four note friday 2.30 | How to End a Photovoice Project

Earlier this week, I read a terrific article in Qualitative Research titled "Ending Participatory Research Projects: Entangled Temporalities, Endy Moments, and Afterlives" by Flora Cornish, Hannah Cowan, Sharmile Parmanand, and Kate Summers. It was an excellent read, and I highly recommend it. See here.

In this post, I am going to overlay the concepts from this article onto photovoice and offer four suggestions related to ending such a project.

Before moving ahead, I want to note that I am not writing this piece because I am good at ending—or exiting—projects. Quite the opposite. I still feel some discomfort around a number of messy endings, sense that things could have been handled a bit better. Reading Cornish et al.'s (2026) work was a salve.

First, recognize that no one knows how to do this well.

In their piece, Cornish et al.'s (2026) acknowledge that the knowledge base is quite lacking in this area. The extant literature on participatory research has very little to offer related to project endings. So, if this is something you have struggled with or are currently working through, rest assured you are not alone. The literature is just now starting to catch up to practice.

Participatory research projects are necessarily messy. And among participatory researchers, this messiness can bring up feelings of guilt, contradiction, and shame. Am I doing it right? How do I fix this? What is the best next step? How do I exit this project gracefully? How should this end?

Taking some action is a terrific way to work through and out of those feelings. We can start a photovoice project with the end in mind. Preplanning for that end is the key. Yet if you are mid-project, you can certainly engage in an ending and exiting strategy now.

Through their article, Cornish et al. (2026) aimed to "highlight the importance of endings, as a phase of research design deserving distinct methodological attention" (p. 2). And their guidance can be readily applied to photovoice.

Second, understand that diverse temporalities are in play.

People experience time in different ways. Your conception of time—the presence of urgency, your pace, internal timelines, and external due dates—is unique to you. One way to illuminate this is to consider the neoliberal demands of academic life in comparison to the life rhythms of (nonacademic) others involved in a photovoice project, including facilitators, participants, policy makers, and others. The grant timeline may not mesh well with the availability of the folks you'd like to partner with. The openness of your summer schedule might be the most hectic time of year for the policy makers you aim to reach.

So, whose time matters most within a photovoice project? Cornish et al. (2026) probed further: "[w]e might ask ourselves: In our projects and our project endings, whose temporality dominates? Who must recalibrate to whose temporality? As researchers, do we ask participants to adopt the temporality of the institutionally-governed research? And what does that tell us about power relations in our aspiring-to-be-egalitarian PR projects?" (p. 6).

When engaging with photovoice, the diverse temporalities of all involved are enmeshed, which means project endings may come at different times for each person, and one person's ending will impact another's. Strong relational work and clear communication can go along way to work through diverse temporalities.

I was recently in a situation where a photovoice exhibition was planned but the host was unable to hold the event because of an issue with the facility. Then, by the time I was ready to reschedule, I learned the contact at the exhibition location had moved on. The inertia to continue under my own volition faded. Things happen. We are human. Sometimes the temporalities simply do not coincide.

Using as temporalities as a lens helps us better understand why and how endings can feel so fraught and tricky.

Third, build in endy moments.

Sharp, crisp, and clean endings are not always possible. And that's okay, perhaps even desirable. Endy moments, however, can be built in to the latter portions of the project. These are moments intentionally designed to bring some measure of closure to the project.

Keeping diverse temporalities in mind, know that moments is plural for a reason. The project may end for participants at a different time than it ends for policy makers. You may want to exit the project while at the same time envision it continuing with others leading it forward.

Cornish et al. (2026) explained that "[c]reating shared,‘endy moments’ can align the temporalities of multiple collaborators in recognition of the journey taken together, producing affects of celebration and satisfaction, amidst and against the overwhelming vastness of ambitions of social change and unpleasantness of institutional endpoints" (p. 10).

Examples of these endy moments can include a culminating (and final) photovoice exhibition, a the delivery of project incentives such as gift cards, closure meetings focused on feedback and reflection, and shared celebratory meals.

Fourth, realize projects have afterlives.

Despite our best efforts to end a project, sometimes a project lives on in ways we never dreamed. And we must come to terms with the things we can and cannot control. Things we believe have ended may continue on far into the future. The afterlives of our projects can be largely outside of our control.

According to Cornish et al. (2026), "[p]articipatory projects, run well, cannot be contained in a single research pipeline. . . . [e]ndings of participatory projects are necessarily multiple because they are run by a mycelial-like network of many people, actors, and resources, accumulated into a critical mass" (p. 14).

Realize that when you end a photovoice project, it may come back to life—in the form of an email from a collaborator who has become reinvigorated about the work, a reporter who has stumbled upon your website and has questions, or a graduate student reaching out about a paper your team wrote about the project. These project afterlives can be the seeds of new or longitudinal work. Or you may have already moved on and want to encourage someone else to carry the baton. And sometimes, you may want to pull on one or more of the threads that arise in an old project's afterlife.

What have your experiences of ending participatory projects—namely photovoice projects—been like? How did your project(s) end? Were your endings intentional? Were the endings pre-planned, or did they unfold organically? I would love to learn more about your experiences with photovoice project endings and exits.

🥹 Thanks for spending a moment with me this Friday.
💌 If you’re new here, welcome! I hope this space becomes one you look forward to each week.

📬 Have a question you want me to answer in a future issue? Reach me at photovoicefieldnotes@gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks for being here.

Warmly,
Mandy
photovoice field notes
photovoicefieldnotes.com