Developing Positive Negatives: Youth on the Edge Capture Images of Their Lives with Help from PhotoVoice

Miranda Gavin

Citation: Gavin, Miranda. “Developing Positive Negatives: Youth on the Edge Capture Images of Their Lives with Help from PhotoVoice.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(2), 2003. Retrieved [date] from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Keywords: photography; street children; children's empowerment

Using photography as a medium for self-expression, a tool for self-advocacy and a way of empowering those on the fringes of society, London-based charity PhotoVoice aims to enable these groups to speak out about their lives through images and words, by providing in-field photojournalism in the context of development.

For the charity's co-founders, Anna Blackman and Tiffany Fairey, both 27, the use of documentary photography is championed as a way of enabling “those who have traditionally been the subject of such work, to become its creator.” Originating in 1998, as part of their academic fieldwork for a masters degree in social anthropology, the pair set up what have now become the charity's founding photography projects, Street Vision in Vietnam and the Rose Class in Nepal.

Fairey set up a photography, art and writing project, the Rose Class, in a Bhutanese refugee camp, Beldangi II- one of seven in eastern Nepal- where she taught the youngsters the basics of photography using donated single-lens reflex and automatic cameras. The project gave 30 young people, aged between 15 and 17 years, an opportunity to express themselves in new and creative ways. With no electricity or running water in the camp, she had the films processed by a nearby lab.

Meanwhile in Vietnam, Blackman faced different problems. Working with street and working children to raise awareness of their lives and using an assortment of used and new camera equipment, she had to find translators and spaces from which to work, and she had to deal with Vietnamese bureaucracy in realizing Street Vision. Since then, the project has trained more than 120 young people in photography and continues to run annual beginners' and advanced photography courses. The program is now managed by a local NGO, The Ho Chi Minh Child Welfare Foundation.

Although Fairey and Blackman were working independently at the time, they discovered that, as well as using similar working methodologies, they also shared a belief in the potential of photography as a means of understanding different cultures. Later, in a bar in Perpignan, France, where they were both attending the annual photojournalism festival, Visa pour l'image 1999, they cemented their partnership and decided to establish a non-profit organization. A year later, they founded PhotoVoice.

In 2001, Blackman headed to Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, where she was funded by Christian Aid, to teach 15 HIV-positive women the basics of photography. Over a period of four weeks, she worked with a local, non-profit organization and Christian Aid partner, Fondation Femme Plus (FFP) to enable these women- most of them widows- to openly document their experience of living with HIV in a developing country. Using point-and-shoot cameras, they began to record their daily lives and struggles. Blackman later returned to Kinshasa, to work with six of the original participants on a further project, Positive Negatives, which made its way to London's Africa Centre.

Blackman and Fairey now manage six PhotoVoice projects around the world. Last year, the group's Transparency project gave a group of young refugees, aged between 12 and 18, from countries including Afghanistan, Angola, Iraq, Romania, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, the opportunity to express themselves through photography. Working from a community center in east London, the project ran over a three-month period and culminated in a well-received exhibition at the Spitz Gallery, London. Since then, Transparency has toured nationally and one member of the group has gone on to study photography full-time and has secured commissions by the BBC. Another participant was a finalist in a national self-portraiture competition, featured on Channel 4 and exhibited in London's National Portrait Gallery. 

Working alongside both international organizations and local partners, PhotoVoice takes a long-term approach, which puts as much emphasis on the discussions surrounding the images that are taken as it does on the technical aspects of photography. In the process, participants develop their self-esteem and, in some cases, an income-generating skill. Images are also used for educational purposes, as well as to inform and affect policy change, which are all integral elements of the charity's long-term aims. For this reason, the individual photographers of PhotoVoice retain copyright of their images. Furthermore, any revenue from work, which is sold through prints or publication, is returned to the individual projects and the photographers themselves.

Recent PhotoVoice work includes Bibin, which means “Look” in the Afghani language Dari, a project working with street kids in Kabul, Afghanistan and On the Move, a pilot project run in conjunction with Quaker Homeless Action, working with a group of homeless people over 25 in London. Working with a local NGO, Bibin gave 13 street kids basic photographic training over a period of three weeks so that they could document life on the streets of Kabul using a medium virtually banned by the Taliban. The participants explored themes, such as peace and reconstruction, and women and working children's rights, producing a body of work that was exhibited in Kabul and the Spitz Gallery, London.

Closer to home, a team of PhotoVoice volunteers took to the streets over the summer to run weekly photography workshops for a group of homeless people. With no centre to work from, much of the training and handing back of photographs had to take place on the streets and in parks, a process which, in many ways, echoed the transitory and outdoor nature of many of the participants' lives. Using both automatic and single-lens reflex cameras, the group documented key aspects of their lives and developed a body of work around the theme of “transition,” which was exhibited in December 2003.

Blackman and Fairey both come from anthropology, development and photojournalism backgrounds and continue to divide their time between working for charities and for groups within the photography industry. They offer consultancy work to other organizations, but direct involvement on projects has had to take a backseat lately, as they fundraise to ensure that PhotoVoice can be a sustainable charity. “One of the biggest day-to-day challenges is having too much to do and too little time to do it and trying to keep afloat financially,” says Fairey.

Recent PhotoVoice successes include gaining charitable status and winning- alongside well-established charities, such as Barnardos- the Arts, Culture and Heritage category of The UK Charity Awards 2003. Furthermore, generous response from the 60 plus photographers, including Tom Stoddard, Eve Arnold, Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Paolo Roversi, who donated prints for a fundraising auction held at The Bloomberg Space, City of London, in October 2003, has also helped to raise this fledgling charity's profile.

Trustees and members of the steering panel from the photographic industry include Adrian Evans, Director of Panos Pictures, a photojournalism agency, Jon Levy, editor of the magazine Foto 8, and the Big Issue founder John Bird.

PhotoVoice continues to rely on a core of long-term support from volunteers, working in a variety of fields, including photographers and fundraisers. Between them, they support the work of PhotoVoice offering project managing, corporate and general fundraising, exhibition coordinating, press and general administrative work. Shorter-term volunteers have also surfaced via the group's website, through word-of-mouth and as a result of the various exhibitions.

Internationally, the charity is now uniquely situated to provide a platform for similar groups to exhibit and market their work and its website provides a global forum for the practitioners and beneficiaries of participatory photography projects around the world. Comments Fairey, “One of the main things is the fact that we are still going and how wide our reach is- considering the size of the organization.” The organization has received recognition from such dignitaries as Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF, who recently expressed her support: “PhotoVoice offers marginalized groups, including many children, the skills of ‘participatory photography,' visual literacy, and a powerful universal language to express their ideas and represent their realities to the rest of us.”

Next year, PhotoVoice will be providing consultancy work for organizations in Bangladesh and Cameroon, and Blackman will be working alongside the U.S.-based NGO, Global Children, to bring PhotoVoice practices to orphanages in Cambodia.

Both Blackman and Fairey have learned a great deal from the individuals who have participated in their organization's projects, and they see even greater potential for their concept in the future:

In truth, PhotoVoice projects enlarge the lives of its participants...and ours, too. Through witnessing the daily challenges of select groups as they see them, we get closer to truly understanding their lives and needs....and are perhaps moved ourselves to help bring about change.

PhotoVoice Photo Gallery

PhotoVoice Project Timeline

• 1998 : Anna Blackman and Tiffany Fairey set up the Street Vision and Rose Class, respectively, as part of their fieldwork for a Masters in Social Anthropology at Edinburgh. They hold a joint exhibition, Developing Visions, of the work from both projects in a Baker Street café, London.
• 1999 : Blackman and Fairey join forces and decide to set up a non-profit organization for participatory photography projects, with the aim of becoming a charity. Street Vision and Rose Class become founding projects.
• 2000 : PhotoVoice is registered as a limited company.
• 2001 : The project Positive Negatives is established in the Democratic Republic of Congo in conjunction with Christian Aid.
• 2002 : PhotoVoice moves into its first office in east London in April. Transparency, a project working with young refugees in London, and Bibin, a project working with street kids in Afghanistan, are set up. In May 2002, work from the Rose Class and Street Vision is exhibited to coincide with the UN Special Session on the Convention of the Rights of the Child in New York.
• 2003 : PhotoVoice is awarded charity status. In June, PhotoVoice wins the Arts, Culture and Heritage category of The Charity Awards 2003. In October, PhotoVoice re-launches its website, www.photovoice.org . The new site includes an online global forum for participatory photography projects around the world and links to Panos Pictures who archive PhotoVoice work for commercial sale. On the Move, a pilot project working with homeless people in London, is set up. PhotoVoice has set up projects in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, Vietnam and the United Kingdom, training over 300 participants to date. Exhibitions have been held in the UK and abroad, including Kathmandu, Kinshasa, New York, Perpignan and Kabul.

Miranda Gavin is a free-lance journalist and photographer who has worked and volunteered with PhotoVoice for some time.  Her most recent activity with PhotoVoice was project management and providing weekly training with the On the Move project, working with homeless people in London over the latter half of 2003.  This project, in partnership with Quaker Homeless Action, culminated in a well-attended two-week long exhibition in the Concrete Basement, Waterloo in December 2003.