(Re)Imagining Visual Research Beyond Photovoice: Methodological Explorations With a Youth Photographer

• In Event: 34.083 - The Danger of a Single Image? Methodological Explorations of Visual Research in Education

Abstract

In this paper, I share explorations from a two-year long collaborative research project with Urja, a youth photographer living in a midwestern city. Urja self identifies as part of the South Asian diaspora and is a young girl currently attending middle school. We make a turn away from the instrumental reigns of photovoice by conceiving a methodological approach that caters to the embodied and multisensory practice of photography. Instead of following a photovoice protocol, I closely engage with the “unprompted” photography practices embodied by Urja. This paper responds to recent critiques on the limits of photovoice (Higgins, 2016; Shankar, 2016) and the need for methodological explorations in participatory visual research, questioning and moving beyond reductionistic notions of voice and empowerment (Author, 2010).
In this paper, I draw on Cole’s (2017) work to conceptualize a reorientation to visual participatory research. In his book, Blindspot, Teju Cole (2017) pairs images with short passages of text. Rather than offering certainty about the image, the prose invites the reader to see the image differently, to think beyond the frame of the image, to travel outside of it, before it, or into it. The representational certainty of the image or the text is suspended through the pairing, offering new insights. The process of making photographs in everyday contexts is viewed as holding the potential to “inspire, give a ‘push’ to thinking and deepen one’s engagement with the world (and the research process) through producing reflexive situations” (Pyyry, 2015, p. 153).
I approached the collaborative visual research project with Urja from an analytic lens of post-qualitative research (St. Pierre & Jackson, 2014). The method of research is not pre-ordained and can never be separated from the analysis. During our two-year long exploration, Urja and I produced multiple iterations of photo-prose pairings which serve as “data” for this paper. In the initial phases of our research, Urja produced the images. I wrote short passages of text based on our (audio-recorded) discussions about the images and her process of making images. Urja curated the text and the images. Later, Urja insisted on making the images and writing the accompanying prose. In September 2018, Urja’s work, which includes eight photo-prose pairings, will be exhibited at a local cafe.
Drawing on Urja’s photographic practice, I offer photo-prose pairings as an alternative approach to visual participatory research with youth. Using her photo-prose pairing as an example, I argue that rather than carrying a fixed notion of voice and meaning, Urja’s interaction with her images is constantly in flux, shifting based on her experiences, encounters, and dispositions. Her relationship with the images is not rooted in notions of causation, patterns, and reason. It is unpredictable and shifting, vivacious and creative. Urja’s photo-prose pairings invite viewers to explore the subjectivities of a young-photographer. Through the pairings, Urja offers meditations on what it means to be a part of the South Asian diaspora, the way she navigates the conflicts between her personal dreams and familial/societal expectations, and her relationship with photography as an everyday practice for seeing, sensing, and thinking.

Author

• Vivek Vellanki, Michigan State University