The picture above is a screenshot of a jamboard from our final Photovoice session. We each had time to consider all the photos we’d taken from previous meetings and create a larger narrative from them. You can see questions that came up for us as a group as we brainstormed.
Q: Tell me about your compiled slide. What do the photos mean to you and how do they all connect to each other?
Haley: I picked photos that I thought represented common themes that we stumbled across throughout the program. It seemed like the majority of us were walking through some major life shifts whether it was graduating college, starting a new job, getting married, getting a new puppy, moving, etc. and I wanted my pictures to represent that transient nature. The pictures themselves are of the Rotunda because I just graduated and that was one of my last nights in Charlottesville and I felt it represented the end of an era and a shift in my community post-graduation. My next photo was a picture of me kayaking with my dog at a nature preserve near my parent’s house, also representing a shift in my community as I become a fully independent adult, but at the same time maintain community with my family and where I grew up. My next photo was from an AirBNB that I visited with a friend of mine as a representation of maintaining community while it changes and we no longer live and work in the same space. My next photo was of bread at my family’s dinner table, because I feel like meals are a central point where members of a community come together to share their lives and enjoy one another's company in a way that only breaking bread can enable. The last photo was taken at a park in my new neighborhood. During the program I moved and it highlighted the parts of the community I was excited to explore such as the different outdoor activities that this new location allows me to explore.
Q: What questions/grey areas did your photos/compiled slide bring up for you?
Haley: I think I have questions about how people maintain healthy community after major life shifts. Most of us were currently walking through these changes and so we’re still in the process of learning about what these changes mean for our communities. How do you maintain healthy contact with people after you move? Should you maintain contact? How do you intentionally seek new community? What is the right balance between “new” community and “old” community? How do we create a balance between the different communities in our lives?
Q: What did you discover about yourself, your community, or your life through PhotoVoice?
Haley: I think I discovered that all of our communities involved families, and friends, and hometowns, and school, and work, along with so much more that all come together to form the complete view of our community. Each of these parts of our community come with unique challenges and joys but they are all formative into how we process situations, what we deem as important, and what drives our focus. It is only through examining how these different parts of lives intersect and interact with one another that we get a clear picture of our community.
Q: What question would you like to propose to TH blog readers?
Haley: How has your community adjusted as you’ve walked through life shifts?
Q: What is the biggest takeaway from the Photovoice Experience? How was it overall?
Haley: I think that the biggest takeaway I have is that while we all have different communities most of us could relate in some way or another to the stories shared behind each photo. There are common challenges we all face, and talking about them together was very enlightening as it highlighted the different ways that we react to said situations as well as the emotions that may come up as a result of them.