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Lifting up voices of participatory visual researchWendy Luttrell; Richard Chalfen

Online publication date: 01 December 2010

To cite this Article Luttrell, Wendy and Chalfen, Richard(2010) 'Lifting up voices of participatory visual research', VisualStudies, 25: 3, 197 — 200To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/1472586X.2010.523270URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2010.523270

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ISSN 1472–586X printed/ISSN 1472–5878 online/10/030197-4 © 2010 International Visual Sociology Association

DOI: 10.1080/1472586X.2010.523270

Visual Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3, December 2010

RVSTGuest Editors’ Introduction

Lifting up voices of participatory visual research

Guest Editors’ IntroductionWENDY LUTTRELL and RICHARD CHALFEN

INTRODUCTION

Over the past few decades and around the world, there has been an explosion of participatory media projects that seek to investigate how people contend with an array of social conditions and life challenges ‘through their own eyes’. Though seldom defined or codified, the process often brings together an unfamiliar ‘outside’ person and an individual or group of ‘inside’ people who use cameras (still and video) to jointly explore a topic of shared concern. Topics are far ranging: living with chronic illness, disabilities, HIV/AIDS and cancer; identifying community environmental, health and educational conditions and concerns (e.g. elder care, infant mortality, homelessness, migration, barriers to education); youth development and leadership efforts focusing on media literacy, violence prevention and environmental protection; and mental health interventions regarding social suffering and personal trauma arising from war, natural disaster and dislocation. In these projects, investigators often strive to bridge traditional divides in the production of knowledge – between theory and practice; ‘applied’ and ‘pure’ research; action and research – and to engage interdisciplinary perspectives and practices. The nature of the collaborations between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, whether researchers, educators, social activists or professional photographers, may vary widely, but there is a general sense that people will welcome the opportunity to use modern camera technology as a means to express themselves, what they know and how they wish to be seen.

As one response to acknowledging this growing body of work, in the fall of 2008, with generous funding from Radcliffe Advanced Institute of Studies, we (Wendy Luttrell and Richard Chalfen) convened thirteen local and international scholars who have utilised participatory visual methods. We purposely sought an interdisciplinary discussion, acknowledging that what counts as evidence, analysis and interpretation is embedded in the disciplinary histories of our respective fields – anthropology, sociology, psychology, education and cultural studies. Our objective was to reflect on an accumulated knowledge and experience across four

specific ‘applied’ fields – education, medicine, public health and human rights work.

We had realised there was a need to take stock following our involvement in two recent events: Visible rights: Photography for and by young people I and II (December 2006, November 2007),1 and the Annual Meeting of the International Visual Sociology Association at New York University (July 2007), focusing on the growing practice of ‘giving kids cameras’. Alongside an exciting proliferation of activity, enthusiastic reception and application, we felt we were also witnessing a growing sense of confusion, and even some frustration, regarding the role of systematic and rigorous analysis of project findings and results.

Two strands of participatory media projects were represented at these conferences. Both strands spurred dialogue about objectives, motivations, strategies, ethics and outcomes. The first and most publicly visible strand includes photography, film and video projects that have attracted human-interest commentary and attention in newspapers, well-illustrated books, clips on television and spots appearing on websites, blogs, YouTube and the like (Chalfen 2008). Perhaps the most widely known, the feature documentary film Born into Brothels (2004) (see http://www.kids-with-cameras.org/bornintobrothels/), drew Academy Award attention. Picture-making projects in this strand have been directed by a diverse set of practitioners, including visual artists, media literacy educators, social workers, professional photographers and community workers, among others.

The second strand is much less well known by the general public, and features the use of visual methods by researchers from various disciplinary fields and published in professional journals. In this strand, image-making and specific images often represent a mid-point rather than an end-point in knowledge production, interventions and social action. This was the strand we decided to focus attention upon; we invited participants to reflect on our shared research practices. Numerous resource guides have been published about participatory visual research (Collier and Collier 1986;

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198 W. Luttrell and R. Chalfen

Knowles and Sweetman 2004; Prosser 1998) and the use of different strategies for analysing images, including narrative inquiry, content analysis, semiology, and social and cultural discourse analyses (Pink 2001; Van Leeuwen and Jewitt 2001; Rose 2001; Riessman 2008). While this list is far from exhaustive, it provides a sense of the field of practice to which we are referring.

During the three-day seminar, eight papers were presented and discussed by two respondents. Three designated ‘listeners’ each took notes, discussed their respective views of the papers and reported back to the group. The following list reflects the organisers’ and listeners’ collective sense of key themes:2

Trajectories of Collaboration

It became clear from the eight papers presented, and the discussions, that the collaboration between participants (insiders) and researchers (outsiders) took varied forms. In some cases, the level of participants’ involvement changed over the course of a study and in its aftermath when findings were reported. Negotiating collaborative relationships under different circumstances – for example, how issues of authority and control were worked through, and their effects on participants – was the most frequently discussed topic during the meeting.

Analysis/Meanings/Complexities of Images

There was no consensus around the question ‘why the turn to using images?’ Are they meant to ‘illustrate’ or ‘complement’ the text, or do they ‘speak’ for themselves? How are images selected, for what audiences and for what purposes? What of the tension between aesthetic and documentary aspects of photographs? Discussions noted how photographs both frame and exclude what is visible in our surroundings. Captions, accompanying texts, contexts within which photographs are displayed – these all interact with viewers’ social and cultural backgrounds to influence responses and meanings attributed to an image. In addition, there is a recurrent feature of surprise – of serendipity. There is always the possibility of finding something in a photograph that the photographer did not see when she/he took the picture. And in an attempt to understand what has been made visible and why – for example, which things have been pictured, what is missing or left unclear – there is also the possibility that others (a ‘third eye’) will see yet other things. This carries over into the research process itself, where through close and systematic analysis we discover something we had not expected. Participants in the conference were well aware

of these sources of uncertainty and complexity in analysing and interpreting images.

Ethical Urgency

Various problems in the circulation of images were recognised – for example, ownership and control of images, contexts within which they are exhibited, access to archives and a sense that certain ethical restrictions can serve to both hinder and help participants take control over their self-representations. Participants argued for the need to develop a much clearer understanding and statement about the thorny ethical dimensions in this field of practice.

Historical and Social Contexts

Since the invention of photography in the mid-nineteenth century, photographs have played an important role in our culture. The circulation of images is so commonplace and widespread that it would be impossible for us to conceive of a world without them. Conference participants were well aware that photographs have also played a role in various academic disciplines; nonetheless, the use of photographs in research is relatively new and still somewhat marginal in the various fields represented at the seminar. In addition, the diversity of visual rhetoric(s) – of art, documentary, spectacle, for example – also informs the ways in which photographs and other images are made and read. There is an increasing need to locate the analysis of photographs within this larger context.

Each of these themes could command its own collection of examples into a Special Issue. But upon further reflection, we decided that what was most elusive about our seminar discussion – and perhaps throughout our field of practice – is the relationship between visual and verbal communication. There is a ubiquitous invocation that participatory visual research is valued for its ability to ‘give voice’ to marginalised, less powerful people. The tacit assumption is that putting cameras into the hands of participants is a resource for having ‘a say’ in public discourse and decision-making. Yet, how is ‘voice’ being conceptualised, produced and analysed through these different collaborations? With what certainty can we attribute whose voice is whose?

There is general, vague agreement that voice is not ‘given’ – whether in speech or in a photograph. Rather, voice is understood to be co-constructed, and historically and culturally specific. As sociologists Madeleine Arnot and Diane Reay write, ‘Most

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Guest Editors’ Introduction 199

contemporary voice research recognises the power of research relationships and methods in framing particular voices, eliciting some and not others. Therefore most researchers accept that there is not one authentic voice of a single social category – they appreciate that voices, for example, are internally differentiated by space, time, relation and place’ (Arnot and Reay 2007, 313). There is also general agreement that the concept of voice has literal, metaphorical, political and psychological meanings. Still, the voices of participants are relatively meaningless unless we, as viewers/listeners, (1) have adequate knowledge of how voices are generated; and (2) are prepared to make transparent our analysis of the communicative strategies made possible through picture-taking.

This is the backdrop for this Special Issue in which we invited seminar participants to return to their papers and bring forth their thinking about the production and analysis of voice(s) through visual means.3

OVERVIEW OF THE PAPERS

The diversity of meaning and use of voice in participatory visual research is matched by our authors’ range of subject matter and choice of participants, including: street children living in Accra, Ghana; a homeless adult in central London; post-surgery hospital patients; chronically ill teenagers in Boston; fifth- and sixth-grade immigrant school children in Worcester, MA; adults recovering from brain damage; and indigenous Maya women living in Guatemala. Conditions that physically defined each project are equally diverse. Authors have given consideration to physical abilities and limitations of participants (Chalfen, Sherman, and Rich; Lorenz); socio-cultural contexts (Mizen and Ofosu-Kusi; Lykes); institutional constraints of schools and hospitals (Luttrell; Radley; Yates); and concerns for personal and political safety (Luttrell; Lykes; Mizen and Ofosu-Kusi).

We asked our contributors to tackle the notion of voice as they understand and use it in their specific studies. Readers will find an encompassing definition, including a capacity for reflection, commentary, perspicacity, creativity and reflexivity about oneself in relation to one’s social context. Still, the concept of voice spans different terrains, including: ‘testimonio’ (Lykes) and ‘speaking truth to power’ (Mizen and Ofosu-Kusi); distinctions between ‘personal’ and ‘group’ voice (Lorenz); ‘re-storying’ (Lykes); ‘another way of telling’ (Radley) and ‘counter narratives’ (Luttrell) beyond those supplied by hegemonic discourse; and voice as a ‘window to the world’ compared with voice as a window

to ‘who I am’ (Yates), to name a few. Authors also deploy different research techniques and protocols: ‘photo voice’ (Lorenz); ‘video diaries’ (Chalfen, Sherman, and Rich); distinguishing between ‘photovoice’, ‘photonarrative’ and ‘photoPAR’ (Lykes); Video Intervention/Prevention Assessment (VIA) (Chalfen, Sherman, and Rich); and various adaptations of ‘photo elicitation’ and ‘photo production’ (Luttrell; Mizen and Ofosu-Kusi; Radley; Yates).

Our authors grapple with how voice can be understood in relation to pictures; for instance, how can photographs be thought of as having, or be said to have, voices? Or are we referring to the verbalisations that are made and/or voices that are heard alongside/about photographs? Is there a sense that visual voices are doing what verbal ones cannot? How much do visual voices need verbal ones? One of our authors reminds us of Elizabeth Chaplin saying that images need words while words do not necessarily need images.

As anticipated, the most recurring concern for our authors is whose voice was being spoken and, in turn, whose story was being told – an issue that remains unresolved. Are we always certain we are hearing and seeing expressions from our research participants and not from researchers, project directors or others – especially as subjects so frequently want to please project personnel? How do we take account for this variation in our analysis, when participants work alone or when we find cases of a joint effort – for instance, when a participant’s parent, especially a protective mother, becomes involved (Chalfen, Sherman, and Rich; Yates), when a family member or friend uses the camera (Luttrell) or when the researcher accompanies the participant photographer (Radley)? In short, there may be several people and intentions behind the camera. What kind of influence do these extra influences offer, and how should this be made visible, analysed and theorised?

All authors seem to state, implicitly or explicitly, a preference for a retreat from naïve realism into one in which voice and meaning are negotiated and co-constructed. Existentially, we could agree that voice is nothing without listeners, or, in our case, viewers; and that we could re-phrase these projects as ‘lending participants an ear’. But our authors remind us of three additional points: (1) it may not always be clear for whom the pictures have been created; (2) imagined audience(s) can change and play important roles in what is ‘said’ or left unsaid; and (3) interpretation is highly dependent on contextual features of the viewing situation.

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200 W. Luttrell and R. Chalfen

As a closely related theme, how are photographs meant to be read? As ‘art? documentary? subversive message?’ (Mizen and Ofosu-Kusi). How much attention should be given to influences from various corners of visual culture; to a particular social group’s or individual’s camera culture; to conventions of various media imagery; or to ‘inspecting gazes’ and controlling images that open and close the shutter or shift the lens of participants as they communicate through photography (Luttrell)?

The emergence of these questions is seen as a very healthy development, one that serves to promote new and better participatory visual research. This collection advocates a theoretical and methodological pluralism towards this end. Options include close and in-person observation of people using cameras, various models of photo elicitation, post facto interviews with participants with or without their pictures, detailed studies of photographic results, and the collecting of both ethnographic and longitudinal data. The collection also suggests ‘voice’ as a concept that traverses four currents: trajectories of collaboration; analysis/meanings/complexities of images; ethical urgency; and historical and social contexts – and it is our hope that future work will refine this contribution.

Ultimately, the pulse of participatory visual research, like other forms of voice research, relies on the need to recognise the power of research relationships and methods that afford some voices and not others. To level the politics of expression in the service of equality and social justice, we will continue to be pressed to ask how some voices continue to be unrepresented, muted, unheard, ‘voiced over’ and silenced.

NOTES

[1] Co-organised by Harvard University’s Cultural Agents

(directed by Doris Sommer). Harvard University’s

Cultural Agents Initiative: Building Society through Arts

and Humanities is a network of academics, artists,

educators, and organisations who develop recognition of

the arts as resources for positive change. http://

www.culturalagents.org/index.html; Harvard faculty

members Wendy Luttrell, Jackie Bhaba and Nicolau

Sevcenko; and Senac University Center faculty member

João Kulcsar, funded by the David Rockefeller Center for

Latin American Studies.

[2] Seminar participants included Susan Bell, Richard

Chalfen, Arlene Katz, Laura Lorenz, Wendy Luttrell,

Brinton Lykes, Elliot Mishler, Phil Mizen, Jon Prosser,

Alan Radley, Catherine Riessman, Jon Wagner and Lyn

Yates.

[3] We wish to acknowledge that Lyn Yates’s seminar paper

paid special attention to the issue of voice.

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