"As Documentary Photographers increasingly introduce the collaborative and participatory methodologies common to socially engaged art practices into their projects (particularly those that are activist in nature, seeking to catalyse social change agendas and policies through image making and sharing
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), there is an increased tension between the process of production and the photographic representation that is created. Over the course of the last five years I have utilised these methodologies of co-authorship. This article contextualizes this kind of transdisciplinary work, and examines the ways in which the integration of collaborative strategies and co-authored practice in projects that are explicitly designed to be of benefit to a primary audience (the participants, collaborators and producers) might be usefully disseminated to a secondary audience (the general public, the ‘art world’, critics etc.) through analysis of my projects Red Light Dark Room; Sex, lives and stereotypes made in Melbourne, Australia, and The King School Portrait Project made in Portland, Oregon, America."
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"Every photography subject deserves to be treated as an autonomous human being, capable of making independent decisions. In case of children, we also need to ensure their parents’ consent. We need to be constantly aware of our position in the power hierarchy — in the development world, in many c
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ases, we control the subject’s access to money, schooling, opportunities, and even fun. So they may defer to us by default, and it is our responsibility to not take advantage of this. It is our duty to protect the subjects from harm, and to ensure they enjoy every possible benefit of participating in our activity." (Page 8)
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"Participatory photography initiatives promise to ‘empower’, ‘give voice’ and ‘enable social change’ for marginalised communities through photography. This thesis questions this promise, demonstrating participatory photography to be a contested practice defined as much by inherent tensio
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n, ethical complexity and its limitations as by its potential. Caught up in governmental practices and instrumental discourses, ‘NGO-ised’ participatory photography has lost its purpose and politics. Using multiple case-studies and presenting empirical research on TAFOS, a pioneering Peruvian participatory photography project, this thesis explores under examined areas of participatory photography practice, including its governmentality, spectatorship and long term impact on participants. It establishes the effectiveness of photography as a tool for fomenting an enduring critical consciousness (Freire 1970, 1973) while questioning the romantic narrative of participatory photography’s inherently empowering qualities and capacity to enable change. Pluralism is used as a theoretical and conceptual framework for re-framing the promise of participatory photography. It is argued that a pluralized notion of participatory photography highlights the paradoxical, uncertain and negotiated character of the practice. It re-conceptualises the method as a mode of mediation that enables a plurality of seeing, that supports emerging and unrecognized claims and that cultivates a critical engagement with difference; qualities that are vital to democratic pluralism. The notion of a ‘Photography of Becoming’ re-imagines the critical and political character of participatory photography and the complex and vulnerable politics of voice in which it is immersed." (Abstract)
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"This article begins with a literature review of Participatory Photography (PP) that highlights how this tool has been mostly implemented for action research, advocacy, and public health purposes. It shows how scholars have only quite recently begun to recognise its ability to generate change among
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PP participants. This is followed by a description of the project that was carried out in Kenya, including its background, objectives and daily activities related to peacebuilding. Offering insight into crucial aspects of this work, examples of the photographs taken by participants and related stories are presented. The conclusion is preceded by reflections on the effectiveness, limitations and potential risks involved in carrying out PP projects in post-conflict settings." (Abstract)
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"Este libro es una selección de imágenes del Concurso Nacional de Fotografía sobre Desaparición Forzada 'Sin Rastro." (Página 1)
"The manual is intended to give an introduction to the power of participatory photography as a tool for social change with marginalised and vulnerable groups. Produced in response to the many enquires requesting advice on how to set up a participatory photography project it offers tips and suggestio
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ns for all aspects of project development including planning, implementation and promotion of work produced." (PhotoVoice website)
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"This essay explores the nature and political consequences of representing HIV/AIDS in Africa, where the disease has taken its greatest toll. We examine how different methods of photography embody different ideologies through which we give meaning to political phenomena. We distinguish three photogr
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aphic methods of representing HIV/AIDS: naturalist, humanist, and pluralist. Naturalist approaches portray photographs as neutral and value free. Humanist photography, by contrast, hinges on the assumption that images of suffering can invoke compassion in viewers, and that this compassion can become a catalyst for positive change. By examining a widely circulated iconic photograph of a Ugandan woman and her child affected by AIDS-related illnesses, we show that such representations can nevertheless feed into stereotypical portrayals of African people as nameless and passive victims, removed from the everyday realities of the western world. We contrast these practices with pluralist photography. To do so we examine a project in Addis Ababa, which used a methodology that placed cameras into the hands of children affected by HIV/AIDS, giving them the opportunity to actively represent what it means to live with the disease. The result is a form of dialog that opens up spaces for individuals and communities to work more effectively in overcoming problematic stigmas and finding ways of stemming the spread of the disease." (Abstract)
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