Photovoice Participatory Action Research Team
Julissa Adames-Torres, LCSW
Adjunct Professor-Research Assistant
Ph.D. Candidate - Adelphi
Shelita Birchett Benash, MSW/interdisciplinary artist
Graduate Research Assistant
Led concept, design, curation, installation, and management of Café Photovoice Permanent & Virtual Exhibitions
IDEATE Integrated & Behavioral Health Fellow - Adelphi
Dr. Chrisann Newransky, PhD
Associate Professor -Principal Investigator
Director, IDEATE Integrated & Behavioral Health Fellowship- Adelphi
Dr. Philip Rozario, PhD
Associate Professor-Principal Investigator
Interim Dean, Adelphi School of Social Work
Rue Silver, MPH
CCBHC Program Manager - Bowen
Hector Ramos
IT Supervisor - Bowen
Vilma Roman, CASAC-T
CCBHC Counselor - Bowen
Rebecca Krakauer, LMSW, MPH
CCBHC Program Director - Bowen
Dr. Salim El Sabbagh, MD
CCBHC Psychiatrist - Bowen
Dr. Shumaia Rahman, DO
CCBHC Psychiatrist - Bowen
Stephanie Lloyd, MA
Photovoice Worldwide Evaluator & Educator
Photovoice Action Research
Photovoice Action Research
“I think it would be a good place (the Café Photovoice Virtual Exhibition website) for social workers actually—Like before they talk to their clients. If they went and took a look at the perspective of the patient before…Or if they had it (Café Photovoice Virtual Exhibition) as a part of their training. Something like that, to look at patient concepts of care and the different fields—So, even though it’s not their particular person, they have a concept of how patients feel, but are not necessarily able to express.”
~Participant Five
The Café Photovoice research methods were adapted to utilize technology during the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Julissa Adams-Torres
Ph.D. Candidate and Adjunct Professor
Research Assistant at Adelphi University School of Social Work
Shelita Birchett Benash
MSW/Interdisciplinary artist/action researcher
IDEATE Behavioral & Integrated Health Fellowship
Graduate Research Assistant at Adelphi University School of Social Work
Led concept, design, curation, installation, and management of the Café Photovoice Permanent Participant Exhibition
Designed and built the Café Photovoice Virtual Exhibition website
Photovoice puts cameras in the hands of people to tell stories that activate social change.
The Photovoice Worldwide Participatory Action Research experience collided with the COVID-19 global pandemic. Health and safety mandated restrictions challenged in-person group interactions, collaboration, and community building. Covid restrictions created opportunities for creative problem-solving and innovations. The Bowen Center built individual pods with computer and audio technology for the Photovoice participants. Through virtual technology, we were provided with even more expansive opportunities with designing the online exhibition where the global community is able to access and engage with the participant photographs, stories, and Bowen Center in an even more inclusive manner. Those who cannot travel to Bowen can still see and be inspired by members of this vibrant and historic Upper Harlem community.
~Shelita Birchett Benash, MSW
How Does Photovoice Work?
Each Café Photovoice participant was given a digital camera that was their’s to keep after the study was completed. The research team met with the participants via Zoom during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers specially created bilingual Spanish and English slides for this Photovoice project where the participants were given picture taking tutorials regarding Photovoice creativity, ethics, and safety.
Photovoice participants and researchers discuss the Photovoice project and process.
Café Photovoice participants share stories about the meanings of their lived experiences through poetry, photomontage, symbols, and metaphors.
Café Photovoice Participant and Research Team Collaboration.
One of the most beautiful aspects of Photovoice Participatory action research is its embedded nature. The participants and researchers work together and communicate throughout a non-hierarchal process of knowledge building with the capacity to break through language and culture barriers.
Photovoice is Ethical Research
The Photovoice Participatory Action Research Team, actively engaged with core social work values and ethics, including cultural humility, cultural competence, commitment, and promotion of the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, communities, and organizations. Photovoice is deeply ethical work rooted in dignity, respect, worth of the person, and informed consent.
The concept for the Café Photovoice Participant Permanent Exhibition began to develop further during those first interview sessions, where the participants shared the photographs and stories of their lived experiences regarding mental health and substance use recovery services at the Bowen Center. The participants shared intimate moments of their lives with family, community, work, nature and the built environment.
“I connected with the complexities of biculturalism and its implications for research.”
Participant Three: “I thought you forgot about me. I was talking about this about a week ago…the frame of the photograph (collage), my mom said she like it. (She said) send it to me to put in the living room…so I sent it.
RA: You sent your collage? Where? To Honduras?
Participant Three: Yes, she (my mother) wanted it.
RA: (To GRA): She sent her frame, her collage to her mom in Honduras
Participant Three: So here, I have my plaque on the dinning table…my mother like it very much.
~Julissa Adames-Torres, PhD Candidate, LCSW- Adelphi
Participant Check-in Interview: Partial Transcribed interview
“Being a member of this research team was one of the most honorable experiences of my professional career, in particular during an unknown time (COVID-19 pandemic). As a researcher, scholar, doctoral candidate, clinician, and member of the LatinX community, I was able to integrate and separate my intersecting identities as I engaged with our participants. Often times facilitating bilingual Spanish-English exchanges, I connected with the complexities of biculturalism and its implications for research. For example, this community based participatory research method allowed me to connect with my researcher positionality and connect with our participants in understanding their lived experiences. The multiple checkins allowed us to further exeamine the short and long-term effects of this project.”
~Julissa Adames-Torres, PhD Candidate, LCSW, Adelphi
“My positionality and intersectionality locate me as an interdisciplinary artist, Adelphi IDEATE Integrated & Behavioral Health Fellow, graduate research assistant, BIPOC MSW student practitioner, and mid-life career evolver continuing the call to service. Leading the design, curation, installation, and management of the “Café Photovoice Permanent Participant Exhibition” at the Bowen Center and designing and building the “Café Photovoice Virtual Exhibition” website, I experienced a dynamic social work professional identity integration across the micro/mezzo/macro continuum. Through the Photovoice methodology, I engaged with core social work values and ethics by co-knowledge building through emergent arts-based research and utilizing technology as an immersive advocacy tool to amplify the voices of vulnerable community members amongst us.
As an artist, I understand aesthetics, and as an MSW student practitioner, I engaged with symbolic interactionist theory within community member interviews, check-ins, and artwork facilitations. These concepts merged as participants were given community leadership awards and experienced seeing their photographed lived experiences presented as gallery art objects.”
~Shelita Birchett Benash, MSW/interdisciplinary artist/action researcher- Adelphi
“I was able to engage with core social work values and ethics by co-knowledge building through emergent arts-based research.”
~Shelita Birchett Benash, MSW/interdisciplinary artist/action researcher- Adelphi
Café Photovoice Community Leadership Award 2022
“I love that thing (Café Photovoice Community Leadership Award). It’s a boost to my self esteem—That’s a proud moment. At the awards ceremony, I didn’t know we were going to get Leadership Awards. I was really happy. That made me feel like there will be a connection to the community with the exhibit.”
~Participant Five
Participant Checkin Interview: Partial transcribed interview
