Bridging Gaps, Building Relationships—One Photo at a Time
Along with helping people to understand the story behind a picture, conversations about photographs help participants to become acquainted with the person behind the camera. Building interfaith friendships can be a meaningful experience for photovoice participants.
When it’s “I took this photo” and “this is what it meant to me” or “I pulled off the road to do this,” or “my kids are in the picture” and then you learn about their family, or whatever, or their church. Some people took pictures at a church. So, I feel like you learned a lot more about each other personally . . . . I could learn all I want about different faiths and what’s different about them—I learned that in college. But it wasn’t until I actually had faces with like, personal stories with those people where it really changed me more. (Dawn)
While photos may document everything from mundane daily activities to significant life events, they also have the capacity to nurture relationships. As anthropologist Elizabeth Edwards puts it, photographs can act as “relational objects” that occupy “the spaces between people and people, and people and things.”
Photo 1. “In reaching out and joining with others—of a different race, different gender, different age, and possibly a different faith—this little girl demonstrates who we, as people of faith, are called to be and shows us how we are called to live in community” (Kathy).
Establishing relationships on the basis of everyday spiritual and religious routines, meanings derived from a sunset or food, and shared values such as family or health can pave the way for conversations about more difficult topics. Participants’ photographs about the challenges they as people of faith in their community take on a new importance in the context of a friendship. People tend to experience empathy when their friend describes a difficult situation.
A Christian participant in Richmond, for example, spoke with admiration about seeing a Muslim pray in public. When she saw public prayer through her Muslim conversation parthers, she began to understand the challenges and risks involved. Photos helped her see how hard it is to maintain daily prayers as a student or at work, how creative one may have to be to perform ablution in a public bathroom, how difficult it can be to find a suitable place to pray, and how anxious a mother may feel over her brown-skinned teenager praying in public with friends before enjoying a movie at the local multiplex. A sensitive person may be moved by narratives like these, but these real-life stories take on new meaning when they belong to one’s new friends.
Photo 2. “(Inner)Struggle: Cover or not cover?” (Salwa).
Muslims in the US and Canada face unique challenges that many Christians simply do not see or comprehend—or all too often they just do not care about those challenges. Building friendships across religious and cultural differences can foster awareness, understanding, and empathy. But not all challenges are unique and discovering shared difficulties, needs, and concerns can strengthen bonds of friendship and even produce a shared sense of purpose. Not only does one care about their new friend, they care with them.
We see things through different lenses, but we all have the same goal in the end: we just want to make the world a better place. And I think . . . we see different things, but then in the end, it’s still the same thing. Like with homelessness, the fact that the homeless population had such a big appearance in the group was mind-boggling to me. I did not expect everybody to feel the same way. (Israa)
Whatever picture Israa may have been remembering, the meanings she ascribed to it reveal a deep connection with something that mattered to her and others. It is endearing to learn that someone else shares one’s own concerns. Not only do Muslims and Christians care about many of the same things, they also share a higher purpose: as Israa put it, “we just want to make the world a better place.”
Activity 11
In conversation with your interfaith co-conspirator(s), identify photographs that became relational bridges for you. What was it about these photos and narratives that helped to build your friendship? Are there any images that helped you care more deeply about your conversation partner(s)? Did anything emerge as a shared concern? As you identify areas of mutual interest, begin to consider why these needs or concerns exist and what might be done to address them.