Potential Impacts
Understanding the potential impacts of photo Interview can help policy teams anticipate the kinds of changes it may support and plan for how these can be recognised and built into ongoing processes. Impacts can occur at multiple levels, from individual awareness to institutional practice.
Intrapersonal change takes place within individuals, involving shifts in knowledge, attitudes, or confidence.
- Awareness and reflection: Photo Interview can prompt residents, stakeholders, or staff to reflect on how biodiversity and land use affect their lives. This can reveal local knowledge and priorities that may otherwise remain hidden in formal consultations.
- Confidence and motivation: The process can encourage people to share their views more openly in policy forums or community meetings, leading to more inclusive engagement.
Interpersonal change occurs between people, as they exchange ideas and perspectives.
- Dialogue and trust: Sharing images and stories can create spaces for constructive dialogue between groups who may not usually meet, such as residents, local businesses, or council staff.
- New perspectives: Photo Interview highlights diverse experiences of policy issues, helping decision-makers understand how measures are received in practice and where adjustments may be needed.
Community-level change involves shifts in collective practices or relationships that affect how policy is implemented locally.
- Strengthening local voice: Community exhibitions or forums based on Photo Interview can help residents articulate shared priorities, supporting more grounded and legitimate policy outcomes.
- Catalysing collaboration: The method can bring together community members and institutions, encouraging joint initiatives that align with local strategies.
Wider societal and policy change happens when photo Interview outputs influence planning, advocacy, or institutional learning.
- Visibility and legitimacy: Exhibitions, reports, or visual summaries can make public concerns visible in ways that traditional surveys cannot, helping to challenge assumptions and broaden debate.
- Informing decisions: When integrated into consultation or planning processes, photo Interview can provide evidence of lived experience that supports more responsive, context-specific policy.
- Sustaining dialogue: Relationships forged through the process can strengthen ongoing engagement between communities and decision-making bodies, contributing to long-term collaboration.
In this video Ghezal Sabir reflects on the impacts of sharing photos:
Measuring Impact
For more detailed guidance on measuring change, see the Impact Module. Three useful techniques include:
- Participant reflection tools – Ask participants to keep short notes, audio diaries, or voice recordings about their experience of being interviewed and the ideas or memories the photos prompted.
- Post-project co-reflection workshops – Bring interviewees together to reflect on what emerged through the images, how their perspectives developed, and whether the process influenced their thinking or choices.
- Audience feedback – If images and stories are shared in an exhibition or report, gather feedback through comment boards, QR-linked surveys, or brief conversations to understand what messages resonated and what actions audiences might take.
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Adapting and Expanding Photo Interview
There are several adaptations of the Photo Interview method, each offering a different way to explore meaning, foster collaboration, and connect visual storytelling with biodiversity and place-based reflection
1. Photo-dialogue
Participants take photographs individually, then come together in small groups to discuss common themes or tensions emerging across their images. The emphasis is placed on collective interpretation and conversation, rather than individual storytelling.
2. Participatory photo-elicitation
Instead of participants generating new images, they select existing photographs (from personal collections, or from a publicly available archive) that resonate with the project themes. These images then become prompts for storytelling, reflection, or discussion.
3. Storyboard Photo interview
Participants create series or sequences of images that tell a story, encouraging photographers to think about narrative arcs, cause and effect, and a potential action.
4. Collaborative Photo interview
Rather than working individually, participants work in small teams to plan, take, and select photographs together.
5. Environmental or place-based Photo interview
Focus specifically on documenting landscapes, ecosystems, or changes in the local environment, rather than personal experiences. This variation fits well with biodiversity, climate, and land justice projects.
6. Multimodal Photo interview
Combine photographs with other media such as audio recordings, mapping exercises, or video clips.
In this video Ghezal Sabir reflects on how the photos were transformed into a film as a further evolution of the method:
