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Residents of the Cururú community view photos from
the “Images that Speak” project.
© Raúl Pérez Albrecht
Local Perceptions of the Forest in Bolivia
In Bolivia, protecting forests means working closely with communities that live in them. Thus, the social dimensions of the BOLFOR II Sustainable Forestry Project supported by the Conservancy and USAID are critical to achieving long-term success.
One aspect of working with forestry sector communities has been the project’s use of Images that Speak, a participatory methodology that provides an opportunity for community dialogue through photography and allows the local residents to express what the forest means to their daily lives. Through this approach, professional photographers and conservation experts step aside and give local boys, girls, and adults a chance to capture the importance of the forest with their own photography and words. The goal is to promote a broader understanding within Bolivian society of the value of forests and engage policy makers in a discussion on forest conservation and sustainable development.
Although similar community photography projects have been carried out in other parts of the world (including as part of The Nature Conservancy´s “Photovoice” project in China), this is the first time such a project has been implemented in Bolivia.
Capturing the Forest in Images
Six Bolivian communities involved in BOLFOR II volunteered to participate in Images that Speak. These communities are located in the forested eastern lowlands of the country. To learn about local perceptions of the forest, a facilitating group visited each community and asked participants of all ages: 1) How do you see the forest? and 2) How do you see your community living from the forest’s resources? The residents were then given disposable cameras to photograph images that best answered these questions. Several weeks later, the facilitating team returned to the communities to collect the cameras.
Forest Dialogue
Once the photos were developed, the facilitating team returned to each community and initiated a discussion with the photographers in which they described their motivations for taking each picture and the significance of each image. The facilitating team noted the expressions, comments, and testimonies of each of the participants as an important complementary element to the photos. Each individual then selected two of his or her photos that they believed best expressed their views on the forest and the resources on which their communities rely.
Afterwards, the communities formed groups organized by age and gender in order to have a dialogue about the two final photos that were selected by each photographer. The groups then discussed each photograph and decided which photo best represented the forest according to group consensus. The agreed-upon photo was then submitted to the facilitating team to be part of the Images that Speak exhibition.
Presenting the Photos
Finally, the selected images and dialogue were synthesized and presented to all six participating communities in travelling exhibitions with poster sized images. This also allowed for an exchange of experiences between the different communities with respect to how each community lives and perceives the forest.
The Images that Speak exhibition, titled in Spanish, Una mirada del bosque con ojos propios: Imágenes que Hablan, is now touring several Bolivian cities to also show urban dwellers the value that the forests hold for those who live in rural areas.
