How can arts in general and photography in particular contribute to peace? Scholars commonly approach this question through two different lines of thinking: While, for instance, our research rather focusses on the contribution of the artistic outcome, others engage more with the production of art and the artistic process itself. This is also the focus of Imaging Peace, a research project led by Dr. Tiffany Fairey at King’s College London.
Being based at the Department of War Studies, this 3-year Leverhulme Fellowship research project explores how images and specifically image-making are utilized to support peace and dialogue processes. For this, Fairey researches a variety of community engaged photography interventions that act as “forms of peace photography or strategic visual peacebuilding.”
Imaging Peace at King’s College London
Imaging Peace looks at photographic projects that have the goal “to build relations, to catalyse dialogue and to create new imaginaries of peace.” By so doing, the project aims at expanding critical knowledge concerning the impact and potential, but also the limits and risks of such photographic interventions, and the ethics around it.
Imaging Peace collaborates with partners in Rwanda (The Kigali Centre for Photography), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Post Conflict Research Centre), Colombia (Everyday Peace Indicators Fotovoice Project) and Nepal (Nepal Picture Library). The project is also part of the Arts & Conflict Hub in the Department of War Studies at King’s College that serves as a space for artists and scholars to engage with each other’s work and to share creative ideas.
The project, thus, is situated at the intersection of theoretical research and practical peacebuilding work, a highly promising venue to further explore the peace potentialities of photography.
Dr. Tiffany Fairey is the founder of PhotoVoice, which she ran for over 10 years. Since 2017, she has been engaged with Art & Reconciliation, an interdisciplinary research project, led by King’s College London in partnership with the London School of Economics and Political Science and the University of the Arts London.
We are also honoured to announce that Dr. Fairey will contribute to imageandpeace.com later this year. (Find the Guest Contribution here.)
Visit the website of Imaging Peace. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/imaging-peace