A Photovoice without Photos: Lessons for Community‑Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and Climate Justice Research

Background and Purpose:

This autoethnography traces the author’s “failed” experience carrying out a photovoice project on the impact of extreme heat on residents of jjokbang-chon, a “slum” housing community in Seoul, South Korea. Photovoice is among the most widely cited Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) methods. Yet in practice, the terms 'community-based' and 'participatory' are frequently invoked in the literature as methodological descriptors rather than genuine commitments, and published research rarely documents what implementing these approaches actually entails. This autoethnography offers a reflexive account of what community-engaged and participatory research actually looks like when put into practice.

Methodology:

This autoethnography draws on the author's experience of initiating a community photography group in collaboration with a local grassroots community organization. However, midway through photovoice, the author made the decision to stop the project, recognizing that the research agenda had begun to center the researcher's priorities over the community's, replicating the very deficit-oriented gaze the project had set out to challenge. Autoethnography was selected as the methodological lens because it treats personal experience as a site of inquiry, one that can reveal broader tensions in how community-engaged research is practiced and understood. Data sources include field notes, personal reflections, and observations gathered throughout the fieldwork period. These were analyzed through iterative reflexive writing, returning repeatedly to key moments and tensions in the field to examine what they revealed about the contradictions between research intentions and practice.

Findings:

The author discovered that the photovoice research agenda had subtly replicated the very deficit-oriented, outsider gaze it sought to critique. When participants were asked to photograph the impact of extreme heat and their living environment, they instead turned their cameras toward flowers, colorful laundry, and the overlooked textures of everyday life. When asked more explicitly to document the experience of heat, participation dropped noticeably, a silence the author initially read as disengagement, but later came to understand as meaningful communication. Drawing on Tuck's (2009) critique on “damage-centered” research gaze, the author came to recognize that participants had been resisting a deficit framing all along, one that the author had imposed without fully realizing it. The author also reflects on the pressure exerted by the grant committee, rooted in positivist epistemology, one that dismissed qualitative observations, interviews, photographs, and community-based approaches as insufficient evidence of rigorous research. This institutional pressure quietly competed with the author's community-centered intentions, shaping research decisions in ways that were not fully recognized until late in the process.

Implications:

The “failed” research endeavor ultimately gave way to an unexpected outcome. The photovoice group became the inspiration for a community-organized photo exhibition advocating for public housing, demonstrating community empowerment. This raises important questions about what 'success' and 'failure' mean in CBPR, and whose priorities define those terms. This autoethnography opens space to think about the broader structural tensions of doing CBPR. Moreover, this paper invites reflection on the structural constraints within which CBPR is practiced, and how researchers can remain committed to community priorities despite them.