We Have Arrived

There is an old saying that a picture is worth one thousand words. The origins of the phrase are elusive and, in our view, inconclusive, but the longevity of the trite phrase can be credited to its undeniable truth: Images can communicate volumes. This special issue of Departures in Critical Qualitative Research focused on advancing photovoice methodology to better account for Blackness, Black people, and Black epistemologies within the approach. Black scholars have situated the utility and power of marrying imagery and inquiry before photovoice was coined and developed. As Black scholars, we believe you cannot get to the present or the future without going through the past. As we conclude this issue, we situate the work of Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot as integral to the process of bringing art and science together and want to acknowledge her in this work as we turn toward the future.Lawrence-Lightfoot (1983) introduced portraiture as a way to capture the complexity of human experience in a narrative form that blends both imagery and inquiry. Portraiture combines systematic, empirical research with narrative and imagery, aiming to tell the story of individuals, groups, or institutions while capturing the context, meaning, and culture that shape them. The approach intentionally merges the rigor of qualitative research with the aesthetic sensibilities of storytelling, using artistic depictions and reflections to construct a portrait.Over 20 years after its initial introduction, Lawrence-Lightfoot wrote a retrospective on the development of portraiture. One of the core themes in Lawrence-Lightfoot’s (2005) work is the power of paradox. She highlights how portraiture embraces contradictions, capturing both the beautiful and painful aspects of human experience. Lawrence-Lightfoot also emphasizes the duality of the portraitist’s voice, which is both central and peripheral in the work, as well as the tension between documenting reality and shaping the narrative. She notes, “The portraitist seeks to document and illuminate the complexity and detail of a unique experience or place, hoping that the audience will see themselves reflected in it” (2005, p.13). The article underscores that portraiture is not only a method of inquiry but also a form of intervention in people’s lives, with significant ethical responsibilities. These themes are intriguingly aligned with many of the arguments and assertions offered in this volume about the auspiciousness of Blackness combined with photography and, ergo, photovoice.Photovoice, first introduced in 1992, was developed as a tool for empowering marginalized populations, particularly women in China’s Yunnan Province. Developed by Wang and Burris (1997), the purpose of photovoice was to address the lack of representation and voice among rural women by empowering them to capture their lives through photography. Participants documented their needs and challenges using photographs, accompanied by written captions that contextualized the images from their perspectives. In this way, photovoice encompasses arts-based research (through images), narrative research (through narrating the photos via captions), and participatory action research (as a community-engaged method designed to foster change and transformation).While powerful, something has been amiss in photovoice. As Black scholars and the various onto-epistemological contexts that comprise our experience and knowing, the way we come to images, how our lives have been constructed and impacted by images, and how we portray images are distinct. To invoke Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis (1997), “charting the development of the portrait, and the shaping of narrative, blending literary principles, artistic resonance, and scientific rigor… portraiture, then, is about boundary crossing” (p. xv). A Black onto-epistemological frame in concordance with photovoice is also boundary-crossing and, perhaps more importantly, boundary-blurring. The authors in this volume have offered their reflections, perspectives, and retrospectives as Black people engaging in the photographic landscape, taking up essential topics related to Blackness and photovoice.Terah J. Stewart et al. opened the issue with a moving historical conversation about the role of imagery, photos, and visuals in depicting Blackness in “Toward an Endarkened Photovoice Methodology: On Blackness, Imagery, Imaginaries, and Research.” Using endarkened feminist epistemology (Dillard, 2006), Stewart et al. illustrate the empowerment-degradation dialectic apparent in past depictions of Black people and Blackness. The authors call for endarkened photovoice methodology as a mechanism for encouraging Black subjectivity, memory, and listening within photovoice methodological processes for those who seek to center research for, by, and with Black people. Next, Breeden et al.’s article, “Body-ody-ody: Centering the Case of Serena Moon and Endarkened Photovoice,” makes one ponder on how scholars, perhaps, have already been doing endarkened photovoice. The authors describe and demonstrate the efficaciousness of applying Dillard’s (2006) endarkened feminist epistemology (EFE) to read photovoice-derived images and narratives. Through compelling photos and dialogue with a co-researcher in the #FatOnCampus photovoice project, Serena Moon, they advocate for the use of EFE as a transformative force for Black scholars seeking to enhance their meaning-making of the experiences with Black people and Black communities.In “Black to the Future: Traversing Digital Time and Space Toward a Critical Race Technomethodology,” by Brown et al., the reader continues the journey of exploring what it means to engage Blackness in visual methodologies research using constantly evolving media technologies like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly, Twitter). Through an Afrofuturist, digital Black feminist, and Black cybercultures theoretical lens, Brown beautifully weaves together the perspectives to systematically review the literature dedicated to digital methodologies for critical consciousness. Through their analysis, Brown et al. scaffold a future for digital Black ecosystems using critical race technomethodology to bridge discursive gaps between disciplines.Moving further into the issue, in Phelps-Ward et al.’s article, “Research Teams for Liberation and Worldmaking: Engaging a Black, Queer, Feminist Lens,” the authors usher the reader into the work of engaging photovoice from a space that honors Black ways of knowing, being, and doing. With a focus on the context of research teams, the authors use Black feminist epistemologies to advocate for research team leadership and work that protects the sacred, resists the neoliberal academy, and affirms team members’ humanity. The authors offer strategies for research teams that hope to mobilize research teams dedicated to liberation within and outside of the boundaries of college and university campuses. Finally, in “Reckoning Through Photovoice: A Collective Journey Toward (Endarkened) Transformative Scholarship,” the original members of Clemson University’s Action Research Collective— Keneisha L. Harrington, Cherese Fine, Lashia Bowers, Maurice Williams Jr., Laetitia Adelson, Travis C. Smith, Dion Harry, and Robin Phelps-Ward—reflect on their experiences with photovoice using an endarkened feminist epistemological perspective (Dillard, 2006). They highlight the elements of freedom, home, community, and action within their experiences and end with a love letter to all Black folx.The authors in this special issue present striking and groundbreaking work that not only reframes the possibility for an endarkened photovoice, but they also reclaim the often lost narrative about the complicated albeit powerful relationship between Blackness and photography. The authors map and charter the landscape of Black digital ecosystems, argue for multisensory engagement with photos, center humanizing people-centered photovoice research teams, and name the importance of our bodies concerning access to being centered in the visual landscape. Interestingly, they also each invite us to think about the issue of time (read temporality), which is imperative in many qualitative research traditions. When thinking about time and Black people, we are reminded of the work of Brittney Cooper, who argues that if time had a race, it would be white (TED, 2017). Here Cooper lays out a compelling case for the racial politics of time, which is crucial to consider when meditating on Black people and the future, including Black methodologies. She argues,William Faulkner famously said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” But my good friend Professor Kristie Dotson says, “Our memory is longer than our lifespan.” We carry, all of us, family and communal hopes and dreams with us. We don’t have the luxury of letting go of the past. But sometimes, our political conditions are so troubling that we don’t know if we’re living in the past or we’re living in the present. Take, for instance, when Black Lives Matter protesters go out to protest unjust killings of black citizens by police, and the pictures that emerge from the protest look like they could have been taken 50 years ago [emphasis added]. The past won’t let us go. But still, let us press our way into the present. (TED, 2017)As we turn to the future, what does it mean that the past won’t let us go? Cooper’s use of photographic images to make this point is compelling and aligns with many of the arguments made in this issue. Specifically, Raiford (2011) reminds us that photography was once called a mirror with a memory. With this framing, we have to ponder, is it that the nexus of Blackness and photography is necessarily arresting? Or are the images taken by and of Black people simply reflecting an arresting reality?The future of endarkened photovoice will likely reflect and portend what lies ahead for Black people more broadly. The joy and sorrow, the triumph and losses, the empowerment and degradation that is part and parcel of many Black experiences. The opposing and dual nature of this dialectic is not new but important for us to make sense of what is and can be reflected in Black imagery. For example, within Afropessimism there exists a belief that to end antiblackness (the thingification, non-human designation, and suffering of Black people) would require the end of the world (Wilderson, 2021). While Afrofuturism “informs temporality, myth-making, and Black linguistic justice in ways that liberate the construction of Blackness from its marginalization within normalized genres of futurity in ways that are anti-racist” (Jones, 2021, para. 25). This articulates a hope to and through the future away from the difficult and negative aspects of marginalization. Depending on one’s worldview, the outlook for Black people paints a strikingly different picture, as it always has throughout history and across time.The future of endarkened photovoice might also take up the diasporic nature of Blackness and the similar but nuanced realities of Black people globally and when, how, and why images of them are captured or not; and what our collective responses are to them. The war and humanitarian crises in Sudan is an example of something urgent affecting an entire nation of Black people. What does it mean that this issue and the images that have been made available to us have largely gone unnoticed? How does the type of Blackness matter with respect to what kind of image is captured and potentially who cares about it? These are important considerations as we think about the future of endarkened photovoice.Paradoxes abound across this special issue concerning Blackness, Black people, and photovoice, a commonality between the past, present, and future. W. E. B. Du Bois is a significant influence on Lawrence-Lightfoot’s work, particularly his ability to synthesize opposites and embrace interdisciplinary approaches. Lawrence-Lightfoot (2005) reflects,Du Bois captured the interdisciplinary as he moved from social philosophy to empirical sociology to autobiography to political essays to poetry and literature to social activism. He invented a way of being, a point of view, a style of work that quite naturally, dynamically, and organically integrated science, art, history, and activism. (pp. 9–10)Du Bois inspired Lawrence-Lightfoot through duality and paradox. We are similarly inspired and locate endarkened photovoice in this lineage. Like portraiture, endarkened photovoice as a method has the potential to uniquely combine empirical rigor with creative expression, serving dual purposes: being a mirror with memory and, perhaps more importantly, a mirror with a vision toward the future. The future of endarkened photovoice is an urgent one largely due to the reality that, in more ways than we care to name, Black people are out of time. Brittney Cooper asks,In the future, do you see Black people? Do Black people have a future? What if you belong to the very race of people who have always been pitted against time? What if your group is the group for whom a future was never imagined? These time-space clashes between protesters and police, between gentrifiers and residents, don’t paint a very pretty picture of what America hopes for black people’s future…. So if we’re really ready to talk about the future, perhaps we should begin by admitting that we’re out of time. We black people have always been out of time. Time does not belong to us. Our lives are lives of perpetual urgency. (TED, 2017)Such a sentiment is a sobering and perhaps dark reminder. However, as we think about the future for Black imagery, imaginaries, and photovoice, perhaps darkness is what is required. In meditating on the connections between Blackness and photography, we reflect on the critical importance of darkrooms to traditional photography and photograph development. Darkness plays a crucial role in the photographic process, where the absence of light creates the conditions necessary for images to emerge. In the darkroom, film and photographic paper—both sensitive to light—require complete darkness and controlled light to develop properly. This space allows for an alchemical transformation whereby latent images become visible, signifying the importance of the dark in bringing forth clarity and vision. The darkness then becomes a site of creation, allowing photographers to exert control over their medium and to shape the final visual product with precision. The darkroom’s transformative function highlights yet one more paradox, this one specifically inherent in photography: Only through darkness can light be effectively captured, manipulated, and rendered meaningful.Drawing on this metaphor, the symbolic relationship between darkness and Blackness offers a powerful lens through which to explore the epistemologies of Black people and Black ways of knowing. Darkness, often associated with the unknown or the hidden, carries negative connotations in dominant Western discourse; however, within Black traditions, darkness can be reinterpreted as a space of possibility, resilience, and self-determination. In fact, Dillard (2000) reminds us that her use of endarkened was to disrupt the assumption that enlightenment—as language and concept—is inherently good or better. Where endarkened reframes what it means to come to knowing and, more importantly, reclaim our knowing as Black people. Like the darkroom, Blackness has historically been misunderstood (particularly by those who have never developed film in this traditional way), yet it functions as a generative space where creativity, knowledge, and identity are produced and affirmed. Blackness, as with the darkness in photography, holds within it a capacity for both preservation and revelation, embodying a unique epistemic power that challenges conventional narratives of what it means to know, see, and be.As a collective of photovoice researchers, advocates, and enthusiasts, we consider it an honor to be invited to advance photovoice research in new and needed ways. We hope this issue reminds Black scholars that research is about integrating what we glean from the literature, what we learn from others, and the innate essence within us (Dillard, 2006). Black researchers know things and should embrace that knowing. We hope the work offered within gives Black scholars and researchers the permission to endarken their photovoice praxis, while also reminding them that they never needed the permission in the first place.Special Thanks: We would like to thank Dr. Kakali Bhattacharya for her unwavering support as we worked to develop this issue and for providing the space in Departures in Critical Qualitative Research for this project to come to life.