Thinking Critically About Photovoice : Achieving Empowerment and Social Change

Photovoice is a participatory action research strategy that may offer unique contributions to women's health. It is a process by which people can identify, represent, and enhance their community through a specific photographic technique. Photovoice has three main goals: to enable people (1) to record and reflect their community's strengths and concerns, (2) to promote critical dialogue and knowledge about personal and community issues through large and small group discussion of their photographs, and (3) to reach policymakers. This report gives an overview of the origins, key concepts, methods, and uses of photovoice as a strategy to enhance women's health.

Scientific research occurs within a set of socio-political conditions, and in Canada research involving Indigenous communities has a historical association with colonialism. Consequently, Indigenous peoples have been justifiably sceptical and reluctant to become the subjects of academic research. Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is an attempt to develop culturally relevant research models that address issues of injustice, inequality, and exploitation. The work reported here evaluates the use of Photovoice, a CBPR method that uses participant-employed photography and dialogue to create social change, which was employed in a research partnership with a First Nation in Western Canada. Content analysis of semi-structured interviews (n=45) evaluated participants' perspectives of the Photovoice process as part of a larger study on health and environment issues. The analysis revealed that Photovoice effectively balanced power, created a sense of ownership, fostered trust, built capacity, and responded to cultural preferences. The authors discuss the necessity of modifying Photovoice, by building in an iterative process, as being key to the methodological success of the project.