Another form of documentary imaging is participatory photography projects which are a grassroots approach to documentary photography. Such projects allow members of the community, who have often been the subjects of documentary photography, to experience individual and collective empowerment by engaging in the creation of their own photo stories, that depict their life from their own point of view.
Participatory Photography was first used by the worker-photography movement in Europe and America in the 1920s and 1930s ‘to promote international relief for Russia’s famine’ document the rise a fascism in Germany and record the working conditions of the factory, railway, dockland and countryside workers in America. (Braden, 1983 p. 9) The idea is to put the camera into the hands of those who were traditionally the subjects of the photographer, and let them record their own predicament. This form of documentary photography has mostly been used for the benefit of an oppressed or disadvantaged group of people.
YAK and Family Planning Victoria was funded by the City of Melbourne to create a photographic arts project. The YAK members took photos and created a series of images that expressed what it is like to be young and same sex-attracted in Melbourne in 2007. As professional photographer, I worked with the young people to develop the theme, teach photography skills and produce a documentary slide show of their work.
