PHOTOVOICE, social change through photography

Photovoice blends a grassroots approach to photography and social action. It provides cameras not to health specialists, policy makers, or professionals, but to people with least access to those who make decisions affecting their lives. From the villages of rural China to the homeless shelter of Ann Arbor, Michigan, people have used photovoice to amplify their visions and experience.

Photovoice has three goals. It enables people to record and reflect their community’s strengths and problems. It promotes dialogue about important issues through group discussion and photographs. Finally, it engages policymakers. It follows the premise that, as Caroline C. Wang explains, “What experts think is important may not match what people at the grassroots think is important.”

Definition
Photovoice is a process by which people can identify, represent, and enhance their community through a specific photographic technique. It entrusts cameras to the hands of people to enable them to act as recorders, and potential catalysts for social action and change, in their own communities. It uses the immediacy of the visual image and accompanying stories to furnish evidence and to promote an effective, participatory means of sharing expertise to create healthful public policy.

Concept
The photovoice concept was developed by Caroline C. Wang and Mary Ann Burris and described in a series of research articles. They used three main sources to create the photovoice concept:

the theoretical literature on education for critical consciousness,feminist theory, and documentary photography;
the efforts of community photographers and participatory educators to challenge assumptions about representation and documentary authorship; and
their experience applying the process in the Ford Foundation-supported Yunnan Women’s Reproductive Health and Development Program.

Summary
Photovoice enables us to gain “the possibility of perceiving the world from the viewpoint of the people who lead lives that are different from those traditionally in control of the means for imaging the world.” As such, this approach to participatory appraisal values the knowledge put forth by people as a vital source of expertise. It confronts a fundamental problem of community assessment: what professionals, researchers, specialists, and outsiders think is important may completely fail to match what the community thinks is important. Most significant, the images produced and the issues discussed and framed by people may stimulate policy and social change. P> Photovoice is a methodology to reach, inform, and organize community members, enabling them to prioritize their concerns and discuss problems and solutions. Photovoice goes beyond the conventional role of community assessment by inviting people to promote their own and their community’s well-being.

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