Participatory Visual

Ethnography
Voice, Vision, and Action in Memphis

Researcher: Andrew Mrkva

In collaboration with Jacob’s Ladder CDC
What is participatory visual
ethnography?
Traditional Ethnography
• Hierarchy: Researcher is the Expert while
Informants are vessels of data

• Exclusion: Participants are excluded from

the planning process and deciding
outcomes

• Etic Representation: Researcher speaks

for the Informants’ culture

• Scientific Goal: Collect knowledge to

serve science and anthropological
knowledge
 Traditional Research
Researchers

Plan

Act

Participants
Analyze
Publish
Results
Participatory Ethnography
• Egalitarian: Researchers and Participants
become Partners and share the role of
Expert

• Inclusion: Participants are included in the

planning process and negotiate
outcomes

• Etic & Emic: Informants choose how their

culture is represented

• Combined Goals: Researchers AND

Participants benefit from collaboration
Participatory Research
Participants Researchers

Plan

Act

Analyze
Publish
Results
 A Tool of Visual Anthropology:
Photography as Qualitative
Research
Photography as Qualitative
• Photography makes an accurate,
Research
objective, and almost unbiased
observational record
“We see what we want to
• Photography captures complex events
see,
that as
can we want throughout
be analyzed to perceive the
it.study
Learning to see with visual
•accuracy...is therefore
Digital photography can be easilya
challenge to the and
operated, distributed fieldworker
is now
affordable
whose training is literary
•rather thanis visual...”
Photography multifunctional and
~John can
Collier, 1986
be used to elicit symbolic and spatial
data, facilitate interviews, and present
data in its raw yet feasible form
Participatory Visual Research
• Preserve the Emic Perspective
Participatory Visual Research
• Invoke the Informants’ authority
and authenticity

• Utilize visuals as multifunctional

assets to both Researchers and
Informants
 C o m m u n i ty

?
Memphis, TN n ity Y outh C e n te r
Comm u
History and
Identity

Interviews Survey
 Community Interests

• Gather stories and images of history

and culture

• Sustain community through changing

times

• Revitalize community with jobs,

educational resources, and better
housing
Community Film Project

• Partnership between
Researcher and
community residents to
document oral histories,
viewpoints, and images.

• Community residents
would then utilize the
film and archive of
materials as they see fit.
 Obstacles to Participatory
Research
• Building Rapport and Recruiting are time
consuming

• Everyone becomes more invested including

time and resources

• Training is more intensive

• Residents reluctant to become partners, but
willing to participate as informants

• Crime activity in the community creates

obstacles for participants and visual research
 A Participant becomes a
Partner

• Native resident of the community

• Benefits: Rapport and local
for 30 years
knowledge
• Interested in preserving history and
• Additional Benefit:
character of participatory
the community
photography and interviewing
• Interested in photography as well
“Man on the Street”
Partner’s Voice and Perspective
 Moving Forward
• Gather more stories and
images

• Persue Visual Perspectives of

multiple generations (from
young to old)

• Establish Volunteers for

Participatory Editing

• Present First Cut of Film to be

critiqued by the
representatives of the
community

• Re-evaluate Film based on

critiques for the Final Cut