A Preliminary Study of the Self-Directed Photography of Middle-Class, Homeless, and Mobility-Impaired Children∗

∗The authors would like to thank the June Burnett Foundation and the San Diego University Foundation for funding parts of this project. The staff and administration of the San Diego Children's Museum, Schweitzer Elementary School, and the St. Vincent de Paul/Joan Kroc Center were very helpful with the “Children's Geographies of San Diego” project of which this study is a part. Also, two anonymous reviewers made extremely insightful comments on an early draft of this paper. Finally, a very special thanks goes to Susan Mains, the independent rater on our leitmotif code.

Understanding the ways in which children with different life experiences come to terms with day-to-day contexts and constraints has become an important topic of social science research. This study applies the technique of auto-photography to the study of children-environment transactions. How children apprehend their environments is described through a leitmotif analysis and an interpretation of photographs taken by children from middle-class families, homeless children, and children whose mobility is impaired by cerebral palsy. We speculate upon the social and physical contexts of these children based upon the images that they selected to photograph. Although impressionistic, our findings suggest the importance of auto-photography as a method for uncovering children-environment transactions.

Key Words:

• children
• auto-photography
• context
• diversity

Notes

∗The authors would like to thank the June Burnett Foundation and the San Diego University Foundation for funding parts of this project. The staff and administration of the San Diego Children's Museum, Schweitzer Elementary School, and the St. Vincent de Paul/Joan Kroc Center were very helpful with the “Children's Geographies of San Diego” project of which this study is a part. Also, two anonymous reviewers made extremely insightful comments on an early draft of this paper. Finally, a very special thanks goes to Susan Mains, the independent rater on our leitmotif code.