Photovoice: A participatory visual research technique
Photovoice is a visual research method, that joins ‘photography’ and ‘voice’ by asking people to photograph key issues, priorities and values in their lives. The phrase was first coined by Wang and Burris, and has three core goals: 1. people visually record their every-day realities; 2. photographs spark dialogue and knowledge; and 3. to reach and engage policymakers and the wider community.
In this project, we put cameras in the hands of twenty residents (ten in aged care and ten living independently in the retirement village) and asked them to capture their day-to-day lives and activities. The benefits of utilising photovoice as a research method was that it encouraged the participant to record various aspects of an issue from their own point of view. This is particularly important for more vulnerable groups, where because of their social positioning, research tends to be done on them rather than with them. As a thank-you for participation, interested residents were also professionally photographed by research student Tricia King.
The photographs above (from this project, the pilot project in 2012-2013, as well as planning for the Exhibition at State Library in 2016/2017) capture the selection and curation process – essentially, residents first took photographs capturing highlights/lowlights, two weeks and a day in their life. Residents individually selected their favorites, and in a group meeting, collaboratively reviewed, discussed and voted for their favorite images – by putting ‘sticky dots’ on their top five images.
We collaboratively worked on the captions, stories and narratives for each image, with the selected photographs exhibited. The research team then spent days grouping and theming the photographs, further developing and refining the narrative, size of images and planning the layout in the exhibition space. Each picture is truly worth a thousand words: from Patrick’s favourite day (‘Scrambled Eggs Wednesday’), Ian’s enduring love for his wife with dementia (‘The Love Remains’), Monica’s request that we ‘take a nice photograph, for her funeral’ and the maroon balloons staff released in Carol’s memory, these images powerfully convey life in aged care.
To read more about our iterative photo voice process, and ethical considerations, please see this publication capturing our reflections: Donoghue, G., Miller, E. & Buys, L. (2017). Using Participatory Visual Methods in Aged Care: the methodological, logistical and ethical considerations for qualitative research practice. SAGE Online Research Case, in press.