Photovoice: Life, a reflection through the lens with people with respiratory illnesses

Background Photovoice is a collaborative method most commonly associated with community participation, activism and supporting marginalized people to make sense of their lives. With its emphasis on participation, power and... [ view full abstract ]

Background
Photovoice is a collaborative method most commonly associated with community participation, activism and supporting marginalized people to make sense of their lives. With its emphasis on participation, power and social action Photovoice draws on Freire’s (1921-1997) idea of conscientisation, feminist theories and documentary photography.

Aims and objectives
The project sought to give people with TB and chronic respiratory disease a voice to express their experiences and the significance of their illness in their lives. Specifically, the project sought to:
• Create a space for people to express through images, their experience of living with a respiratory illness.
• Generate dialogue through the images between patients and healthcare professionals on the illness experiences.

Description of innovation
Patients who were attending a respiratory clinic in a large teaching hospital were invited to take part in the project through a leaflet and poster campaign resulting in a final number of eleven participants. The project was rolled out in a community setting over a seven-month period during which time the participants learned basic skills in photography and were invited to take photographs to relay a story of their choosing. The project team members worked on a one-to-one basis with participants to select their key photographs and develop a caption for each photograph. The participants identified their target audiences for exhibiting their work and went to an exhibition in the Gallery of Photography.

Impact of innovation
The stories captured both foregrounding and backgrounding of illness in everyday life. The photographs also provided an opportunity to both discover and express responses to the challenges of ill health. The choice of venue for the project and visit to the Gallery of Photography were important factors in giving ownership to the participants. So far, the photographs were exhibited over a one-month period in Ballyfermot library.

Conclusions
Photovoice offered a means of enabling participants to set their own agenda in terms of articulating their illness experience and to choose their target audience. At the same time, their photographs offer a powerful insight into the backgrounding and foregrounding of illness.