Hyper-invisibility and visual scrutiny: reflections from photo-narrative research with transgender young persons

Abstract

In recent years, photo-narrative methods have gained popularity as a feminist decolonial research approach. Located within the broader category of participatory action research, photovoice is committed to the democratisation of the research process. It aims to centre previously excluded knowledges and problematises what is considered ‘legitimate’ ways of knowing within the social sciences. As such, photovoice has been utilised across a wide range of studies that are aligned with a social justice agenda. Arising are questions around the burden of representation that is placed on participants; what it means for stories of marginalisation to be put ‘on display’; and the risk involved in disclosing personal experiences when there is a power differential between storyteller and audience. By highlighting complications encountered when conducting a photo-narrative project with transgender young persons in Cape Town, South Africa, this methodologically reflexive article contributes to this conversation. We explore the nuances and complexities that arose when using a methodology that relies heavily on visual data, on a community that experiences intense visual scrutiny daily. As a result, the research focused on participants’ narratives of invisibility and hypervisibility as presented in the data, thus bringing a reflexive stance and interrogation to assumptions of the approach often taken for granted.