Why disposable cameras? On participatory photography as a research tool

One of the most distinctive elements of this project is the use of disposable cameras as a research instrument. Not smartphones. Not digital cameras. Disposable cameras — the kind you buy at a drugstore, wind manually, and can’t preview.

This choice is methodological, not nostalgic.

The inverted photovoice design

Standard photovoice gives participants cameras at the start of a research process and asks them to document their world. We invert this sequence. Cameras are given after an initial in-depth interview, with a specific prompt: photograph the tensions between how your life appears and how it is actually experienced.

Participants keep the camera for two weeks. Then we meet again — this time to develop the film together and analyze the images in a return interview.

Why disposable cameras specifically?

No metadata. Smartphone photos carry GPS coordinates, timestamps, and device IDs. For communities navigating stigma and institutional visibility concerns, this is not a trivial issue.

Intentionality. With only 27 frames, every shot is a decision. The scarcity creates a different relationship to the act of photographing — more deliberate, more considered.

The ritual of development. There is something irreversible about a disposable camera. You cannot delete. You cannot preview. The act of developing the film — waiting, not knowing — adds a dimension of encounter with one’s own images that digital photography eliminates.

Democratizing the gaze. The disposable camera is a familiar, non-intimidating object. It does not signal expertise or equipment. In research settings where power imbalances are already significant, this matters.

What we are asking participants to see

We are not asking about poverty. We are asking about appearance and experience — about the gap between how a household presents itself to the world and how daily life is actually felt. This framing allows participants to engage with their own situation without the stigma that poverty language carries.

The photographs, analyzed together in the return interview, become a third voice in the conversation — neither the researcher’s interpretation nor the participant’s verbal account, but something that emerged from their own deliberate gaze.