Paper short abstract:

This presentation examines how participants' reflexive practice can lead to ‘activate’ images exceeding self-representation to disrupt their own context. I examine image production -in different formats- as a conscious process of self and world-making, as participants create their own biomythography (Lorde, 1996).

Paper long abstract:

This article explores the use of different forms of reflexivity within a collaborative research project, as a device to ‘activate’ the images from the field to the screen. Drawing on a research project centred on exploring autobiographical image-making with people living with HIV in Chile, I suggest that embedding reflexivity within a participatory visual project can lead participants to ‘activate’ images and their’ process of creation.

By activating images, I refer to a type of ethnographic engagement in which participants embrace authorship in ways that are meaningful beyond the research practice, sometimes even leading to disruption of their context. In this project, by embedding reflexivity as an integral part of the process, collaborators ended up challenging silence and invisibility, on which stigma is rooted. The article seeks to invite reflections around the concept of ´activating´ images through reflexivity, so to understand ethnographic image production as a conscious process of self and world-making. Furthermore, this research seeks to contribute to current debates about the status of ethnographic images, research and activism and interventionist forms of visual anthropology.