Visual representations of environments, life and the entangled values, relations and contestations surrounding development projects are often unexplored. What we normally see are slick advertisements, commercials and political or social media campaigns presenting the rhetoric of development (whether as tree or oil palm plantations, mining or as state education forest) as enabling modern lifestyles, organizing unruly environments and as mutually beneficial for all.
FairFrontiers uses photovoice as a counter-method to include visual storytelling of those impacted by development projects. Drawing on documentary photography, feminist theory and critical consciousness theory, photovoice puts cameras into the hands of community participants and allows them to guide data collection in documenting their observations about various phenomena through photography and narratives. Photovoice leans on feminist theory in seeking to empower community members to be the “experts” of their own lives and experiences, and treats participants as co-investigators rather than the subjects of research.
The power of photovoice is its potential to reveal the diversity of real-life experiences, to offer often marginalized people a voice, to promote critical dialogue, and to create social change. Over the past year, FairFrontiers members and partners are implementing photovoice to capture how change is affecting wellbeing in West and South Sulawesi, Indonesia and identities, hopes and future aspirations in Pitas, Sabah, Malaysia. We will be carrying out photovoice in Campo Ma’an (Cameroon), Upemba (DR Congo) and Northern Laos next – stay tuned for more updates on this exciting work!
A couple of useful readings:
Masterson, V. A., S. L. Mahajan, and M. Tengö. 2018. Photovoice for mobilizing insights on human well-being in complex social- ecological systems: case studies from Kenya and South Africa. Ecology and Society 23(3):13; https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10259-230313
Liebenberg, L. (2018). Thinking critically about photovoice: Achieving empowerment and social change. International journal of qualitative methods, 17(1), https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406918757631