Learning from another project

In September I was commissioned to document the lives of people involved at two community businesses in Brighton and Hove. The project arrived just as I started work on this one, and it was good timing because it reminded me of some important lessons.

When someone turns up anywhere with a camera a few things can happen. People sometimes get excited and want their picture taken, more often than not, people are shy, possibly angry at the possible intrusion. Some might think I’m a journalist looking for a juicy story, or, with my recent projects, that I’m a photographer out on a poverty safari, looking for the most extreme angles about a council estate.

So much of this can be handled with good communication, but, no matter how hard you try, that communication can be missed by someone.

One of the things I realised very early on when doing this is that I have to work really hard to quickly put people at ease and possibly even trust me. I don’t have an exact plan for this, because it’s really just about being honest and human. It probably helps that I lived in East Brighton for 20 years, although I’m sure people might get sick of hearing that story, because I don’t live there now, so I am not living in their community. I always prepare what I call an information sheet, which is all about getting informed consent from participants. It explains why the project is happening, what their involvement entails and what the outcome might be.

When I first started doing the work on community businesses I turned up at The Bevy community pub, and one of the first stories I heard was about a photographer that had taken some pictures, and without permission, put large prints of them in a very public space in the centre of Brighton. I only heard one side of this story, but if it’s true, this is the kind of thing that stops good work from happening. It meant my job was doubly hard gaining trust, it probably meant some people didn’t allow me to photograph them.

For me, doing this kind of work is about honouring the people you are working with, putting their needs first, way before mine as an ‘artist’ or ‘storyteller’.

Here’s a talk I gave about the project.

Spent the morning with Tanya doing a walking interview

This was the second session with Tanya. We'd already walked around the area she lived and worked, and today we went slightly further afield. I have decided to let the walk guide the interview rather than arrive with a bunch of pre-planned questions. I'm looking forward to listening back to the stories, and starting phase two, which will be setting up Tanya with a camera to document her life for a week.

Grenfell survivors document life

 This is a fantastic project by residents from or nearby Grenfell. It's a project supported and curated by Juergen Teller and ID magazine that puts power into the hands of the people directly affected by Grenfell. 

My first thought, when I read about this, was what insight can we get from these images, the process the photographers went through, and how can that be made an important part of the official review process into the disaster.

Photography Kieron Debruyne

I am not working somewhere where there has been a disaster. I am working in a place a bit like the estate Grenfell is on, where residents struggle to be heard. Grenfell is the most extreme example of humans having a voice, but it not being listened to. This project, and a lot of my other work is in part about changing this. 

Find out more 

Starting fieldwork

I'm in the process of planning for the first fieldwork session with my first participant. I wanted to share some of the ideas I'm exploring when it comes to actually supporting the participants in documenting their lives.

On past projects, I've used things like disposable cameras to change the perspective of gathering and documenting from myself to the participants.  With this project, I wanted to add to that with a whole bunch of other tools and ideas. It would be all too easy for me to stick with what I know best, photography and sound, but, I want to go way beyond that.

At the moment, the plan is to invite each participant to take me on a walk around the significant places in their life. As we wander, I will capture our conversations and the stories about the places we visit. This will be my first considerable contact, and I hope will give both the participant and myself and chance to talk about where our collaborative research might lead us, and how we might do it.

Here are some of the things we are going to experiment with.

A conversation with James Hopkirk

I recently had an interesting conversation with journalist James Hopkirk. He's been working on a project called Lambeth: Living with the cuts since 2015.

He told me about how the project started, and lot's of common themes came up between our work. We spoke about finding the right way to work with vulnerable people, how to do that in an ethical way and the importance of taking time to build relationships.

We talked a little about our role in this kind of work. I mentioned my slight nervousness about feeling like an outsider even though I lived in the area my project will be happening for 20 years. James suggested, maybe even stated, that my project shouldn't be a fly on the wall, and that my relationship with the place was critical to the story. He said I have to be in the work.

It's something I've become slightly more comfortable with over the past 12 months, getting in touch with my voice and opinion in all of the stuff I am uncovering. But that is still a work in progress.

James mentioned two projects I should check out, one by Robert Clayton called 'Estate', the other by Mikhael Subotzky called Ponte City.

Layers

"The largest part of photography is the subject matter.
The next largest part is the approach.
The next largest part is the technique.
The next largest part is the equipment.” — @stewartbrand

— jason sussberg (@friendofdurutti) November 22, 2017

Storytelling for Policy Change: promise and problems

One of the hopes of this project is that the work has an impact on individuals lives as well as the bigger picture, society and the policymakers. It's a lofty ambition I know, which is why this is an R&D project itself.

I found this post all about a workshop in which academics and scientists debate the power of storytelling to create more impact in their work.

I suggest you read the whole post, but here are some of Paul Cairney's key themes:

• The balance between effective and ethical storytelling, accepting that if a story is a commodity it can be used by people less sympathetic to our aims, and exploring the ethics of using the lens of sympathetic characters (e.g. white grandparents) to make the case for marginalised groups.
• This ethical dimension was reinforced continuously by stories of vulnerable storytellers and the balance between telling their story and protecting their safety.
• The importance of context: the same story may have more or less impact depending on the nature of the audience; many examples conveyed the sense that a story with huge impact now would have failed 10 or 20 years ago and/ or in a different region.
• The importance of tailoring stories to the biases of audiences and trying to reframe the implications of your audience’s beliefs (one particularly interesting example was of portraying equal marriage in Ireland as the Christian thing to do).
• Many campaigns used humour and positive stories with heroes, based on the assumption that audiences would be put off by depressing stories of problems with no obvious solution but energised by a message of new possibilities.
• Many warned against stories that were too personal, identifying the potential for an audience to want to criticise or fix an individual’s life rather than solve a systemic problem (and this individualistic interpretation was most pronounced among people identifying with right-wing parties).
• Many described the need to experiment/ engage in trial-and-error to identify what works with each audience, including the length of written messages, choice of media, and choice of ‘thin’ stories with clear messages to generate quick attention or ‘thick’ stories which might be more memorable if we have the resources to tell them and people take the time to listen.

Guardian - I benefited from social mobility – and I still feel like a permanent outsider

Crossing Britain’s class divisions has never been easy. There are plenty of traps for people who grew up with chips, not coriander

Read the piece