Participatory Photography Continued
17th March 2011
The third session of my Transition project with Halton Borough Council went very well. In this session we were beginning the editorial and captioning process. We asked each participant to select 20 of their favourite images, including the ones that they had taken from the storyboards the week before, to be shown to the group on the projector screen. Normally, I would not ask each participant to preselect their images, but work with them individually to make an edit. However, due to the large size of the group and the time restriction of the session, this was the only way we could get the work done in the time.
As we moved through each participant’s work, I would ask them questions about their selected images. Firstly I asked them why they had chosen that particular image, then what it meant to them and finally what emotions or ideas the picture could represent. This kind of work is aimed at developing literary understanding of images and looks to lay the foundations for the captioning in the final session. One participant in particular gave some amazing insights to his images, and left all the adults in the room astounded at his depth of analysis. When he showed us one image of his bedroom with all his video games, toys and dvds staked up in a pile, I asked him what he thought this might represent. He firstly stated that they could be a clue to him, his likes and hobbies. However, he then went on the expand further on this and said that the image could also be a representation of our society, where material wealth is an indication of success and happiness. In addition to this he also added that the image could be a representation of changes in life: like us, these object were made, had a use of period of time and then were consigned to history, as we are when we die.
Before this session I had been worried than an activity like this would be difficult with such a large group. However, the participants were all very keen to engage with the activity and feed into group discussions. With the help of the support staff we were able to get round every group member and build up insightful, focused bodies of work on the topic of transition.
The next and final session is tomorrow. I have printed all of the participants’ selected work and we will be making scrap books for these images and adding cations to them.
