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Anna Blackman
Co-founder and Executive Director
PhotoVoice
Unit 304, Colourworks
2 Abbot Street
London E8 3DP
Tel: +44 (0) 207 254 4087
Fax: +44 (0) 207 275 9914
Email: anna@photovoice.org
Website: www.photovoice.org

Location

PhotoVoice is an international non-profit organisation, based in London, UK. Our mission is empowerment – to support people in need around the world to use photography as a medium to speak out about their concerns, hopes and fears. Working alongside both international organizations and local partners, we provide in-field photojournalism workshops for those living on the fringes of society. Internationally we provide the platform for these groups to exhibit and market their work.
The website www.photovoice.org provides the global forum for the practitioners and beneficiaries of participatory photography projects around the world through its closed forum.

PhotoVoice work to

Set up long-term photographic projects, training of marginalised and disadvantaged groups worldwide in photojournalism skills
Provide a network and forum for participatory photography projects around the world
Provide short-term training and consultancy to other development organisations wishing to introduce participatory photography into their work
Promote the images produced in participatory photography projects through the web, newsletters, mainstream media, development media, events and exhibitions

Give a voice to those who are too often ignored or silenced
Provide a unique means for expression and creativity
Encourage participants to gain confidence in their capabilities and their role in civil society
Enable participants to become advocates for change

Images from PhotoVoice projects

Provide alternative and more direct perspectives than images traditionally used in mainstream media
Raise awareness on local and international levels, among both policy makers and the general public
Can be used in school and NGO educational packs and resources
Can be used as a form of inter-cultural communication between participants from different projects and countries
Raise money for the continuation and expansion of PhotoVoice projects and to generate income for the photographers themselves

By giving photographic training to the politically and economically voiceless, PhotoVoice enables its constituents to advocate for change themselves. Locally, their exhibits challenge the stigma and stereotyping of their daily lives. Internationally, their photos raise consciousness about the millions who live on the fringes of society. In truth, PhotoVoice projects enlarge the lives of its participants…and ours, too. Through witnessing the daily challenges as they see them, we get closer to truly understanding their lives and needs and are perhaps moved ourselves to help bring about change.
Long-term PhotoVoice projects have been set up in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, Vietnam and the United Kingdom, training over 300 participants to date. We have worked with refugee groups, the homeless, street and working children and women living with HIV. Their images offer extraordinary insights into ways of life, captured by the very people that live fight and challenge them on a daily basis.

PhotoVoice was built on a partnership between Anna Blackman and Tiffany Fairey which originated while both were studying for MA’s in Social Anthropology at Edinburgh University (Scotland). Both, with a background and interest in documentary photojournalism, integrated photography into their MA dissertations, independently establishing the Street Vision project in Vietnam and the Rose Class Project in Nepal in 1998. These two projects became the two founding initiatives of the PhotoVoice organisation.
PhotoVoice was registered as a company limited by guarantee in March 2000. Company no: 3938488. Having secured a strong body of trustees PhotoVoice worked with pro-bono assistance from the legal firm Dechert from 2002 to secure charity status. This was granted on 19th March, 2003.

Success stories
PhotoVoice work has been exhibited in over forty locations including Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi (Vietnam), Kinshasa and Bukavu (DR Congo), Kathmandu and the Bhutanese refugee camps (Nepal), Kabul (Afghanistan), across London and the UK, in Ireland, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Australia and in New York and Boston, USA.
PhotoVoice images have also been published and cited in numerous media including: The Guardian, The London Evening Standard, The Observer, The Telegraph, The Independent, BBC World Service, on BBC 2, BBC Online, and The National Geographic Channel (UK), In The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, UN Special Session on the Rights of the Child Daily Newspaper and on CNN (USA). Other coverage worldwide includes local and national print, radio and television in Vietnam, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal and France. Publications include Umbrage Editions/ UNAIDS ‘Pandemic Facing Aids’

PhotoVoice

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