“Our Photos Are for Us First”: The Framing of a Black Girl’s Truth

• In Event: Disrupting Qualitative Inquiry: Possibilities and Tensions of Art-Based Educational Research

Abstract

Saving Our Lives, Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT) is a space where the life experiences of middle school-aged Black girls are shared and documented. The author positions herself within SOLHOT, as a site of praxis, where she conducted research in both of her roles of Afro-Latina woman researcher and Black girl participant. In SOLHOT, participants share their life stories, using the camera as a tool for interrogating notions of power, voice and representation as articulated within the images and stereotypes of Black girls. In this paper, the author discusses the data collection and analysis as a disruptive method of visual ethnography, exploring how photography is used to document the counter-narratives of Black girls, where value is placed on a collective voice rather than the individual.

Author

• Claudine Olivia Taaffe, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign