Embedding the Process

When you start a photovoice project – after you have selected the research frame, site(s), and groups – then you need to orient the groups on the objective, what your plans are, what is in it for the community, what will be the final output, and how you want to take forward the outputs, including the photos and the narratives produced by participants to reach stakeholders at different levels.

Before anything else, you must assist participants in using a point-and-shoot digital camera or a mobile phone camera. These days, most people choose the mobile phone over the camera, given its ubiquity and ease of use. In addition, when conducting a long-running photovoice project to capture the seasonality, as was done in the case of PASTRES, it is impossible for the researcher to be physically present during the entire project duration. In these cases, smartphones are handier for sharing pictures and narratives through WhatsApp/ Snapchat. The narratives or the story behind the photos are usually communicated through audio chat. This also allows the researcher to communicate with the photovoice group.

However, smartphones with good cameras tend only to be owned by more affluent people, often men. Younger women may only have a basic phone, by contrast, and so may not be able to contribute the same quality of photos and may not be able to use a smartphone if one is supplied. These dynamics need to be considered in planning the photovoice work.

In two of the PASTRES sites (Sardinia and Amdo Tibet), most men and women had access to smartphones. However, there were also communities where smartphones were rare (Kenya and Ethiopia). In Tunisia, the PASTRES researcher bought each participant a disposable camera to take pictures. The Kenyan researcher bought the local youth group a set of smartphones, while in contrast, in Ethiopia, the researcher took a photo walk with each participant and took pictures of issues and objects that the participant told him to document – a guided photovoice. In Gujarat, India, a professional photographer was hired to help the researcher design a pictorial booklet and other learning aids to orient the herders on camera use. The process is never straightforward. Often the herders in Gujarat would forget to take pictures or be attracted to other uses of their smartphones. Images taken by a young woman in Gujarat who said she had taken many photos of her journey could not be found on the camera. In Isiolo in Kenya, the youths inadvertently damaged their smartphones, and it took some time to get replacements. Despite all these challenges, photographs, alongside their explanatory narratives, from participants in all sites were incredibly revealing, speaking to themes of uncertainty, hope, despair, stoicism and diverse emotions.