Mission
PhotoVoice’s mission is to bring about positive social change for marginalised communities through providing them with photographic training with which they can advocate, express themselves and generate income.
PhotoVoice is an award-winning international charity; its projects empower some of the most disadvantaged groups in the world with photographic skills so that they can transform their lives. Through establishing in-field photojournalism workshops its projects enable those who are traditionally the subjects of photography to become its creator. Through photography these individuals find confidence in their voices and are enabled to speak out about their challenges, concerns, hopes and fears.
PhotoVoice projects span four continents, assisting refugees, street children, orphans, HIV/ AIDS sufferers and special needs groups. Internationally the organisation provides the platform for PhotoVoice groups to exhibit and market their work and to inspire change. It also provides long-term support for individuals to pursue careers in their local photographic industries.
PhotoVoice always works in partnership with other international organisations and local community organisations.
Click here to view PhotoVoice's Statement of Ethical Practice
Philosophy
Today - more than any other time in history - images bombard and envelop us. Television, print and the Internet unceasingly present images of people to emulate or help… historical icons to remember… products we need. It’s within this new world of constant visual imagery, and the need for shock-value or aesthetic beauty, that photojournalism today must compete; to make a single image stand out and to get us to take the image – and what it is depicting – seriously.
With visual saturation comes indifference. Many of the images we witness of war or famine, disease or extreme difficulty no longer touch us - the people depicted are elsewhere, their plight irrelevant to our lives. Rarely do we have the opportunity to get close to these “static” people, to really glimpse their lives, to see them as active individuals with views and opinions rather than as helpless victims. This is what PhotoVoice can achieve.
No picture, of course, depicts ‘truth’. A photo simply reflects reality - a moment of time bordered and framed, shot by an individual and singled out by another. PhotoVoice projects enable people in need to document their lives, as only they can really know them. In doing so these projects channel the unique subjectivity of the participants into a direct and powerful form of human communication.
In truth, PhotoVoice projects enlarge the lives of its participants…and ours, too. Through witnessing the daily challenges of select groups as they see them, we get closer to truly understanding their lives and needs, and are perhaps moved ourselves to help bring about change.
The images produced by PhotoVoice groups offer extraordinary insights into ways of life, captured by the very people that live, fight and challenge them on a daily basis.
