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Caroline
Wang "Photovoice Methodology" Before she died of breast cancer in 1992, the photographer and educator Jo Spence published a book, What Can a Woman Do with a Camera? I came across Spence's work in 1995, three years after many Chinese counterparts and I provided sixty-two Yunnan farmers with cameras so that they could take pictures, tell stories, and reach policy makers who govern their lives. In her title, Spence poses a question that fittingly introduces the photovoice* concept and methodology used by these farmers. The theoretical underpinnings of photovoice are health promotion principles relating to community organization and communication, and the theoretical literature on education for critical consciousness, feminist theory, and a grassroots approach to documentary photography. Photovoice embraces the basic principles that images teach, pictures can influence policy, and community people ought to create the images and text that inspire healthful public policy. It is a process facilitated through a series of workshops in which people can identify, represent, and enhance their community through a specific photographic technique. The participants are first familiarized with underlying issues surrounding the use of cameras, power, and ethics, and introduced to the photovoice concept and method. Participants then meet regularly to discuss their photographs, and to codify the issues, themes, or theories that arise from them. Finally, they share their recommendations and insights with policy makers, journalists, and the broader community through public forums and venues that include newspaper spreads, exhibitions, and slide shows. Village Works: Photographs by Women in China's Yunnan Province is about the lives of farmers, and how they used their photographs and stories as a tool for policy change. Through their images and groups discussions, these farmers voiced the need for specific changes in their townships and counties. As a result of the farmers' advocacy and participation, new programs and policies arose, including cooperative-style day care for children, midwifery training for indigenous women, need-blind scholarships for girls, health literacy for adults, biogas tanks for families |
While describing to western activists and academics how the Yunnan women helped to create social change through their images and text, I have been asked thoughtful questions: What layers of representation occur in this process? How was the support of policy makers brokered, and how did policy and program recommendations arise from all the stories and images? The process of excavating these and many other questions led me in 1994 to create this photovoice concept and methodology. This exhibition therefore maps not only the farmers' village homeland, but a method that homeless adults in Ann Arbor, neighborhood residents in northern California, people with mental illness in New Haven, and young people and policy makers in Flint have also used to create programs and influence policies that matter to themselves and their community. The photographic works of these farmers exceeded their own expectations as well as those of hundreds of cadres from the provincial, county, and township organizations that facilitated this Ford Foundation-supported project. These farmers, who are also village mothers and daughters, are rarely seen and heard, despite their extraordinary contribution to the labor force. As this exhibition bears witness, the village works. |
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