(Re)presenting the self: Questions raised by a photovoice project with people with physical disabilities in South Africa

Abstract

Photovoice is presented here as an emancipatory, participatory research method with the potential to put minority subjects in charge of their own representation. Drawing on research with disabled people conducted in South Africa, we argue that the meaning of images is often hostage to interpretations which reify untruths about the subject. We consider how photovoice projects may give rise to images that perpetuate the subjugation of their subjects, but could also facilitate an emancipatory politics of self-representation through photography, constituting a challenge and not only the discursive regimes and ideologies which underlie dominant aesthetics.