Thinking Critically About Participatory Visual Research: Part 2

Co-Producing Knowledge to Empower Marginalized Communities and Refine Methodology

Exploring Participatory Visual Research

Traditionally, ethnographic documentary photography and videography has been produced by “the powerful, the established, the male, the colonizer” to “portray the less powerful, less established, female, and colonized” . In accordance with what has been called “new ethnography,” participatory visual research attempts to flip this historical tradition on its head. Participatory visual research enables the voice of the “other” to be heard by using visual materials (i.e. photographs, sketches, or videos) to elicit verbal responses or by asking participants to produce their own visual materials (and comment on them in group discussions or individual interviews). PVR situates the researcher and participant as co-collaborators in a qualitative research study, placing emphasis on the voice of the marginalized and providing space for self-expression as well as individual and community, reflection, knowledge creation and social transformation.

Proceeding the crisis of representation of the 1980s and 1990s, the postmodern ethnographic practice has become increasingly motivated by ethics. The field of anthropology has recognized the need to create non-exploitative participant-subject relationships that enable collaboration and the centering of a participant-defined reality. Ethical motives have not only made popular the notion that research participants and subjects should benefit from the research in which they help inform but that the researcher should take a genuine interest in “helping to solve problems of communities without thinking primarily about their own professional gain”.

Participatory visual research is distinguished by three key elements: people, power and praxis. With feminist theory roots, it prioritizes historically disenfranchised and marginalized people and is informed by and responsive to their needs and experiences. In supporting creative expression and community dialogue, the approach helps communities develop co-created knowledge and critical awareness. It is through the critical awareness that praxis—organized action based on critical reflection— can occur. As researchers, we are positioned in roles in which we can facilitate this process through intentional and informed project and study designs.

Ethics are not the only motive for an increase in participatory visual research, of course. The technological advancements of the last quarter of a century have made exponential difference in the amount of access participants and researchers have to cameras, editing equipment, and other storytelling tools. Along with this, the recognition of participatory research as a qualitatively-rich generator of data further increases its use among researchers. As Belgian anthropologist Luc Pauwels explained: “If the film elicitation technique is employed skillfully, the researcher may obtain some of the most exciting data of anthropology: how members conceptualize and structure the world in which they live.”

Though use of participatory visual methods has grown recently, participatory research is not new. Participation is a broad concept and, as Pauwels argues, almost all research is participatory, collaborative or cooperative in some sense. Participants can be involved in various aspects of research design, execution and analysis. Involving participants helps researchers draw out emic perspectives that can paint a fuller picture of individuals and communities (Pauwels 2013: 111). What seems distinct about visual participatory methodologies, especially those involving participant-generated visuals, is the degree to which the participant has control of what is studied as well as their involvement in interpretation and analysis. It is the reprioritization of whose voice and needs matter most. Below, Quaylan Allen (2012) describes the prioritization of participant voices in his photo voice research with black middle-class youth in the Pacific Northwest of the United States:

“… by putting a camera in the hands of the Black male students, they determined what phenomena should be studied, what areas of Black middle-class male youth life should be explored, and what questions should be asked to gain this understanding… What was important for them to document trumped what was important for me to document, just as their interpretations trumped mine.”

 Part 3 Coming Jul 2023