Project
Becomings
engage · learn · reimagine · grow
Reimagining recovery narratives following adversity
Photovoice And Photography
Exploring recovery through images, everyday life and lived experience
In Project Becomings
Photovoice was used within Project Becomings as an optional way for co-researchers to capture and share moments, objects and experiences from their everyday lives between research sessions.
Using their phones, co-researchers uploaded photographs and short videos that could then become prompts for reflection and discussion. Sometimes an upload also led to something being brought physically into a later workshop — allowing connections between everyday experience, creative making and group conversations to develop over time.
For example, photographs of creative work uploaded between sessions could later be viewed and discussed together in person. Other contributions, including a video involving roller skates, became part of the research discussion without the video itself being publicly displayed.
Importantly, these photographs and videos were not used as public exhibition material. Many contained personal or identifiable content, including images of co-researchers themselves. Protecting anonymity therefore shaped what could move from the private research space into public dissemination. This is consistent with the thesis, which notes that some photographs could not be exhibited because of anonymity concerns.
About The Method
Photovoice is a participatory visual research method in which participants use photographs — and sometimes short videos — to capture experiences, environments, objects or moments that feel meaningful to them. These images can then act as prompts for reflection, conversation and collective sense-making.
The value of photovoice is not necessarily in the image itself. What someone chooses to capture, why they capture it, and the conversations and connections that follow can all become part of the research process.
Photovoice can also extend research beyond a scheduled interview or workshop. Participants can notice and record something as it happens within everyday life and return to it later, creating connections between different times, places and research encounters.
Within Project Becomings, photovoice was optional, and the way material was subsequently shared was shaped by participants' choices and considerations around anonymity.
Why Use Photovoice In Trauma And Recovery Research?
Experiences of trauma and recovery extend beyond research sessions and formal services into everyday lives, relationships, places, objects and activities. Photovoice can create a way for participants to notice and capture some of these experiences as they occur, rather than relying only on what can later be recalled or explained in a workshop.
A photograph or video can also provide a starting point when an experience is difficult to put immediately into words. The image does not need to explain the experience itself; instead, it can act as a prompt for reflection and conversation, with meaning developing through what the participant chooses to share about it.
Within Project Becomings, this helped connect experiences occurring between workshops with later research encounters. Material uploaded by co-researchers could prompt further discussion, be revisited with the group, or lead to related objects or creative work being brought into the research space. The thesis describes photovoice as enabling co-researchers to document and share information they found meaningful using accessible tools such as their phones.
For trauma research, this also requires careful attention to choice, privacy and control. An image can be valuable within the research without needing to be publicly shown. Within Project Becomings, identifiable and personal material was therefore kept out of public dissemination where anonymity could not be maintained.
What Did Photovoice Make Possible?
Photovoice allowed the research to travel beyond the workshop space, creating opportunities for co-researchers to notice and share moments of recovery as they unfolded within everyday life. Rather than recovery being explored only retrospectively during scheduled sessions, experiences could be captured in the places and moments where they occurred.
These uploads could then generate further movement within the research. Images of creative work were revisited in later workshops, while other uploads became starting points for conversation and reflection. In this way, an image or video was not necessarily an end product; it could set other encounters, conversations and ways of thinking in motion. The thesis describes how uploaded material was subsequently shared and discussed within the research group.
One example was a video uploaded after the Inner Child workshop showing a co-researcher roller-skating in bright, playful skates. The significance was not the video as a public artefact, but what the experience opened up: connections between play, movement, learning, joy and earlier aspirations. The creative inquiry had travelled from the workshop into an embodied activity in everyday life.
Photovoice therefore helped make visible something important within Project Becomings: research encounters did not simply begin and end when a workshop started and finished. Ideas could continue to move through bodies, objects, activities and everyday environments, before returning to the research differently.
