The Framing Safety Project

Violence Against Women
http://vaw.sagepub.com The Framing Safety Project: Photographs and Narratives by Battered Women
Lisa Frohmann VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN 2005; 11; 1396 DOI: 10.1177/1077801205280271 The online version of this article can be found at: http://vaw.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/11/11/1396
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VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMENFrohmann / November / THE 2005FRAMING 10.1177/1077801205280271 SAFETY PROJECT
The Framing Safety Project

Photographs and Narratives by Battered Women
LISA FROHMANN
University of IllinoisChicago
This article describes the Framing Safety Project that the author developed to do collaborative, community action/education research with battered women about the meaning of safety in their lives. The project is built on the use of participant-generated photographs and photo-elicitation interviews as methods for exploring with women, in support group settings, the meanings of violence in their lives and their approaches to creating safer spaces. Although visual sociologists have used variations of these methods, particularly to study the experiences of children, the author combines them in a uniquely feminist approach that leads from the womens photography and interviews to a community education and action component. The author describes the process of developing and implementing this project with Mexican and South Asian immigrant women and discusses the ways in which its methodological approach serves to amplify the voices of silenced women, and to offer opportunities for community education and social action. Keywords: domestic violence; Mexican immigrant women; South Asian immigrant women; visual methodologyphotography
The Framing Safety Project is a workshop, offered in support group settings, for women who are or have been battered and are interested in exploring, through photography and narrative,
AUTHORS NOTE: This project was a collaborative effort. I thank all of the project participants for your openness and honesty, for trusting me with your stories, and for your willingness to use your life experiences to educate others. You are powerful women. This project was made possible by donations from Helix Camera, Ltd.; Gamma Photo and Digital Imaging Labs; HammerMill Paper Company; Studio ERA2; and Calumet Photographic, Inc. The project was funded by grants from the University of IllinoisChicago Great Cities Institute, Campus Research Board, Institute for the Humanities, and the American Sociological Association Spivak Program in Applied Social Research and Social Policy. I would like to thank the translators, Danila Miranda, Ines Sahagun, and Cristina Arroyo, for their tireless work. I would also like to thank Nancy A. Matthews for all the support she has provided during this project.
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, Vol. 11 No. 11, November 2005 1396-1419 DOI: 10.1177/1077801205280271 2005 Sage Publications
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Frohmann / THE FRAMING SAFETY PROJECT
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their experiences and strategies for living with the violence in their lives. The project has three interrelated components: selfexploration, reflection, and change; community educationsocial action; and research. The project emerged out of my work on legal responses to battering. Working with legal agents, I found an underlying assumption that if women use legal remedies (i.e., temporary restraining orders, arrest, and prosecution of batterers) they will be safe, or at least safer. The literature on legal remedies suggests mixed reviews on the relationship between the use of remedies and womens safety (Ford & Regoli, 1993; Harrell & Smith, 1996; Hirschel & Hutchison, 1996; Jang, Lee, & Frosch, 1990; Schmidt & Sherman, 1996). When I talked to survivors and advocates, it was very clear that safety is a fluid concept. It has spatio-temporal dimensions. It is not always linked to the use of legal remedies, although it can be. My intention in creating the Framing Safety Project was to explore the everyday and indigenous meanings of safety for such women. PROJECT OVERVIEW The Framing Safety Project is a therapeutic tool, a community education and action strategy, participatory action research for women to explore their experiences living in and extricating themselves from a battering relationship, and a means of informing others about the realities of these experiences. The project is centered on battered womens photographic representations and associated narratives of the violence in their lives and their strategies for survival and safekeeping. The project has three separate but interrelated components: (a) participant-generated photographs, (b) community exhibits of the photographs, and (c) research conducted through interviews and ethnographic observation of the first two phases of the project and in-depth interviews organized around participants photographs. The program uses a progressive participatory action strategy. Women may choose to take part in all three components or any combination thereof. It is designed to give participants control and flexibility in deciding how to participate. A common goal of all three sections is to empower participants and act as a tool for social change. Thus far, I have conducted this project with three groups of women. This report offers some preliminary reflections on the
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VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / November 2005
value of this alternative methodology for addressing violence in womens lives. PROJECT GOALS
1. To provide participants with a medium for self-exploration, expression, and reflection on the violence in their lives (interpersonal and systemic) through photography and narrative. 2. To enable women to identify, make visible, and value all the taken-for-granted work they do (i.e., their safekeeping strategies) on a daily basis to survive and to keep children and others safe. 3. To empower women to make their own decisions, honor their own feelings, and choose their own actions (Sharma, 2001, p. 1409) by gaining a better understanding of their lives through the integration of the knowledge and insight gained from the workshop with the counseling work they are doing in support groups and individual therapy. 4. To educate the community about battering as a social problem, the causes of battering, and available resources and interventions. 5. To add the voices of women who have been or are experiencing battering and related abuse to policy-level discussion on battering so these policies may better reflect the needs of battered women themselves.
METHODS This project is informed by feminist methods and the methodological traditions of visual anthropology and sociology.
FEMINIST METHODS
Feminist methods make problematic the taken-for-granted assumptions about womens lives and the political, economic, and social systems and ideologies that shape our lives. By problematizing these assumptions, our research destabilizes the production of knowledge and knowledge itself. Feminist researchers recognize womens subjective experience as an important and legitimate base for knowledge and political activity and struggle to develop methods that give voice to womens experiences without distortion or exploitation of those who speak. More generally, feminist methods try to deconstruct rather than reify societal power hierarchies. Feminist methods support research that can
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be used for social and political change that benefits womens lives (Cannon, Higgenbotham, & Leung, 1988; Collins, 1990; Devault, 1999; Fine, 1992; Harding, 1986; Hertz, 1997; Smith, 1987; Zinn, Cannon, Higgenbotham, & Dill, 1986). Feminist approaches have been critical in recognizing, studying, and challenging the pervasive violence in womens lives. In this project, they have informed my methods in several ways. First, my commitment to empowering the participants meant I chose a method that had the participants, not the researcher or other professionals, identify and photograph significant experiences in their lives. The project is designed to provide participants with a range of private spaces and public settings (support groups, photography exhibits, research interviews, and dispersal of information) in which experiences can be heard. The project participation framework gives women choices of how and when to participate. Second, the knowledge gained from the project can be used for further research and for individual and social action. Third, the project is structured as a collaboration between the participants and me. Fourth, I take a reflexive approach to the research process and I contextualize myself within the project and my writing.
PARTICIPANT-GENERATED IMAGES AND PHOTO-ELICITATION INTERVIEWS
Anthropologists, and more recently sociologists, have used photography as a research tool (Becker, 1974). Historically, in anthropology, it has been used for ethnographic data collection, in which the researcher, as expert, decides what is significant in a particular culture and uses the camera to document these persons, places, rituals, and cultural artifacts. Visual anthropologists and sociologists have also begun to give cameras to research participants and have them photograph what is significant in their culture. This method has been referred to as indigenous media studies and the photos as native-generated images. Participant-generated images provide an opportunity for traditionally silenced populations to document their lives and the environments they live in (Ewald, 1985; Hubbard, 1994; Leavitt, Lingafelter, & Morello, 1998). Thus, the traditional power imbalance between photographer or researcher and subject is broken down. Analysis of visual images provides insight into social
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interactions, social relationships, social structures, ideology, and cultural norms (Bateson & Mead, 1942; Collier & Collier, 1986; Goffman, 1979; Harper, 1998; D. B. Schwartz, 1989). What we photograph and how photographs are interpreted are shaped by the values, beliefs, assumptions, and experiences that we bring to the act. As a form of self-expression, visual techniques also provide a window into the photographers immediate environment, significant relationships, feelings, and perceptions of self (Cavin, 1994; Ewald, 1985; Hubbard, 1994; Leavitt et al., 1998; Orellana, 1999; Ziller & Smith, 1977). Visual anthropologists and sociologists have also used photographs in conjunction with ethnographic fieldwork as the basis of interviews with participants. This process is called photoelicitation. It involves showing participants pictures of themselves, their history, or their environment and asking them to talk about what they see (Harper, 1998; Harrison, 2002; Suchar, 1989). The three main uses of photo-elicitation are to reveal the ethnomeanings of the informant, to reveal aspects of the informants social psychology, and to examine the meaning of behavior and social process in which participants engage (Suchar, 1989).
EXPLORING EMPOWERMENT AND HEALING
In this project, I combine participant-generated images and photo-elicitation interviews. My intent was to empower women by enabling them to direct our gaze toward images of their choosing as well as giving voice to their own experiential standpoints (Haraway, 1988; Harding, 1986; Smith, 1987). This method gives women a medium to frame and define what is significant in a specific setting and within the larger context of social relationships and the environments in which they live. They choose the subjects of the photographs. They determine who or what to include or exclude from the frames. This act of self-determination might increase womens feeling of independence and self-esteem (Bery, 2003; Ewald, 1985; Hubbard, 1994; Leavitt et al., 1998). Furthermore, the discussions that occur in the photo-elicitation interviews erode some of the power differential inherent in traditional interviews or any other setting where an authority is directing the conversation (i.e., the interviewer determines what questions, topics, and information are relevant). The photographs taken by the participant are used to shape the topics of the inter-
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view, and the participant, not the interviewer, defines what is significant and interprets its meaning. This method places participants in the role of expert in the interaction, as they narrate the photographs they took of their lives (Blinn & Harrist, 1991; Clark, 1999; Collier & Collier, 1986; Harper, 1998; Norman, 1991; D. B. Schwartz, 1989). At the beginning of the interview, participants are asked to arrange the photographs in groups meaningful to them, by story lines or themes they want to convey. Organizing the photographs involves decisions about which images to include and exclude, the sequencing of events, or the importance of an image. Taking their own photographs is a method for participants to explore taken-for-granted assumptions about their lives (Becker, 1974). It is a way for participants to tap into the subjectivity of their battering experiences. It provides a means and opportunity for women to shift their orientations to specific settings, to become observers, observer-participants, or participants. This shift might assist women to see aspects of their lives previously unrecognized or ignored. It might provide the participantphotographer additional insight into her immediate environment, significant relationship, perceptions of self, and perceptions of her experiences. The power of this knowledge and insight may lead to change. In addition, these methods may facilitate the healing process. In the tradition of feminist work with survivors of male violence, the discourses of empowerment and therapeutic healing have been intertwined. My project is related to art therapy in the way art in general is used with victims of violence to assist them in expressing the fear and trauma they suffer in their lives. Psychologists have used photography as a form of therapy (Cox & Lothstein, 1989; Furman, 1990; Laing, 1980; Landgarten, 1981; McNiff & Cook, 1975), and narrating photographs has been shown to promote self-reflection and self-understanding and to provide a means of expressing fear and trauma (Killian, 2001).
REVIEW OF RECENT RESEARCH
A review of recent research that combines participantgenerated images and photo-elicitation provides a glimpse of their methodological power and potential. Several photogra-
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phers and researchers have used participant-generated images and photo-elicitation with children as a method for understanding their worldviews (Cavin, 1994; Clark, 1999; Ewald, 1985; Hubbard, 1994; Leavitt et al., 1998; Orellana, 1999; Rich & Chalfen, 1999; Venkateswar, 2002). Autophotography, a method used in social psychology, has participants use the camera to explore issues of identity and the self through their orientations to the social and physical environments. For example, this method has been used to explore issues of gender identity (Clancy & Dollinger, 1993; Ziller & Smith, 1977), to understand how wheelchair-bound individuals interact with their environment (Ziller & Smith, 1977), and to explore how shy persons interact with their environment (Ziller & Rorer, 1985). Photovoice, a participant action strategy developed by Wang and Burris (1998), blends a grass-roots approach to photography and social action (Wang, Yi, Tao, & Carovano, 1998, p. 1). This strategy gives cameras to community members who typically have no voice in social policy as a way for them to identify the significant issues in their lives and communities. Community members photograph their health and work realities, discuss the content of their images in small groups, and then communicate their ideas and common themes to policymakers (e.g., Wang, Burris, & Xiang, 1996). PHASE 1: THE PROJECT AS IT UNFOLDS Prior to recruiting groups to participate, I laid the groundwork for the project. I successfully solicited donations for cameras, film processing, and album kits. Much time was spent getting approval from the University of IllinoisChicago Internal Review Board (IRB), which was difficult for reasons related to the issues of confidentiality and consent. A central element in addressing these issues was participant control. Each participant (including secondary subjects) determined the form and degree of identity masking. For example, participants chose to use either their given name or a pseudonym or to be anonymous, and the identifying details of participants lives could range from completely transparent to completely opaque. For the group sessions, all persons in the group agreed to be recorded. All participants in the group remained anonymous,
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and any information that could violate their identity-masking decisions was edited out of the transcript. The photographs belong to the participants. They decided which photographs were shared in the group, which ones were used for the research interview, and which ones appeared in any public display of this work (i.e., academic products, such as books or conference material and public exhibits). Secondary subjects were provided with the same options as other participants. To attend to participants emotional well-being, the group facilitator, who is also a therapist, was present at all group sessions. She was also on call during the participant interviews and could be reached 24 hrs a day through a hotline. To insure that the participants understood the project and their roles and rights as participants, I engaged in an ongoing consent process. Participants were recruited from support groups from two agencies in the Chicago area that provide services to battered women. Two of the groups were comprised of women who had emigrated from Mexico. The third group consisted of primarily South Asian immigrant women. In total, 42 women were given cameras, and 29 returned them for processing. Twenty-four did research interviews and 26 participated in the community exhibits. One woman never took a camera but continued to participate in the group and the community exhibit. For the exhibit, she placed her narratives next to black and white squares. The names that are used in text about the project follow the participants identity-masking guidelines. Working with Mexican and South Asian immigrants challenged my linguistic abilities and cultural knowledge. The two Latina support groups were conducted entirely in Spanish. I understood some Spanish but was not fluent enough to participate or interview without a translator. The South Asian group was conducted in English, but there were members who did not speak English, so conversations were also translated by the support group facilitator and other participants into Urdu and Hindi. These language arrangements made me even more acutely reflective about how the differences between the participants and me shaped my interactions (Bolak, 1997; Devault, 1999; Edwards, 1990; Hertz, 1997; Riessman, 1987; Zinn, 1979). The following are some examples of how cultural, linguistic, and ethnic differences informed my work.
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I am a White, middle-class woman of European descent. Having taken Spanish years ago in school, when I began the project I was moderately able to read and understand conversations, but my speaking ability was very limited. My linguistic ability shaped my data collection. For example, in group, I typically would listen to the discussions in Spanish and ask questions in English. My questions and the womens answers were translated by the support group facilitators, who doubled as translators. On several occasions, the group facilitators, who are not trained translators, would provide me with a synthesized version of group discussions or participant responses. My ability to follow much of the discussions in Spanish filled in this gap, but particularly in the beginning when I was not used to the pace of talk and my vocabulary was more limited, I missed details. On other occasions, participants would use idiomatic expressions or cultural references that could not be or were not translated and, therefore, remained elusive. As much as possible, I would ask what a particular phrase, expression, or reference meant at the close of a meeting. These data collection issues were less of a problem in the groups in which I was able to tape-record the proceedings. In these situations, I could refer to the text and ask participants to fill in what I initially did not understand. My limited speaking ability also impeded my interactions with participants outside of group, particularly in the beginning. Before and after group was a time when participants visited with each other, problem-solved, and so on. As people entered the room, we always greeted each other. I would sit and listen to the conversations and participate by nodding my head and saying, Hmmm. This did not provide the foundation for forming relationships. As the project progressed, our interactions improved. Those of us with limited linguistic skills worked together to communicate our ideas, and those who were, to varying degrees, bilingual translated when necessary. Participants children also assisted in the communication, helping me with my Spanish and translating for their mothers. Some of the more proficient Englishspeaking participants spoke to me in English. Another personal factor facilitated my relationships with the women. Occasionally, my schedule required me to bring my 1year-old son to group. In Mexican culture, children are very important. My son was immediately brought into the fold; all the
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women and their children wanted to hold and care for him. My son is Chicano, and participants were concerned he was not hearing Spanish at home, so whenever he came to group, they would sing and talk with him in Spanish. Our common experience of motherhood created a natural topic of conversation and a common reference point in our lives. All the research interviews were done through translators who were also immigrant Mexican women. This common set of references created a level of connection and familiarity between the paired women. I have been told by participants that having this common bond made them more comfortable telling their stories to a stranger. But on occasion, it created a dynamic in which I felt as if I was on the periphery of the interaction, only moving closer to the center to pose questions and then receding to the background to eavesdrop on a conversation in which I was supposed to be a participant. This dynamic was recognized by the translator as well. Analysis of the interaction revealed that as she translated a participants story (which was done in first person), she sometimes felt that the violence was also part of her own life; she could feel it moving through her. It was during these times, when she felt a deeper level of connection with the participant, that I experienced being on the periphery. This not only pointed out how linguistic ability and cultural knowledge can shape the interactions between interviewer, translator, and interviewee, it also is an example of the emotional responses that can arise from working with violence survivors. In reflecting together on these feelings, we changed the translators rotation schedule and did more debriefing after interviews (Campbell, 2002). During the first part of the project, I met with existing support groups to facilitate discussions of what safety meant to them and the pictures we might take to express the experiences and feelings wed had over the previous week. We spoke about who typically took photographs in their family and when photographs are taken. We shared how it felt to view the photographs taken at ritual occasions such as weddings, christenings, and birthday parties. We discussed the violence in their lives as they grew up. In the context of these discussions, we talked a lot about the metaphors we could use to depict our feelings, experiences, locations, and relationships. For example, in a discussion about the rhythms of abuse, a woman whose batterer frequently abused her
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when he came home drunk late at night said she would depict the cycle of abuse and her feelings about the impending violence by photographing her alarm clock. At night she lay in bed watching time go by, anxious about the hour her husband would return and the abuse might begin. Another woman said her husband only beat her on the weekends. To depict this she would take a picture of a calendar with every weekend xd out to indicate when the battering occurred. She then talked about how her feelings of anxiety and fear grew as the weekend drew near. After our initial discussions during the first few weeks, the group decided they were ready to take photographs. Prior to giving group members cameras, we talked about photography etiquette (i.e., respect for others privacy and rights). I also emphasized that participants should not place themselves in danger to take a photograph. I then gave the participants their disposable cameras and asked them to photograph persons, places, and objects that represent the continuums of comfort-discomfort, happiness-sadness, safety-danger, securityvulnerability, serenity-anxiety, protection-exposure, strengthweakness, and love-hate. For the next 4 to 5 weeks, participants took five to seven pictures per week. Each week women talked about the photos they took that week and what they represented for them. For each photograph, we talked about how they chose to take the picture, how they categorized the photo on a safetydanger continuum (i.e., the range of experiences and feelings from a perception of safety to danger that women experience in their everyday lives. These concepts were not predetermined in the study plan, but defined by participants; they are fluid, not static). We also talked about the photographs they didnt take and why. Participants were free to not discuss with group members any or all photographs they had taken that week. Some women chose not to talk about some of their photos throughout the project. What became evident during these discussions was that the photographs conveyed the complexity of the womens lives. Several women had taken similar photographs, and even if they had not, many noted that others photographs represented an aspect of their own lives. Examining the photographs women took and listening to the talk that accompanied each photo suggests that the photo-
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graphic process, the photographs, discussions about the photographs, and narration about the photographs are tools for selfexploration, reflection, and analysis of the violence in their lives and individual change. For example, the photograph above of an empty table was taken by Jenny.1 She was 29 years old. She wrote,
Esta es la mesa de mi comedor y tom esta foto porque la mesa esta vaca y yo siento que aunque estoy con mis hijos la siento vaca pues no hay armona familiar que pienso es lo ms importante. [This is the dinning room table and I took this picture because the table is empty and I feel that although I am with my children, I feel that it is empty because there is no family harmony, which I think is the most important thing.]
The image and narrative represent Jennys concept of family: a husband and wife who love each other and their children. Food, and eating together, are important family activities. Part of being a mother and wife, of caring for her family, is preparing the food. Her concept of family is fractured. The next photograph was taken by Maria. She was 38 years old. It is a picture of her bathroom door. She wrote,
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Esta es la puerta de mi bao. Me siento segura aqu porque esta puerta tiene dos seguros y as me siento ms segura porque las otras puertas nada ms tienen un seguro y mi pareja las botaba con un cuchillo y me daba mucho miedo. [This is my bathroom door. I feel safe here because
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this door has two locks and the other doors only have one. My partner picked open the locks with a knife and I was very scared.]
This photo makes apparent how fluid safe space can be. Maria chose the bathroom as a safe place because it has more locks than the other doors. As she notes, locks can easily be broken; her safety evaporates when he decides to enter. PHASE 2: THE PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITS In the second phase of the project, participants were invited to create a photography exhibit of their images and narratives. The purpose of the exhibit was to give public voice to the participants experiences and, in so doing, educate the community about how it feels to live in a violent and abusive relationship. Women chose which photographs would appear in the exhibit and how much anonymity they wanted. The gallery exhibits of participants photos and accompanying narratives are the medium for community education, and thus become a catalyst for social change. Participants embraced the concept as fully integral to the project and became actively involved in fleshing out the concept of the exhibit and its execution.
PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITS AS COMMUNITY EDUCATION
Exhibits have been housed in the community and are open and accessible to the public. Each opening has been accompanied by a public community education event. The exhibits have been held at a social service agency, the Mexican consulate, a caf, and a conference. Efforts were made to widely publicize the events through such avenues as sending invitations to all the domestic violence service agencies in the metro area, and announcements in all Spanish- and English-language area newspapers and entertainment guides. Having one exhibit at the Mexican consulate gave high level official recognition of battered womens situations and was empowering to the women. It also brought the exhibit to a much broader audience. For example, persons waiting in line at the consulate for visas and other documents were taken in groups to view the exhibit. Thus, at least 1,000 people viewed the exhibit over the 2-month period it was on display.
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Viewers of the exhibit not only learned about the lives of women who have been or are battered, they also learned about their own stereotypes and assumptions about battered women and Mexican immigrant women. The cultural images of battered woman as victim, a person without agency, someone who is not us, are challenged by the images and stories of the participants. The images also shatter stereotypes of Mexican immigrant women as simply passive victims of machismo, locked into traditional gender roles. Instead, we are presented with the multidimensionality of womens lives, their strengths and their struggles. They are women with agency who put themselves in the public eye to create change.
PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITS AND THE PERSONAL EMPOWERMENT OF GROUP MEMBERS
As noted above, the first act of empowerment occurred when the participants embraced the exhibit and shaped its definition and execution. It became a representation of their lives. All of the project participants chose to be part of the exhibits. They also agreed to be part of a traveling photography exhibit. They wanted to participate in the exhibits because they hoped their stories would help other women see that they had options in life. The names the groups gave to their exhibits convey this: Sueos y RealidadesDreams and Realities and De la Obscuridad a La LuzFrom Obscurity to Light. In the group discussions about the exhibit and levels of anonymity, the members talked about the feelings of vulnerability and shame they had about going public. We also talked about the risk to themselves of exposing the batterer to the community as someone who abuses his wife. The women decided that if a man was out there abusing women, they were not going to keep silent about it; they were going to tell people what it was like to be abused by him. Totally unexpected by either the agency staff or me, the women decided they wanted to have a group photograph and statement at the beginning of the exhibit, and their names or initials to appear below their photographs. They wanted to do this as a way to claim the exhibit as their own and personalize their stories. Two women appeared on television, and some participated in a call-in show on a Spanish-language radio station
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about battering. The majority of women attended the exhibit openings, which was another level of exposing themselves. Viewers could identify and locate the participants among the crowds. They could approach them and ask questions or make comments about the exhibit or the womens lives. Many women did not wait to be approached; they engaged the viewers as they viewed their photographs, identifying themselves as the photographers. The decision to go public on so many levels reflects changes in their perceptions of self. It suggests that the process was empowering. However, empowerment is a process that is itself fluid and discontinuous. As with all personal journeys, these decisions were difficult to make, and many women were insecure about their decisions. Examples of these feelings appeared in the support group session the day before one of the exhibits opened, where the women talked about how nervous they were about the exhibit and about displaying their lives out in public for all to see. This same group retreated to a corner of the exhibit room and stayed there for much of the opening. When I asked them why they were there, they told me they felt ashamed. They told me they felt that people must be looking at them and thinking how stupid they were to be living in a battering relationship. I encouraged them to listen to the responses of viewers and to read the response book. A few women were brave enough to do this. One woman sent her adult daughter to listen to peoples responses to the photographs. After overhearing remarks about how powerful the photographs were, how brave the women were to be part of this exhibit, how they respected what they had done, and how they wanted to bring others to view the exhibit, the women told me they felt they had made the right decision in agreeing to participate. One woman did not attend the public event for the exhibit at the Mexican consulate. About a week later, she called the facilitator in the middle of the night and said she was being beaten and needed to get out. She then called the police. The next day, she met the facilitator at the consulate, a familiar landmark, to go to court and get a temporary restraining order. While the woman was waiting for the facilitator, she decided to view the exhibit. After viewing several womens photographs and reading their narratives she got to her own. At first, she didnt recognize that the photographs were hers. As she studied them, she realized they were
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hers, and that she was like everyone else in the show: She was abused. When the facilitator arrived, they talked about her reaction to the exhibit. That afternoon, several women were going to be on a call-in show about domestic violence. She asked if she could participate. That day, she went from a position of semidenial about her abuse to another level of increased exposure about this abuse. To date, no women have asked to remove their photographs from future exhibits or change their levels of disclosure to the public. PHASE 3: THE RESEARCH The third part of the project is the research component. All participants were invited to participate in an in-depth life history interview about the violence in their lives and their safekeeping strategies. I chose the life history approach because it provides the best means to gather information on womens backgrounds, feelings, and experiences, particularly when exploring information about difficult situations (Marshall & Rossman, 1989; Mishler, 1986; Richie, 1996; Watson & Watson-Franke, 1985). The interview was based on the photographs each woman took and any other photographs important to her story. In addition to the interview, with permission of group members, I documented the project (i.e., womens photographs, support group discussions, individual in-depth interviews, creating the community exhibit, and the viewers response to the exhibit) by keeping copies of selected participant photographs, taperecording support group discussions and individual interviews, and keeping field notes on the project. Using the grounded theory method of interpretation, I did an initial coding of the narratives that participants wrote to explicate their photographs (Charmaz, 1983). I developed these codes by sorting responses and accompanying photographs according to themes that emerged from the data. The purpose of these codes is to label, separate, and organize the data. As I continue my analysis, these categories may change, becoming sharpened, eliminated, or collapsed into one another. A very preliminary analysis of the data suggests that the following categories can be developed from the photographic and narrative patterns: safety strate-
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gies, zones of violence, representations of the forms of abuse, subjectivity of abuse, support systems, family, construction of gender identity, religion, immigration, and life changes. Note that the categories are not mutually exclusive. This reflects both the complexity of womens lives and the preliminary nature of the analysis. Participants photographed safety strategies, which included their zones of safety, such as the bathroom and bedrooms where they sought refuge from the battering, and lookout posts to watch for signs of impending violence, such as a chair a participant sat in that provided her a clear vantage point from which to see all the doors and rooms of the house. Others documented preparations for leaving, such as one womans photograph of her grabbing her coat and keys that always hung at the back door for easy escape. They also photographed zones of violence, such as the kitchen, or the house where a participant and her husband lived when the battering first began. Women often used metaphorical images to express the feelings they had living in an abusive relationship. For example, one survivor took a picture of a kite flying as a metaphor for the freedom she desired while in the relationship. Placing herself as the kite, she wished someone would cut the kite string and allow her to fly away, to be free. Instead, her husband had control of the string, controlling her movements. All the women photographed their support groups as key persons in their support system. To indicate a change in their lives, women took pictures of educational institutions, hair salons, and the smiling faces of their children. LIMITATIONS AND OTHER CONSIDERATIONS Taking the Safety Frames Project from design to implementation gave me an appreciation and insight into methodological and process issues I did not previously have. Drawing on my own experiences and the work of others, I have identified some potential limitations and other methodological and process considerations that have shaped how this project unfolded.
SUSTAINING CHANGE
An indication of success in a project involving individual and social action is sustainability of change. On an individual level, a
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goal of this project is empowerment of participants. It appears, thus far, that participating in this project has been an impetus for change. This change has occurred in the context of support group settings, where women gave each other a lot of encouragement and support. The question remains whether this sense of empowerment can be sustained over time. To answer this, the concept of empowerment must be placed in the context of womens lives. We need to explore the role of informal and formal support systems, such as the support groups. In addition, funding must be available for services so women can continue to build on this experience.
ETHICS
On a social level, another goal of this project is changing policy to better reflect the needs of battered women. As Wang et al. (1996) point out, a potential ethical concern of projects that seek to incorporate elements of social change is that they often place a greater burden on those with the least power to create that change.
FUNDING
The Framing Safety Project is expensive. It requires funds for cameras, tape-recording supplies, film developing, exhibitrelated costs, and research assistance. Without outside funding, the project is not sustainable. It seems to reside in the interstices between research, art, and domestic violence intervention strategies. This requires grants to be written for different parts of the project, a time-consuming process that takes time away from the project itself.
THE IRB PROCESS
Obtaining IRB approval can be a complex and time-consuming process. It is a difficult and ongoing process to develop consent protocols that do not compromise participants rights, are limited in number, are not too legalistic in form, have minimal interference in the project process, and are culturally appropriate. Using nontraditional methodology requires a long lead time and
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approval of the project may necessitate an ongoing dialogue with IRB members to educate them about the methods being used.
CHOOSING PROJECT SITES
In my experience, groups of shelter residents had lower levels of participation than groups of participants who did not live in shelters. Discussions with shelter resident participants revealed that the project was not a priority in their lives. They had too many responsibilities and decisions to make (e.g., to remain or leave the shelter, to separate or return to their partners, finding work, caring for children, building support systems, dealing with their immigration status), and they had no remaining emotional or physical energy to devote to anything else. This raises several questions: Can the project be modified to better meet their needs? If so, how? If the project can be modified, should it be, or is this project better suited for nonshelter residents?
EMOTIONAL TOLL
Many researchers have written about the emotional toll they experience working with violence survivors (see Alexander et al., 1989; Campbell, 2002; Kelly, 1988; M. D. Schwartz, 1997; Stanko, 1997). Those who do this work are familiar with these experiences. In all my years working in this field, I never experienced such pain and exhilaration of working with survivors as I did with this project. Providing oneself with ways to debrief is important and indeed a crucial part of adopting a self-reflexive stance in research. CONCLUSION I began the Framing Safety Project with the enthusiasm of a novice, excited about working with visual media, not anticipating the difficulties of dealing with the IRB, soliciting donations, or mounting a professional photography exhibit. When we mounted the first exhibit, I realized the power of the project had surpassed my dreams. As you walk through the exhibit, you can feel the power of womens voices emanating from the images and text. You can experience the impact of the photographs as you lis-
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ten to people comment about the exhibit. You can feel the power and pride of the participants as they tour the exhibit they created. Even with the limited dissemination of an analysis through traditional venues, this project has been a successful method for working with battered women. All the projects goals were met to varying and sometimes significant degrees, resulting from the workshops themselves and the exhibits: providing participants a medium for self-exploration, enabling women to identify the work they do to keep safe, empowering women to make decisions and take action, and educating the community. Further analysis and dissemination will expand the impact of the research to additional audiences, including advocates, scholars, and policymakers. As I continue the project, I will expand participant groups to include same-sex couples and persons of other racial and ethnic groups and nationalities. I also plan to work with women in Mexico who are survivors of domestic violence. Comparison of the photographs and narratives of Mexican immigrant women in the United States to those of women in Mexico to see how immigration informs their constructions of safety is planned. If the pattern continues, each additional group that participates in the project will have an opportunity to reflect on and educate others about the abuse in their lives. Hopefully, this will take us a step closer to securing the human right of all women to live free of violence. REFERENCES
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Lisa Frohmann is an associate professor in the department of criminal justice at the University of IllinoisChicago. Her areas of specialization include violence against women; race, class, gender and the law; social construction of legalities; and qualitative and visual methodologies.

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Violence Against Women

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMENFrohmann / November / THE 2005FRAMING 10.1177/1077801205280271 SAFETY PROJECT

The Framing Safety Project

Frohmann / THE FRAMING SAFETY PROJECT

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / November 2005

Frohmann / THE FRAMING SAFETY PROJECT

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / November 2005

Frohmann / THE FRAMING SAFETY PROJECT

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / November 2005

Frohmann / THE FRAMING SAFETY PROJECT

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / November 2005

Frohmann / THE FRAMING SAFETY PROJECT

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / November 2005

Frohmann / THE FRAMING SAFETY PROJECT

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / November 2005

Frohmann / THE FRAMING SAFETY PROJECT

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / November 2005

Frohmann / THE FRAMING SAFETY PROJECT

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / November 2005

Frohmann / THE FRAMING SAFETY PROJECT

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / November 2005

Frohmann / THE FRAMING SAFETY PROJECT

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / November 2005

Frohmann / THE FRAMING SAFETY PROJECT

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / November 2005

Frohmann / THE FRAMING SAFETY PROJECT

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