Vision and Voice: Representations of Welfare Reform

Photovoice is an innovative participation action strategy that enables people to identify, record, and represent - for themselves, other community members, and policy makers - their perspectives on important issues affecting their lives. As a way to include new voices in the research process and to access information about the impact of welfare reform in a different way, the New York Scholar Practitioner Team (see below) decided to include this strategy in their research. Participants included people from focus groups and individual interviews as well as social service workers who have been key collaborators on the project. They were given cameras and asked to photograph scenes in their communities that represent the impact of welfare reform. In describing the images to researchers, community residents and social service workers were able to project not only their voices, but also their visions, of the transformations that have taken place as a result of the new policies.

Community gardens are great. People learn, if they don't already know, how to plant. They can get food in these places. It's also a beautiful place to hang out.
- Resident, East Harlem

The New York State Scholar Practitioner Team was funded by the W.F. Kellogg Foundation. Graduate students were awarded fellowships to participate in making research available to community and advocacy organizations. In addition to Photovoice, the researchers administered 200 surveys and conducted focus groups in upper Manhattan and on the Lower East Side. The research was disseminated through reports, newsletters, community meetings and a mobile participatory photography exhibit.

Members of the New York State Scholar Practitioner Team:

Andrea Queeley supervised the Photovoice Project. Graduate Center Presidential Professor Leith Mullings (PhD Program in Anthropology), who teaches "Anthropology for the Public," directed the New York State Scholar Practitioner Project.

Six women participated in this project, taking photographs from Fall 2001 through Spring 2002. Three of the women were workers in social service agencies in Harlem and East Harlem and three were residents from the Lower East Side, Harlem, and East Harlem. They were asked to take pictures that depict the impact of welfare reform and to explain how a particular image was related to welfare reform or why it was significant.

There is a Mexican lady on 116th Street. It's good food on the street; it's good all the way around. I'd rather have fritura on the street than fritura from Burger King. She's providing food people want to eat, what they're familiar with. She's probably undocumented and she found a way to make money. It's tragic, though, it's really difficult for her. She's busting her butt trying to make a buck. She's working independent but what she's doing is difficult.
- Resident, East Harlem

Research team members accompanied participants, listened to their perspectives on the consequences of this public policy known as 'welfare reform,' and looked through the photographs. Three common themes emerged and were used as the basis upon which the Photovoice exhibit was organized. One theme (titled "Making Work") was related to the impact of 'work' and the welfare reform bill. Participants photographed streets that have been emptied by people presumed to be working due to the mandate to work. Increased activity in the 'informal' economy was also depicted as a consequence of the increased economic insecurity that has been brought about by the policy change.

There are more people going to work. You don't see anybody in the neighborhood. There used to be crowded streets on a sunny day with children playing and people hanging outside. Now, the streets are empty.
- Yvonne, Harlem

A second theme to emerge ("What a Human Needs") was the impact that welfare reform has had on people's ability to satisfy basic human needs such as food, housing, clothing, education, and health care.

At the FDR, there used to be people living under there. There were no gates.... We'd call it a 'shanty town.' People lived in these airplane cargo containers and there used to be a whole lot more containers here. See, there's still someone in this one.
- Shawn,
Lower East Side Resident

They're going to the park. There are so many kids. For me, that's a big class for kindergarten. Kindergarten and pre-K classes have grown because more women have to go to work. We're going to need more schools, more teachers.... Then there are young girls coming up pregnant. They've opened up more programs and classes and there are more kids in the classrooms.
- Shawn, Lower East Side

The homeless sell clothes...we call it Bloomingdale's. It's been happening two or three years. They have good stuff...shoes, hats, picture frames...some stolen, some junk. The sell it for a dollar or two. About every two weeks, these garbagemen come and clean up the street...but within a couple of hours, people have their stuff set up again.
- Nancy, Union Settlement worker, East Harlem

The third theme ("Public Space / People's Place") concerned transformations in public space. Participants were very interested in representing changes in the physical space of the neighborhood or, in some instances, places in the neighborhood that are beautiful and thus contradict stereotypical images of the community.

This is on 106th Street - the Graffiti Hall of Fame....
It's the idea of having art outside and people reclaiming space for everyone to see.
- Resident, East Harlem

Flower cart in East Harlem.

The Photovoice photographs were exhibited at forums held in May and June 2002, including:

The photographs are now on exhibit in the office of New York City Councilman Bill Perkins. In addition, they were reproduced for the cover of The Impact of Welfare Reform on Two Communities in New York City, a report published by the New York State Scholar Practitioner Team in 2002 (New York: The Graduate Center of the City University of New York).

The Photovoice concept was developed by Caroline C. Wang
(PI, Assistant Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education at the School of Public Health, University
of Michigan), and Mary Ann Burris.

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last modified 3.6.03
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