PEACE PHOTOGRAPHY
‘Peace Photography: A Guide’ explores localised, participatory, and community-engaged peace photography methods where people use images and image-making to foster peace, dialogue, and non-violent civil resistance. Drawing on academic research and practice from around the world, it critically discusses the ethics and practicalities of visual peace methods and features 26 peace photography activities. We hope this resource will be useful for community, peace, and visual practitioners and researchers who are interested in exploring how photography can be harnessed to transform conflict, navigate difference, foster healing and agency, build visibility and connection, and spark peace imaginaries.
It is co-authored by Tiffany Fairey (product of her Leverhulme Fellowship research project Imaging Peace) and Ingrid Guyon and draws on contributions from peace photography practitioners and projects in 21 countries with diverse experiences of peace and conflict. The images of these projects are featured throughout. You can view these projects here.
Cameras can be used in my community to bring two groups who refuse to be in the same room together to discuss and explore their issues through a camera or to communicate from a distance until they are ready to meet and sit down in the same room.
A camera can allow people who cannot express their feelings verbally to do so creatively through an image. It can allow the inner and outer emotional and spiritual journey of an individual or of a group within a community.
When you explore your memories, your feelings, and emotions, or your local area through the lens of a camera, your eyes and mind magically open and discover what was hidden just inside you or in front of you. You can suddenly connect to your neighbourhood; you observe it as an outsider while being an insider; you can witness the little changes that have taken place in your daily life.
Without reconciliation and dialogue, there can’t be any peace. Images open the hidden stories and foster dialogue and profound and sincere conversations instantly and in a responsible and respectful manner.
In a post-conflict zone or displaced or conflicted communities, people often focus their attention on what is not right, what has not changed, and what has not improved, generating a culture of despair.
We have delivered projects with the Colombian diaspora in Europe (International Catalan Institute of Peace, Mujer Diaspora, Unidad de Victimas de Colombia) and in Northern Ireland with Beyond Skin.
Photography can be used a tool for integration, as a way to express ourselves and reflect collectively about what affects us. Photography can bring us together to be stronger
— Aldair, Colombia
IMAGINE PEACE
Collaborative portraits that transform memories of migration and armed conflict of Colombian women from the diapora into memories of peace, stories of self-expression and gender empowerment.
Being photographed gave me a platform to share internal feelings that I previously felt were unimportant. It began a process of self-analysis within me that continues to this day.
— Camila
TEJIENDO VIDAS
Check out our recent online project working with a therapist, the body, and photography to transform stories of war into stories of hope and resilience with Colombian victims of the armed conflict living in Catalonia, Spain. An inspiring project funded by Unidad de Victimas de Colombia and organised by the Colombian Consulate in Barcelona that has left footprints in all our hearts.
NORTHERN IRELAND
We have been working collaboratively with Beyond Skin in Northern Ireland on different projects using creative image-making, participatory and collaborative photography, and public exhibitions as tools for dialogue, community cohesion, disrupting, questioning, having fun, and creating in with Jean Paul II Youth Club and Belfast Exposed with Imagine Peace in Belfast, FUTyoURES project with Colombia, Grow Wild, Cookstown Holy Trinity College, Conversation Festival in Mount Stewart, and Sowing of Life.
Read Ingrid Guyon’s blog about her first visit to Northern Ireland here.
We are also taking part in the Belfast Exposed ‘Healing Through Photography’ Conference in 2023 and 2025.
Peace Photography Begins
We ran our first peace photography workshop as part of the Build Peace conference in Bogota, Colombia, in 2016.
“I really enjoy the creative space you created and the icebreakers. I have made more friends in 2 hours of your workshop than in the 3 days of the conference and even though I was the only non-English speaker in my group, we could easily communicate.’ Zack Tilton
