Auteurship and Image‐Making: A (Gentle) Critique of the Photovoice Method

This article critiques digital photovoice, a method deployed by social activists, developmentalists, and anthropological researchers. I argue that the uncritical use of photovoice methods (1) has allowed a reinvigoration of a positivist orientation toward image authenticity and (2) inadvertently supports hegemonic regimes of value. To revitalize photovoice as a method, I argue that practitioners must view their project as an aesthetic one, in which image‐makers are considered auteurs producing realities. I provide an example from my fieldwork in Adavisandra village near Bangalore, using one of my students’ photographs to consider how representations of her life change when we take her aesthetic‐auterial sensibility seriously.