By Diana Weggler and Laura Lorenz
Here at PhotovoiceWorldwide, ethical issues are a major focus of our photovoice trainings and work. All photovoice practitioners must maintain a deep and abiding concern for the safety and wellbeing of photovoice co-researchers and their communities. Much like the globe of our logo, encircled by people, safety of co-researchers (also called participants) is the epicenter around which photovoice planning and facilitation revolves.
Photovoice ethics do not exist in a vacuum, however. While photos of lives and communities raise specific ethical issues for photovoice and participatory photography projects, the ethics of photovoice research are nested within universally recognized ethical principles that guide all research. Three principles we will explore today are: Respect, Beneficence, and Justice.
Respect
Photovoice participants must be treated with respect from the time they are approached for possible participation, throughout their participation, and after their participation ends. This includes respecting their right to fully understand your project’s purpose and methods before agreeing to participate. Other elements of respect include the right to be heard (essential to photovoice!), the right to autonomy – which includes the right to participate in making project decisions, as well as the right to change their minds (e.g., about including a photo in an exhibit). It also includes the right to privacy. These rights are especially important when co-researchers share their work with an outside audience, such as in an exhibit. It is one thing to share a photo during a photovoice project session; it is quite another to share with the public. It is also very important to respect the communities in which your co-researchers live, work, worship, and go to school, and where they will be exhibiting their photographs.
One way to show respect for a community where two or more languages are spoken is to translate your photovoice exhibit into more than one language – to show respect for all and show that all are welcome. Yet it can be costly to translate all the captions, and you may not have the budget to do that. Having a native speaker do the translations can work for some projects, but not for all. One option is to translate just the photo titles instead. The titles are usually intended to capture the essence of a photo’s meaning. Having the titles in more than one language will support understanding by diverse audiences and will demonstrate that all community members are welcome. If you have project themes and have grouped your photos by theme, translate the theme names as well. These two strategies are ethical practice in action and will help your project and group show respect for all community members despite language differences that may exist in your photovoice context.
Beneficence
This word comes from the Latin “to do good”. The principle of beneficence holds you, as the facilitator, responsible for the physical, mental, social, and emotional safety and well-being of your participants throughout the duration of the project. This means planning for, preventing, and/or reducing any potential risks of harm from photovoice participation. How can you ensure that everyone feels comfortable participating in the group discussions? How will you ensure access to emotional support if any project photos or discussions create distress for a co-researcher? What training will ensure that co-researchers stay safe and avoid taking risks when they take photographs for the project?
An example of a strategy to support beneficence with photovoice when working with coresearchers who have experienced trauma is to ask participants to draw a picture of something positive and negative in their lives or community before taking any photos. In a project in Mdantsane Township, South Africa, a young man drew a picture of himself lying on the ground while the man who had mugged him ran away with his belt, shoes, and the family groceries. His drawing prompted a rich conversation about safety in the Township, and about how to share this experience in a way that would be safe for him. As a group, we discussed and agreed that he could take a photo of the grassy, green street corner where it happened and write about his experience in the caption. Drawing a picture allowed him to identify a traumatic experience to share with the group and then determine a strategy to safely take a photo.
Justice
When conducting participatory research, it is imperative that all your co-researchers be treated fairly. Justice means creating opportunities for every participant to participate fully in every step of the photovoice process, and to have an equal say in discussions and decision-making. It means making every possible effort to fully include persons with certain health conditions, cultural differences, or personality traits that could impede their full participation. Examples to plan for include: visual, hearing, or speech impairments, language barriers, natural shyness, learning differences, and cognitive or physical disabilities. Inclusiveness is a hallmark of ethical practice with photovoice research.
A strategy to support justice with photovoice is to create opportunities for individuals with cognitive or other disabilities to gradually build understanding and skills related to essential photovoice tasks: taking photos, discussing them, and writing captions. For example, consider starting your group’s photo discussions with a non-project photo, maybe a humorous one of animals doing unexpected things. Ask the group, “If this were your photo, what would you say about it?” Make this a fun exercise. Help people to laugh about the photo and their ideas for captions. They will start their photo discussions in a more relaxed frame of mind. Supporting success with photovoice tasks among all participants, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, will support the ethical practice of justice in your photovoice project.
Staying true to the three overarching ethical principles of Respect, Beneficence, and Justice can mean using different strategies and tools, depending on the potential risks and strengths of your photovoice context. We encourage you to keep these ethical principles in mind when planning for photovoice, and to let them guide facilitation throughout your project. Adapt the strategies shared here and elsewhere to strengthen your ethical practice with photovoice.