By Ingrid Guyon, Founding Director of Fotosynthesis and Co-Track Leader for Photovoice & Peace Building, 2024 Photovoice Conference

Photovoice can be very complex, very simple, romanticised, or criticised. My experience is not as an academic using photovoice for research but more community and grassroot orientated, and the 2024 Photovoice conference brings all of us from different paths to listen, learn, reflect, share, ask questions, take what we feel is for us and leave out what is not, and this is why I really look forward to hear more anecdotes, impacts and stories that will probably blow my mind and make me realise how much there is still to learn and discover. —Author 

Everything started during a Visual Anthropology lecture 20 years ago, when the professor told the class that the chief of a tribe would never share its community’s and ancestors’ secrets, but rather, “tell the anthropologist whatever he wanted to hear so he would leave.” …

I realized I had no interest at all in reading a book about a black African tribe written by a Western outsider; I wanted to hear the voices from the people themselves. My dream to become an anthropologist and travel photographer vanished, and I applied my anthropology background in a healthier way — at least for me. I started researching and discovered photovoice and participatory photography methods, which changed the course of my life and my career, and I never looked back. I met Tiffany Fairey and Anna Blackman from Photovoice.org and now, 20 years later, Tiffany and I are writing a Peace Photography Guide, a book and a website about participatory, collaborative, and community-led peace photography as part of her Imaging Peace research, which will be launched early 2025.

Early Influences 

Being a photographer, documentary filmmaker, a photovoice, participatory photography, video trainer and practitioner is a blessing. When I was a child, I would have never guessed I would become a photographer and that images would be central to my personal and professional life. May I should tell you that when my family sought refuge in France during the second world war as the German would not let them carry their journey, they ended up in Nicephore Niepce’s home, which led me to be born in the city where the first world photograph was taken. And when I was four years old, my parents migrated to the South of France in Arles, where the famous international photography festival takes place each year. But even then, photography had not entered my life yet, as it was more for the elite of my town. 

Being a visual practitioner opens door to pretty much anything, but it also makes you feel like an outsider when working with communities: how do you explain to people what these photovoice and participatory photography are and entail? I often feel that sharing lived experiences and anecdotes from projects and participants is the best way to transmit what we do, the impact it can have and the time that those processes need… time… Time is the key factor. And how do we convince clients or communities to dedicate time in 2024 society?

A Case in Point 

I will never forget my first meeting with a new client from a big United Nations institution who wanted to use photovoice for a multi-country evaluation with vulnerable children. He said, “I have spoken with ten of the best experts in photovoice in the world, and they have suggested to spend half a day with the first group of children to teach them photography and give them the evaluation question. Then, as they go out to take pictures in the afternoon, you work with another group, and on the following morning you look at the pictures from the first group, discuss them, analyse, and so on, with as many groups as possible.” While laughing silently to myself, I responded, “I am not sure who you have spoken with, but if this is how you want to work — in quantity without quality — then you should have chosen one of them, because I will never spend so little time with a group. How do you build trust with the participants so they open up to you and share personal experiences with a stranger using a medium they probably have never used before and expect to get profound and meaningful data and stories?”  

He then suggested me to train the staff in the car as we travelled using a powerpoint presentation with not group dynamic and I had to convince him for the ‘trained’ staff to accompany me to the fieldwork otherwise what was the point to train them in the first place? He had no idea what he was jumping into and was a bit of an extreme case, but I would say that this is most common mistakes that people make: they want a photovoice project without consulting with practitioners first, without designing the project carefully to adapt it to the needs and objectives, the time and budget available, without considering the the local context and most importantly, the participants or community needs, which are central to any participatory process. This is when, we, practitioners, come on board and can make successful processes together as a team.

Do people actually understand the impact that a photovoice research or project can have in a community to help to understand them better to shape policies and program or to relate with others from a more empathetic perspective? Some do, some don’t do, and each project is an adventure with no fixed ending or outcome and everything will be ok as long as you remember that the participants are the protagonists and the one to care for.

“You have gathered more information and data about the realities and the impact of the programs in three days with the children than us during a whole year. How did you do it?” This is what an evaluation program manager told me after presenting a summary of the findings while some of his colleagues were questioning the rigor and truth of the stories that the children shared, “how do you know that what the children said is true?” as they did not match with the numbers of their spreadsheets. This is what photovoice is for me. A humanist approach to let real stories emerge, but an active listening ear, trust, fun and meaningful conversations around a table.

And if the client, a community or an institution you are working with do not understand that from the beginning and especially, if they don’t trust the process and open the door to unpredictable outcomes, then photovoice is probably not the right approach for them.

Ethics and Photovoice 

Another aspect of participatory photography or photovoice are the ethics. We all know that. But how do you keep a balance between the community’s or participants’ expectations, the client expectation and agenda, the expectations and agenda of the communication department of that client and the ethics of informed consent of use of images and respect for the dignity of the people? It is not easy and I don’t think there is a straight answer to that, especially as each project is unique and requires dialogue, negotiations, and patience.

And most of the time they forget about the most important: the participants and the community who are engaging with the process with trust. They are at the centre of the process and are the priority so they don’t feel used, so they are not forced to talk about experiences that could trigger traumas or make them feel frustrated, or even worse, put them or their community in danger. This is why we should take special care in developing photovoice, community led, or collaborative photography initiatives and think about the reasons why we want to use these approaches and this specific medium in the first place. Who is it for? What are your expectations and objectives? What would be the impacts, positive or negative? Who are the social and political dynamics? Do the participants really understand what they jumping into? For me, the participants are the priority and who ever knows me, would know that I do not compromise my ethics and the well-being of any individual I am working with.

Conclusion 

Photovoice methodology brings endless opportunities and surprises and most importantly, allows me to have met hundreds or thousands of people from different paths that I would have never met otherwise and countless untold stories, this why I have never looked back and why Peace Photography has become, has always been a part of me: to use participatory photography to heal, dialogue, advocate, reconciliate, freedom of expression, change narratives, create safe spaces and make peace visible from communities’ perspective.

About the Author

Ingrid is a photographer, filmmaker, and participatory visual media practitioner with more than 15 years of experience in designing and implementing participatory and community-based projects and processes, trainings and audiovisual production with the education, museums, NGOs, international development and peacebuilding sectors. She is founding director of Fotosynthesis, a social enterprise specializing in participatory media and audiovisual production, and an associate of Insightshare. As a freelancer, she also produces photographic assignments or documentaries and impact videos and has a strong interest in ethics of images and stories of resilience and inspiration. She is the co-author of the ‘Peace Photography Guide’ with Tiffany Fairey part of her Imaging Peace research, which will be launched early 2025.

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