Using photovoice with sex workers: The power of art, agency and resistance

Abstract

Situated within an arts-based research framework, photovoice method was utilized with women working in diverse aspects of the sex industry. The purpose of this project was to understand sex workers' lived experiences through their own artistic self-representation. This supports the acknowledgement of individual strengths, skills, visions, and voice. Another goal was to provide opportunities for group dialogue, engagement in community education, and activism through art. The findings from this study have implications for furthering our understanding of the lives of sex workers. Specifically, attention is given to the role of intersectionality as informing the lived experiences of sex workers. Findings from this study also highlight sex workers' shared experiences of stigma and the use of photography as an act of resistance to this stigma. This project confirms how empowerment comes about through the arts. Using photovoice method with sex workers affirms agency, self-representation, voice, and choice in sex work. KeywordsArts-based research, empowerment, photography, photovoice, sex work, visual methodsThe ways in which sex workers 1 are often studied and represented socio-politically and academically do not always take into account their voices, subjective experiences and participation in the process. This can contribute to the stereotyping and stigmatization of sex workers, while social science research is consistently being done on sex workers instead of with them. This research study moves beyond a traditional qualitative research approach by implementing the methodology of photovoice with women working in the sex industry. Through the use of photovoice, sex workers utilized visual representation (photography) to generate art, Qualitative Social Work

My Stage: Participatory Theatre with Immigrant Women as a Decolonizing Method in Art-based Research

“…Our interdisciplinary approach to art-based research provides a basis to address the "in-between" spaces of cultural expressions and people's agency, building on the narration and involvement of the research participants (Desyllas, 2014;Foster, 2012;Foster, Deafenbaugh, & Miller, 2018;Määttä, 2017;Sinding, Warren, & Paton, 2014). We approach interaction and creativity in art-based research as being products of specific cultural, social and historical contexts.…”

Innovation in social work research

“…Chapman et al (2014) used photographs to examine the ways in which images function to facilitate difficult discussions and can be used to stimulate shifts in attitudes. In the second paper, Moshoula Capous Desyllas (2014) describes the use of photovoice with sex workers. The author used over 300 photographs together with field notes and journal entries to understand the lived experience of sex work.…”

Innovation and equity in public health research : testing arts-based methods for trauma-informed, culturally-responsive inquiry.

“…However, the literature reveals that photovoice projects often fail to include participants beyond data collection-with researchers conducting subsequent coding, analysis, and publication either alone or with fellow academics (Evans-Agnew & Rosemberg, 2016). More problematically, many academic publications have focused less on community-centered outcomes than on what a given photovoice project reveals about the method's effectiveness for that population (Delgado, 2015;Desyllas, 2014;Bender et al, 2017;Teti et al, 2016;Strack, Magill, & McDonagh, 2004). Such information is relevant almost exclusively to fellow researchers.…”

“…Such information is relevant almost exclusively to fellow researchers. Other publications focus on the new "insider" knowledge that the method generates for outsiders (Desyllas, 2014), rather than on new knowledge that benefits participants and community members themselves. 38 In short, researcher-initiated goals and deliverables are explicit and commonplace in the literature and, to the extent that researchers simultaneously describe photovoice as a community-centered method, the contradiction is problematic.…”

“…While some of these benefits have been mentioned in the literature, they have yet to be fully theorized, tested, or expanded in public health.51 Additional studies that in some way note the photovoice process as having aided the disclosure or discussion of sensitive topics includeDesyllas, 2014;Shankar, 2016; and Simmonds et al, 2015, among others. …”