Spaces of Care / Photography as Queer Racialized Affective Archives: A Collaborative Project

Abstract: This participatory research-creation project brings together the photovoice method and queer personal archives to look at how the ephemeral, feelings-based aspects of queer and trans racialized young people’s experiences of ‘spaces of care’ can be shared through photograph-making. Through the facilitation of four photovoice workshops with three other queer/trans racialized identified young people, each collaborator created 35mm photographs related to the theme ‘spaces of care,’ culminating in a collective zine. The process of coming together to share ideas, feelings, and experiences is as important as the making of artwork itself. In focusing on the archival possibilities that arise from a qualitative arts-based method (photovoice) that is not typically concerned with issues of the archive, this project simultaneously critiques photovoice and asks: how might affective attachments to spaces of (queer) care, as fundamentally ungraspable and ephemeral experiences, be brought into the queer archive through photograph-making?

Keywords: queer studies; personal archives; affect; participatory arts-based research; photovoice; community arts