PhotoVoice(+cultural probes) for clean water and sanitation in Mumbai

Cross-posted to THDBlog.

Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to view a PhotoVoice exhibition at the University of California, Berkeley organized by Haath Mein Sehat (HMS), a group working to improve access to clean water and sanitation in six slums of Hubballi and Mumbai, including Dharavi.

It was exciting to see a group effectively blend the advocacy elements of PhotoVoice with the design elements of cultural probes. The difference between the two approaches is less in the methods and more in the use of the outputs. In this case, they organized the exhibition to raise awareness and break down stereotypes of slum life, and they are using the photographic corpus to guide the design of both programs and technologies related to their core mission.

What I was most interested in from a design perspective were the instructions given to community photographers and how this tied back to the mission of HMS. The results below followed from the simple prompt: “Represent your daily experience with water”.

Comments

[Roger Kahlon]

It has never occurred to me that you could use a gallery for advocacy purposes, but it makes so much sense.

Even when the galleries here in NY have a "struggle" concept the actual exhibit is more about the photographers. Narcissism in its purest form.

[Jaspal]

Interesting perspective ... I'm sure one could argue that there are elements of narcissism in these photos, too. But with participatory work, that's what we're interested in.