What is Photovoice?

Photovoice puts cameras in the hands of people with valuable lived experience so they can explore, inform, and advocate

How Photovoice Works

The photovoice method has four major steps. All projects include these steps. You may adapt them to your context and needs, and you may change their order—but to be true to photovoice, these four steps are essential.(1)

Step 1: Answer questions with a camera.

The photovoice group learns about being community researchers and how to stay safe when taking photos for photovoice. They answer questions with their cameras and show their experiences, feelings, strengths, and challenges – from their perspectives.

Step 2: Communicate in the group.

Co-researchers work in a group to describe what their photos mean, hear what others think, and share experiences and perspectives. They write captions or use arts-based methods to interpret and provide context for their images. They learn from and with each other.

Step 3: Observe commonalities.

Co-researchers point out commonalities among the photos and experiences shared. They group their photos into themes, to help audiences understand the key issues shown in the photos and described in the captions. This step can help participants to feel less alone. It can help to identify solutions.

Step 4: Communicate to power.

The group shares their project’s findings (photos, captions, themes) with peers, family members, community leaders, organizations, and policymakers in exhibits, trainings, and booklets, among other strategies. Outreach efforts create awareness, inform and encourage action, and aim for impact.

Why Photovoice Matters

Photovoice generates multiple benefits for co-researchers, communities, organizations, decision-makers, and policymakers.

Creates opportunities for mutual learning and understanding among various communities

Builds critical thinking, teamwork, and communication skills

Supports patient recovery and healing

Provides decision-makers with powerful data about real lives

Gives participants a voice in healthcare, community, and research

Informs changes in awareness, attitudes, programs, and policies

Photovoice levels the playing field by prompting respectful conversations among equals.

Photovoice flips the script of traditional research by creating opportunities for individuals from all walks of life to participate in and guide research on their lives and communities. Through pictures and words, participants – called “co-researchers” – document their challenges, strengths, successes, failures, hopes, and fears, from their perspectives. Their images and captions prompt respectful conversations among researchers, participants, community members, and decision-makers. With photovoice, stakeholders engage each other as equals. Their authentic, real-life data inform change through outreach, advocacy, policymaking, and more.

Learn more, check out

The photovoice process is simple and can be applied to any group of people you want to learn from and with.

Photovoice projects begin when stakeholders collaborate to learn about photovoice and choose a topic for their project. Co-researchers then learn about the ethics of being a visual researcher before taking photographs that reflect their thoughts and experiences. Next, they share the stories behind their photos and craft captions to provide context. Lastly, their photos and captions are shared among peers, decision-makers, and policymakers through exhibits, websites, and other means. In this way, the valuable data they have produced can prompt further conversation and inspire and inform changes in awareness, attitudes, programs, and policies.

Who Can Do Photovoice?

Groups and organizations around the world have used photovoice to learn, create awareness, and foster change. Here are some examples:

Adults with disabilities. A photovoice project in a small town in the Northeastern US explored community participation by older adults with disabilities from acquired brain injuries. Co-researchers took photos of a walkway that was too steep and uneven sidewalks that were not safe. When authorities saw the project photos, they improved the steep walkway and rebuilt the sidewalks along the town’s busy main street.⁽²⁾
People with chronic health conditions. People living with chronic health conditions such as diabetes, HIV, COPD, anxiety disorder, and chronic brain injury often participate in photovoice. A common goal is to understand their lives from their perspectives. People want to be seen as more than their diagnosis. Participating in photovoice helps participants to experience healing while informing policymakers.^(3,4)
Youth and teens. Many projects have used photovoice to include youth voices in community assessments, research, and policymaking. Photovoice participation can build or strengthen leadership, critical thinking, photography, and communication skills. Photovoice harnesses youth energy for activism, helps young people to reflect on what matters to them, and helps their findings reach audiences who can affect change.^(5,6)
Military Veterans. US Military Veterans and their caregivers have used photovoice to document barriers to accessing mental health services. Others have used it to show their challenge providing nutritious food for their children. Their photos and stories have created awareness of ways that military culture and identity can contribute to negative and positive coping with post-deployment life and inform interventions.^(7,8)

History of Photovoice

Four major roots of the photovoice method form the foundation for its use in the present day.

Documentary Photography for Social Change

Photographer Lewis Hine documented children working in factories and on commercial farms in the United States in the early 1900s. These child laborers toiled for long hours in dangerous conditions. Hine sought to raise awareness of child labor and advocate for the abolishment of this practice through his work.

The Community Education Work of Paulo Freire

Groundbreaking educator and philosopher Paulo Freire spearheaded an innovative approach to education in some of Brazil’s poorest rural villages. As a reflection of his philosophy of teaching as a collaborative act of liberation, he instructed his adult students to draw pictures of their community’s strengths and challenges and reflect on them as a group. Through this exercise, Freire encouraged people to think independently and critically about their surroundings and experiences.

Participatory Photography with Children

Before the establishment of the photovoice method, photography was used to help children build visual literacy skills and articulate their lived experiences. For example, Wendy Ewald used photography to help children practice reading and writing skills. Another photographer, Jim Hubbard, taught unhoused children to document their daily lives in photos. These photographers pioneered efforts to help children express themselves and build visual literacy and communication skills through participatory photography.

Producing Knowledge Through Collaborative Research – a Feminist Approach

A feminist approach to research means doing research with, not on. In 1992, scholars Caroline Wang and Mary Ann Burris brought a structured feminist research approach using photography to a regional development project in rural Yunnan, China. They worked with 165 village women who photographed their lives, spoke about their photos, and presented their work to journalists and policymakers. As a result, these local policymakers were inspired to fund new programs that met the participating women’s expressed needs. This groundbreaking project established the photovoice method used around the world for more than 30 years.

Read our definition of What is photovoice.

Citations

(1) Lorenz L, Bush E. (2022). Critical and creative thinking and photovoice: Strategies for strengthening participation and inclusion. Health Promotion Practice. 23(2):274-280. doi:10.1177/15248399211055714
(2) Kolb, B. and Lorenz, L. (2021). Chapter 9: Photo interview and photovoice. Engaging research participants, empowering voice and generating knowledge for change. In R. Breckner, K. Liebhart and M. Pohn-Lauggas Analysing image and media worlds in the social sciences, Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg (Studium). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110613681
(3) Lorenz, LS. (2010). Visual metaphors of living with brain injury: Exploring and communicating lived experience with an invisible injury, Visual Studies, 25(3), pp 210-223. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2010.523273
(4) Connors, JD, Conley, MJ, & Lorenz, LS. (2019). Use of photovoice to engage stakeholders in planning for patient-centered outcomes research. Research involvement and engagement, 5, 39-
39. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40900-019-0166-y
(5) Banyard, V., Edwards, K., Herrington, R., Hopfauf, S., Simon, B., & Shroll, L. (2022). Using photovoice to understand and amplify youth voices to prevent sexual and relationship violence. Journal of community psychology, 50(1), 90–110. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22495
(6) Strack, R. W., Magill, C., & McDonagh, K. (2004). Engaging youth through photovoice. Health Promotion Practice, 5(1), 49–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839903258015
(7) True, G., Rigg, K. K., & Butler, A. (2015). Understanding Barriers to Mental Health Care for Recent War Veterans Through Photovoice. Qualitative Health Research, 25(10), 1443–1455. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732314562894
(8) Kamdar, N., True, G., Lorenz, L., Loeb, A., and Hernandez, D.C. (2020). Getting food to the table: Challenges, strategies, and compromises experienced by low-income veterans raising children. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, https://doi.org/10.1080/19320248.2020.1855284