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”.
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.
Posted by: Roger Kahlon | 10 March 2009 at 05:19 AM
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.
Posted by: Jaspal | 10 March 2009 at 08:25 PM
Hello from Bologna/Italy. We are planning a research dealing with role and training of feldschers in Mongolia. If you know of any papers on this subject, can you please send their links or the papers if you have access to them? Thanks in advance. Sunil - my email is sunil.deepak(at)aifo.it
Posted by: Sunil Deepak | 28 May 2010 at 01:08 AM
Hi Sunil, I just saw this comment - I'll send you an email now...
Posted by: Jaspal | 31 May 2010 at 12:10 PM