Abstract
Participatory photography projects with marginalized groups have become commonplace. Underpinned by celebratory narratives that cast photography as an inherently empowering activity, these projects promise to give voice and enable change. However critical thinkers raise concerns around tokenism and the over-simplification of the participatory photography narrative. They point to a hollowing of the critical and radical potential of contemporary participatory and community-engaged photography. The challenge for practitioners is how to re-imagine the promise of participatory photography to account for the tension and negotiation it involves. Drawing on photography by young people living in the UK as refugees, this chapter offers the conceptual metaphor of a photography of becoming to reconceptualise the promise of participatory photography through a pluralist imagination. A photography of becoming accounts for the fluid and contrary forms of photography that emerge from participatory projects. It frames participatory photography’s potential as lying in its capacity to enable and accommodate plural ways of seeing and to nurture a critical, dialogical engagement with difference. A photography of becoming highlights the emergent, collaborative and fragile character of participatory photography while reaffirming its contribution to supporting emerging voices and claims, creating spaces for agency and resistance and making visible unheard and unrecognized stories.
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Notes
- 1.
In this writing, ‘participatory photography’ is used as an umbrella term to refer to a range of community-engaged photographic practices in which participants or community members are supported by facilitators to create and produce their own photographic work. Participatory photography has been harnessed by a range of practitioners and researchers in diverse contexts with varying agendas. As a result, many different applications and forms of participatory photography now exist in different fields, each with their own terminology, lineage, protocols and criteria. One of the most popular of these is photovoice, a participatory action research methodology first developed by Caroline Wang (1997). Whilst participatory photography refers to a spectrum of practices with varying interpretations as to what constitutes ‘photography’ and ‘participation’, it can be distinguished from other forms of collaborative and socially engaged photography in which artists or professional image producers collaborate with community members to co-produce photographic work and retain co-authorship of the work produced. Authorship in participatory photography projects can be individual, collaborative and collective, but it lies with the participants or community members and is not shared with the artist or practitioner facilitator.
- 2.
- 3.
PhotoVoice is a UK-based photographic charity which runs participatory photography projects in the UK and internationally. Co-founded by myself and Anna Blackman in 1999, I worked as a co-director of PhotoVoice for its first 11 years until 2010. https://photovoice.org/.
- 4.
- 5.
The projects ran from 2002 onwards and comprised a number of different initiatives including Transparency (2002–03), Moving Lives (2004–06) and New Londoners (2007–09).
- 6.
See Chalak Abdulrahman’s visceral pairings of images in his project Maybe in PhotoVoice (2008) New Londoners: Reflections on Home. Trolley Books.
- 7.
See Shamin Nakalembe’s project, Side by Side, in PhotoVoice (2008) New Londoners: Reflections on Home. Trolley Books.
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Fairey, T. (2024). A Photography of Becoming: Re-imaging the Promise of Participatory Photography. In: Bertrand, M., Chambefort-Kay, K. (eds) Contemporary Photography as Collaboration. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41444-2_2
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