Photovoice

Historical and Epistemological Roots

The context within which photography was invented in the mid nineteenth century shaped its early use and impact. Developed by wealthy Europeans in the midst of the colonial period, cameras were initially used to document privileged lives and foreign travels to exotic lands, focusing on ‘the spectacle of the other’. They became tools in the racialized classification of humans under European imperialism, reinforcing notions of scientific racism. Photographs also soon replaced drawing in the rising role of advertising to promote industrial capitalism and the consumer culture. The technology of early cameras made them awkward, expensive and inaccessible to ordinary people; they were clearly the domain of the elite and the professionals.

The capacity of photographs to show actual traces of reality also fed dominant epistemologies of positivism and the elevation of the ‘objective’ nature of reality promoted by Western science. Photographs were used as evidence, and there was little awareness of who was behind the camera, the photographer's perspective or interests. In the early twentieth century, reformist photographers such as Jacob Riis capitalized on this objective power of images to document the horrific living and working conditions of new immigrants to the USA; his aim was to raise public consciousness about poverty and catalyze social and political action. The Farm Security Administration photographers in the 1930s and 1940s had a similar mission: to document the real conditions of poor communities in the midst of the Depression; these classic social documentary images became emblematic of social inequities and were used to press for social reform. But the cameras remained in the hands of the professionals, the practice required considerable financial support and training and the subjects did not benefit from their images.

Photographers' claim to objectivity was debunked in the latter part of the twentieth century by postmodern thinkers and artists, who vigorously challenged the ‘objectivity’ of positivist Western science and any notion of ‘truth’ that photographs could portray. Rather, they framed photos as frozen moments reflecting the subjective ‘point of view’ of the photographer and particular regimes of truth. While for some, this recognition spelled the death of documentary photography, for others—in both the art world and the world of social action—the acknowledgement only expanded the scope of the practice; Mirrors and Windows, a pivotal 1978 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, embraced both the artist's sensibility (mirror) and the world she explores (window), or the subjective and the objective power of photographs.

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