Smartphone cameras for the common good.

Photovoice uses photographs to give voice to people and issues in a community. It is used by participants to identify needs, raise awareness, and instigate change. Our process invites people to use their smartphone cameras to take photos of their everyday lives in response to questions. Over a series of several meetings guided by one of our facilitators, participants from different religious traditions discuss their photos and identify shared experiences, needs, and concerns.

Projects culminate in a public photography exhibition, which typically includes an opening night reception. During the reception participants engage in conversations with community members, stakeholders, local leaders, the general public, and the press. This engages the broader community with the important stories and insights of the project.

In the midst of our digital reality where millions of photographs are snapped and shared every day, we seek to use the technology to facilitate meaningful interactions between people from different backgrounds, cultures, religions traditions, and more. This increases acceptance and reduces prejudice.

A new friend has the ability to change our perspective on people like them. The same holds true for gaining a friend from any other religious group. Numerous studies also show that an increase in warmer feelings toward one group leads to warmer feelings toward all groups against which a person was biased.

Since religion is embodied, people bring with them differences including race, class, gender, and political affiliation. As such, opportunities for building interfaith relationships, for example, also helps to bridge other differences and can address a host of challenges related to equity, diversity, and inclusion.

At a time when so much of the public discourse is centered around diversity, equity, and inclusion, religion seems peripheral to the conversation. So, while many embrace the wisdom that our workplaces, schools, and communities are enhanced when people bring their whole selves into every aspect of their daily lives, religion and spirituality are separated from other forms of diversity such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and ability. To complicate matters, religion and politics have come together in ways that amplify deep cultural divides in the United States.

A more robust vision for diversity, equity, and inclusion must include religion and spirituality. People flourish when they are able to bring their whole selves to work, school, and their broader communities. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are also central to thriving organizations, businesses, and communities.

Interfaith engagement involves something more than just talking. Our work helps participants to engage one another across differences in ways that build bridges between individuals and communities. People learn to see and feel the world through one another’s lenses. And this exposure helps to develop empathy and a shared sense of purpose across lines of difference. These experiences are foundational to being able to follow the so-called “Platinum Rule”: Love others as they want to be loved.

Photos help participants start and sustain conversations. They can be used to help people understand unfamiliar objects, activities, and ideas. When someone introduces a snapshot into a conversation, it informs the boundaries of a conversation by helping participants to see what is “fair game” on the basis of what is represented in the frame of the photograph. Differences come into view. By looking with care and intention into other people’s photos, photovoice participants gain empathy, develop a sense of shared purpose, and establish relationships across religious and cultural differences.

While many photographs highlight differences between religious traditions, they can also underscore the ways in which beliefs and practices overlap, rhyme, and resonate. Likewise, conversations about photos can also lead to the recognition that participants possess a common set of concerns arising from the human condition and experience.

These days, everyone is a photographer. If you used your mobile phone to snap a photo in the last week, you have the experience needed to participate. You just need to be willing to use a camera to tell your story. We’ll give you a few pointers during the project. And if you want to get started, check out our blog, “Four Quick Photography Tips.”

Of course!

We hope to bring together a group of people from a wide variety of backgrounds in our work. This could be from explicitly religious communities or from entirely secular ones. The goal is to use photography to explore how our various worldview identities shape our experiences, whatever those identities may be.

Let’s talk to discuss your individual needs and how visual tools might fit into your work. Please email us at collaborate@interfaithphotovoice.org.

A variety of factors shape the budget of a photovoice project. The number of participants, location (online or in person), number of sessions, hospitality, exhibition costs (number of photos, venue rental, reception, promotion), and facilitation needs are among the main considerations. In North America, project budgets range from $5,000 to $25,000 (or more).