Why and How: Reflections of a photographer (original) (raw)
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Arc Centre of Excellence For Creative Industries and Innovation Creative Industries Faculty, 2013
Teaching and being taught coined the term conscientização to speak of the awakening of a critical consciousness which expresses itself in dialogue with reality. In different moments and texts, Freire states the importance of dialogue for freedom, rigorous thought, and independent self-consciousness. Opposing the idea of the thinker who shuts him/herself up in his/her office or laboratory, Freire argues that rigorous analysis can also emerge through conversation. In a 'spoken' book, when he engaged in a conversation with António Faudez, he said: I think that here, in privacy, yes, but at the same time open to the world, including the world of nature outside your office, we can engage in serious and rigorous thought -and are doing so. The style is different, because the language is spoken -with a more colloquial touch, more feeling, more freedom. (Freire, Freire and Macedo 1998, 188) Against the Brazilian educational tradition, Freire advocates for an education that exchanges ideas, encourages debates and discussions, works with students, and offers them the means for independent self-consciousness, because he believes "only through dialogue do we fulfil our ontological and historical vocation of becoming fully human" (Christians 2010, 18-19).
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This article examines how the properties of photography might mediate voice, defined as the capacity to speak and to be heard speaking about one’s life and the social conditions in which one’s life is embedded. It focuses on the affordances that the image provides for migrant cultural minorities to articulate such a voice within the context of collaborative research. I look at the case of Shutter Stories, a collaborative photography exhibition featuring the photo stories of Indian and Korean migrants from Manila, The Philippines. Using participant observation data, I show that it was photography’s ability to be all at once indexical, iconic, and symbolic that became important in voice as ‘speaking’. It allowed migrants to tell rich, multimodal narratives about their lives, albeit with some key limitations. I also show that it was photography’s inability to fix meanings with finality that mattered in voice as ‘being heard’. Although the locals who visited the exhibition engaged with the photo stories in an overwhelmingly positive manner, they often did not completely grasp the migrants’ complex narratives. All these data indicate that collaborative photography exhibition projects should not just be about how migrants speak and are heard. They should also be about how migrants can listen, so that they can adjust what they say to how they are being heard. This is a valuable reminder that in conceptualising photography and migrant cultural minority voices, we also need to take into account the broader process of multicultural dialogue.
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Ethnography and Photography are founded on relational practices which are based on encounter and storytelling. In such an observation, participation and representation space, these disciplines are configured as two forms of writing with their own methodological specificities, as well as zones of contact. Considering the profound technological changes in the recent decades (such as greater accessibility to photographic devices, the increasing production and circulation of photographs, the diversification of virtual spaces, the new digital ethnography), what are the current links between ethnographic research and photography? What kind of contribution do the visual languages offer to the production of anthropological knowledge? Which kind of relations are established between texts and images? How creative and/or authorial artistic research combines with scientific knowledge? The aim of this issue of Visual Ethnography, edited by Marina Berardi and Chiara Scardozzi, is to generate a critical reflection starting from intersectional points between the two disciplines and the plurality of visions and methods. It is conceived as a moment of thought and comparison on the role and the future of photography in ethnographic research, through a theoretical and visual approach, to start a reasoning about theoretical and practical tools of cultural and social anthropology, considering how photography and/or post-photography and its uses declined through the different devices, in addition to making the research contents visible, can also be considered as a real collaborative practice, methodology of intervention, restitution and/or autonomous authorial narration. The call is open to papers and photo essays focused on experiences of collaborative visual ethnographies that use photography to solicit specific narratives and / or include methods of participatory photography aimed at involving groups and communities in the research and co-production of visual contents; researches that explore the possibilities of creating subjectivity in the online life by sharing new forms of self-representation of the body, gender, identity; reflections that interweave ethics and aesthetics in the representation of otherness ; studies concerning photographic collections that are interpreted through their political and public use and inserted (or censored) within the so-called heritagization processes; researches relating to the most innovative and creative trends in contemporary photography that redefine the boundary between reality and fiction starting from the idea of "post-truth", using different media and methods.
From Passive to Active Voice: Using Photography as a Catalyst for Social Action
2012
Researchers often find themselves in a position of “acting for” or “in the name of” individuals and communities whose voices have traditionally been muted or silenced. The passive nature of these muted or silenced voices prevents them from being heard, fully understood or appreciated. As true voices of participants emerge in research, so does a more representative view of individuals’ or community’s strengths and concerns. Photography can be used in various forms as a catalyst for participatory research especially in partnership with people whose voices have been silenced in contemporary societies. This manuscript explores a variety of photographic methodologies and discusses their use as mechanisms to directly document, investigate, evaluate, uncover, elicit, challenge and empower in collaboration with participants and community members. They have been organized in order of the level of participation and growth of the community member, with documenting involving the least amount of...
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This paper aims at discussing the value of researcher-generated visual methods in studying migration. It focuses on photography as a data collection method, and the problem is presented in the context of researching urban and rural arenas of exercising transnational belonging by migrants and their descendants in new and ancestral homelands. Photography is approached here as a sensorial experience mediating a relationship between the researcher and the participants. The author argues that the relationships occurring around photo-taking in the field are as important as the data collected intentionally. Moreover, the chapter discusses ethical questions prompted by the employment of visual methods, problematizing them in a context of different social, cultural and national settings. With this chapter, the author attempts to answer a question whether researcher-generated visual data can open new angles of analyses of migrants’ life-words and how the employment of visual methods can infl...
Using the eye of the camera to bare racism: A photovoice project
Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work, 2016
INTRODUCTION: Researchers have well established that visible minorities experience discrimination in the labour market and racism at work; however, few studies have explored the experiences of immigrant visible minority women, especially those residing outside of large urban areas. The focus of this article is to explore participants' experiences of discrimination and racism using photovoice methodology. METHODS: This Canadian study used an arts-based qualitative method in the form of a modified photovoice where 17 participants took photographs of their work and health experiences and discussed the meaning of their photographs and narratives in the interviews. FINDINGS: Results indicate that participants experienced discrimination in the labour market, and racism at work. In the absence of language, participants found the eye of the camera as an effective methodological tool to uncover and communicate their lived experiences of discrimination and racism. CONCLUSIONS: Social workers can utilise photovoice for exploring sensitive issues such as experiences of discrimination and racism in a safe context with marginalised populations. They can use the participant-generated photographic images as an education and advocacy tool to prevent discrimination and racism in their communities.