The bad and the ugly: ethical concerns in participatory photographic methods with children living and working on the streets of Lima, Peru

Visual methods are particularly well suited for getting at the ways in which children living and working on the street understand their socio-spatial environment, and can bridge gaps between researcher and researched. In this study, adolescents who live and work on the streets of Lima are asked to take photographs, documenting their lives and their socio-spatial environments. While participatory methods such as photovoice can bring children and adolescents into the research process and can provide significant benefits to research and its participants, the introduction of photographic methods with marginalised populations carries with it important ethical concerns. This article explores the various critiques of documentary photography, and ethical concerns that arise when using visual methods, including issues of exploitation and intrusion in research with adolescents living on the streets. It also examines the ways in which researchers must continuously reassess their methodological practices in order to protect the best interests of the participants involved. Notes [1] There is much current debate about the terminology applied to the people, under the age of 18, who make their homes on the streets of the urban landscape (see Verdera 1995 Verdera, F. 1995. El trabajo infantil en el Perú, Lima: Organización Internacional del Trabajo, IEP Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. (Child labor in Peru) [Google Scholar]; Bar-on 1997 Bar-on, A. 1997. Criminalizing survival: Images and reality of street children. Journal of Social Policy, 26(1): 63–78. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Tierney 1997 Tierney, N. L. 1997. Robbed of humanity: Lives of Guatemalan street children, Saint Paul, MN: Pangaea. [Google Scholar]; Mickelson 2000 Mickelson, R. 2000. "Globalization, childhood poverty, and education in the Americas". In Children on the streets of the Americas: Homelessness, education and globalization in the United States, Brazil, and Cuba, Edited by: Mickelson, R. 11–39. London and New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; ADM 2001 Associación por la Defensa de las Minorias (ADM). 2001. Forme estadístico del primer censo de los niños de la calle http://www.geocities.com/adm_peru/estudios.htm [Google Scholar]; Panter-Brick 2002 Panter-Brick, C. 2002. Street children, human rights and public health: A critique and future directions. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31: 147–71. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). While I am aware of the problematics surrounding the use of this term, for the purposes of this study the term street child is understood as a child or adolescent who has limited or inconsistent contact with family and whose major form of subsistence is garnered from the street. [2] The participants in this study, along with most of the children and adolescents who live and work on the streets of Lima, experience frequent transitioning between the street, their homes, various casa-hogares throughout Lima, as well as various juvenile detention centres or jail. It is therefore important to remember that these indicators are not fixed, as children may leave the street, enter a casa-hogar, and stop using drugs, for example, for brief or extended periods of time. [3] All participants are given pseudonyms. [4] The Bowery, in Rosler's own words, is 'an archetypal skid row', one which has been the intrigue of many documentary photographers (Rosler 1993, 303). [5] I have purposely chosen not to publish the photographs discussed in this article as their publication may compromise the dignity of the participants involved. Furthermore, while it is possible to conceal participants' identities through the use of blurring techniques, it is my concern that these techniques serve to objectify and dishonour those they aim to protect.