Urban Youth and Photovoice Visual Ethnography in Action

The past decade brought forth a wave of excitement and promise for researchers and practitioners interested in community practice as an approach based on social justice principles and an embrace of community participatory actions. But, effective community practice is predicated on the availability and use of assessment methods that not only capture and report on conditions, but also simultaneously set the stage for social change efforts. This research, therefore, serves the dual purpose of generating knowledge and also being an integral part of social intervention. Research done in this way, however, requires new tools. Photovoice is one such tool - a form of visual ethnography that invites participants to represent their community or point of view through photographs, accompanied by narratives, to be shared with each other and with a broader community.

Urban Youth and Photovoice focuses on the use of this method within urban settings and among adolescents and young adults - a group that is almost naturally drawn to the use of photography (especially digital and particularly in today's era of texting, facebook, and instagram) to showcase photovoice as an important qualitative research method for social workers and others in the social sciences, and providing readers with detailed theoretical and practical account of how to plan, implement, and evaluate the results of a photovoice project focused on urban youth.

Melvin Delgado, PhD, Professor of Social Work & Chair of Macro-Practice, Boston University School of Social Work.

Section 1: Setting the Context
Chapter 1: Overview
Chapter 2: Arts-Based Social Justice: Research, Education and Social Action
Chapter 3: Youth Development & Photovoice

Section 2: Photovoice as a Research Method
Chapter 4: Values Guiding Photovoice
Chapter 5: Conducting a Photovoice Project
Chapter 6: Approaches and Challenges for Analyzing Results
Chapter 7: Ethical Considerations

Section 3: Voices from the Field and Epilogue
Chapter 8: Camp CAMERA Case Study

Section 4: Lessons Learned and Future Directions
Epilogue
References