There are also analytical approaches to consider. Carrying out research is a necessarily complex endeavor.

So I had a topic—community college students’ educational lives. But, what was I going to do methodologically? Ideas came together in my mind like three-dimensional puzzle pieces moving toward one another in a space where gravity had no bearing. Pieces came into focus as they crossed the line of vision of my mind’s eye. While taking courses in pursuit of my doctoral degree, I attended a number of conferences where I was exposed to a broad swath of methodologies and methods. It was at a conference when I first heard the term photovoice uttered. Paraphrasing and simplifying, the researcher explained how she was interested in better understanding youth perceptions of literacy within the context of the home environment. For example, how does the presence of books within the home environment impact the child’s perceptions of reading as a normative behavior? Elementary-aged children were recruited as participants and then given disposable cameras to document their home environment. Then, alongside the researcher, the children engaged in storytelling about the photographs they created. In essence, the researcher facilitated a focus group wherein the children discussed their photographs. The photographs themselves were not data per se, but they served as data antecedents, or elicitation devices, meant to spur on storytelling, which served as data to be interpreted by the researcher. The photographs, however, were to be interpreted by the children. Only the children knew, really, why they took the photographs they took. Intriguing. It was at this conference presentation where I first heard the term photovoice. What was this photovoice? Where did it come from?

* * *

Photovoice in Brief

In the early 1990s, Caroline C. Wang and Mary Ann Burris (1994) coined the term photo novella, a research methodology that later came to be known as photovoice. The importance of Wang and Burris’s seminal work cannot be overstated, as it is difficult to locate any subsequent piece of writing about photovoice that does not reference these two scholars. Wang and Burris implemented photo novella as one part of a four-part needs assessment related to women’s health in rural China, which evolved into an empowerment education project. The women participants were asked to document intangibles such as “worry” and “love” with cameras. Soon it was realized that the photographs alone were insufficient to understand the women’s sentiments. The explanations—or narrations of the photographs—were paramount. Because of the importance of both the photograph (photo) and the story behind the photograph (novella), a new term was born. In time, however, photovoice supplanted photo novella as the term of choice for this particular research approach. Wang and Burris noted that the process “provides participants the opportunity to spin tales about their everyday lives” (p. 179). And while the tales spun by photovoice participants are certainly valuable and even critical, the notion that photovoice makes space for participants’ voices—the vehicles of those stories—was the impetus for the change in terms.

Photovoice is a form of participatory action research, which is often community-based and “contrasts sharply with the conventional model of pure research, in which [participants] … are treated as passive subjects” (Whyte, Greenwod, & Lazes, 1991, p. 20). In most cases, photovoice participants are actively interwoven into the research process, and that involvement can take many forms—from helping to build photography prompts to analyzing the data. Photovoice necessarily positions participants both as participants and co-researchers. Choice on the part of the participants is always involved, however. According to Argyris and Schön (1991), participatory action research “aims at creating an environment in which participants give and get valid information, make free and informed choices (including the choice to participate), and generate internal commitment to the results of their inquiry” (p. 86). It should be noted that participatory action research is applied research (Whyte, Greenwod, & Lazes, 1991), and as such, participants are often quite keen to see the fruits of their efforts affect change. While the creation of new knowledge is certainly a possible outcome of the photovoice methodology, it is not always the primary aim.

According to Sutton-Brown (2014) “[photovoice] oscillates between private and public worlds in its attempt to publicize and politicize personal struggle via photography, narratives, critical dialogue, and social action” (p. 70). Historically, photovoice has been used to highlight the experiences and perspectives of those who have been marginalized, those with voices not ordinarily heard by those in positions of power. For example, the rural Chinese village women who participated in Wang and Burris’s (1994) needs assessment were marginalized within their community. Photovoice brings the marginalized to the center, as the “photographs ‘listen into speech’ [participants’] voices that ordinarily would not be heard, and broadcast[s] them into the halls of decision-making power” (Wang & Burris, 1994, p. 182). It is through this process that positive changes can be influenced and implemented.

Photovoice is not without its detractors, however. Even though “[p]eople … experience their own lives as parades of visual encounters” (Brunsden & Goatcher, 2007, p. 44) and life narration has become increasingly visual considering the proliferation of myriad image-based social media sites, Prosser (1996) noted that “[m]any commentators on research methodology perceive image-making as being inappropriate to research” (p. 26), citing its subjective nature and assuming researcher as photographer. Prosser explained that “[t]here is a general belief that images are unacceptable as a way of objectively ‘knowing’ because they distort that which they claim to illuminate” (p. 26). While this could be the case, photovoice disrupts this vein of thinking because the photograph is meant to symbolize a participants’ response to a prompt. Higgins (2014), however, asserted that photovoice is the most frequently used approach among social scientists who use participatory visual methods. And the use of photovoice shows no signs of slowing down. I recently conducted a search for articles with the word photovoice in the title of the manuscript using Google Scholar and found 1,060 results.

Photovoice in Eight Steps

Procedurally, photovoice can be distilled down to eight steps: identification, invitation, education, documentation, narration, ideation, presentation, and confirmation. First, photovoice researchers must identify the place, people, and purpose of the study. What is the research site? Who will be involved? What is the purpose of this project? These three questions, among potential others, require consideration during the identification step. Next, individuals are invited to participate in the project. After participation is confirmed, participants must be informed about how the project will unfold and what their participation might entail. This step, which I have termed education, also includes talking with participants about their consent to participate and how the photographs they take might be used. Once participants are fully on board with and oriented to the project, they are asked to respond to questions or prompts related to the purpose of the project through photography. In some, but not all cases, cameras are provided to participants. This is the documentation phase. Once the photography is complete, it is time for the narration stage. During either individual interviews or focus groups, participants are asked to narrate the contents of their photographs. These narrations give meaning and context to the participant-produced images. This phase sometimes unfolds as a writing exercise. Next, ideation occurs. This step may or may not involve the participants directly. In short, the researchers—sometimes in concert with the participants—generate thematic strands within the narrations, selecting from a plethora of analytic approaches that have been established within the qualitative research literature. These thematic strands are then converted into the findings of the work, complete with practical implications. Furthermore, the findings are typically situated against what is already known about the project’s topic. Consider the following research question as an example: How do elementary school students describe the presence of science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) in their everyday lives? During the ideation phase, researchers ought to consider existing research on this topic to provide context and highlight resultant new knowledge. It should be noted, however, that photovoice “envisions a self-defined space that would diverge from depictions by outsiders superimposed on a culturally charged background” (Wang & Burris, 1994, p. 180). How often are children asked about how STEAM “works” in their lives? Not often. Therefore, the findings of such a project would have great potential to diverge from what is already known. As such, photovoice is a methodology that has rich potential for generating new knowledge vis-à-vis counter stories, stories that diverge from dominant narratives. The next step is presentation, which typically takes the form of an exhibition. Here I use the term exhibition very broadly. An exhibition could take the form of a poster, brochure, website, digital story, or museum installation. And this is not an exhaustive list. It is during this phase, typically, when participants have the opportunity to interface with individuals within the community who wield power—policy makers and others who have the capacity to make decisions—and can affect change. Last is confirmation. This step has several components. By confirmation, I am insinuating that photovoice researchers should endeavor to understand how those who interfaced with the exhibition received the presentation phase. Was the message clear? What were the perceptions? Have policy changes been made? In addition, the researchers should try to find ways to sustain the project’s energy and broaden the reach of the participants’ voices. This is photovoice in brief.

Historical Sketch

Before delving further into the ins and outs of the photovoice methodology, it is important to sketch out the history of the relationship between photography and research. This chapter is focused on the ways in which photography has been used within inquiry over time. Since the advent of the camera and the still image, photography and inquiry have been intertwined. But the relationship between photography and inquiry presents itself in different and highly nuanced ways based upon discipline. For example, the historical trajectory of the use of photography and inquiry within the field of journalism looks rather different than the historical trajectory of the use of photography and inquiry within the field of psychology.

As will become evident throughout this book, photovoice has utility within a number of disciplines, and the methodology has no specific disciplinary home. Viewed another way, however, it could be argued that photovoice has a plethora of disciplinary homes. The flexibility and broad potential use of the approach is one of the methodology’s many strengths. And in many ways, photovoice provides a methodological space ripe for transdisciplinary research teams to ask and answer research questions. For example, if photovoice were to be employed in response to the following research question, a transdisciplinary approach may be apt: In what ways do middle school students describe their school environment? While education is certainly the most obvious discipline within which this question might have been generated, it should be noted that education has foundations within a number of other parent disciplines such as psychology, sociology, philosophy, history, and anthropology. Imagine the vastly different ways in which a research team comprised of diverse individuals—a psychologist, sociologist, and so on—would understand the response(s) to the abovementioned research question.

Understanding the history of photography and the ways in which it has been integrated into everyday life and what have become the disciplines (e.g. sociology, anthropology, journalism, psychology, history, biology) are critical to understanding the historical and philosophical underpinnings of the photovoice methodology. Collier (1967), an anthropologist, said the following:

In 1837 Louis Daguerre perfected the first efficient light sensitive plate, the mirror with a memory. The daguerreotype introduced photography to the world … Now it was not only perspective and principles of light that were recorded for study, but the human image, a precise memory of exactly how a particular person looked, that could be examined again and again by any number of observers, now or years later. The camera image because of this facility ushered in a new phase of human understanding that continues to expand our social thinking.

p. 3

Collier’s words still resonate today, nearly 50 years later. The advent of the camera has changed the ways we think about, act within, and see the world.

For a more comprehensive treatment of photography’s conception and origin—including camera obscura—see...