PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP

Abstract
The goal of this project was to analyze the impact of photojournalism as a research method to understand how photojournalism can be an effective means of empowerment, self-expression, and form of communication. The project was sponsored by Viva Nicaragua! (www.nicaraguainternships.org/). Twenty-five community members (mostly women) of the barrio community named Solidaridad in Granada, Nicaragua participated in a 6-week photo workshop.

Solidaridad, a social housing project located on the edges of Lake Cocibolca, is home to over 200 families who have worked and struggled to build their community. Over five years ago, several homeless families from Granada moved onto the land that is now Solidaridad and constructed makeshift shacks out of plastic, tin, and whatever scrap material they could find. Together they faced many hardships including police evictions and flooding. Their need for dignified housing outweighed their difficulties and their desires for better lives kept them together.

Organized and with the assistance of The Casa de la Mujer Granada (AMNLAE), the local government, and Spanish and French organizations, they received economic support to build their community. Today 250 families have received title to their land and have constructed their own homes. Currently, families now have homes that are safe to reside in and people no longer fear the rains in addition to living in more sanitary conditions.

Solidaridad is a community of hardworking and proud people that demonstrates the power of organization and working together to achieve a goal that you believe in and that is bigger than yourself. Today it is a well-established neighborhood that as a community have been through and achieved a great deal. Additionally, these individuals continue to work diligently for a better future.

The participants within this project were taught basic concepts and principles of design of photography. They were lent digital cameras and were instructed to take photos of whatever they like as long as it is through the perspective of the following three questions and detailed within their reflections:

• What is your life in Nicaragua like?
• What is good about your life? (What are the positive aspects?)
• What should change? (What are the challenges?)

Every session the participants would reflect on their photos and expand on how they answered the above questions. These reflections were later used as part of the description to the photos selected and that are presented here within this exhibit. The community-based participatory research approach allowed for the participants themselves to tell their own stories of the significance behind their lived experiences. They had the opportunity to express themselves and were give a voice to shed light on their daily realities as they saw them – not by what others projected onto them.

The results are two products, one being this exhibit of images and reflections that were self-selected by the participants to be shared with the Granada Nicaraguan community at Tres Mundos (August 17 – 28, 2009) and within the barrio Solidaridad (August 29 – September 12, 2009), in addition to the production of postcards to be sold as a means of sustainable fundraising for youth programming within the barrio Solidaridad.