The Power of a Camera: Fieldwork Experiences From Using Participatory Photovoice

Conducting primary data collection can be a fulfilling and interesting adventure producing significant learning experiences particularly for early career researchers. However, fieldwork marred with complex challenges frustrations, especially if conducted in dynamic politically sensitive environments highly vulnerable urban populations. This paper contributes to advances academic scholarship on the social sciences. Drawing from first author’s doctoral experiences, we share our reflections application of photovoice method researching street traders Harare, Zimbabwe. We engage different issues that researchers could consider photovoice, marginalized populations like traders. These include dealing managing multiple ethical dilemmas, content-quality conundrum, exploring ‘missing’ photographs handling ‘leftover’ photographs, conflictual council-street trader relations, building rapport, ensuring participant commitment, joint interpretation, co-construction meaning methodological benefits using To best knowledge, this is reflects use Global South cities, hope insights presented here will useful future working similar topics.