Imaging Peace Research & Book

Despite significant scholarship on the photography of war, violence, and suffering, very little research has explored what a photography of peace might consist of. This is a conspicuous omission in our accelerated visual age, where images are persistent forces that shape memory, perceptions, history, and politics as much as they depict them. A new agenda for visual peace research highlights an urgent need to more systematically understand the political significance and effect of images on post-conflict peacebuilding in diverse cultural settings.

Imaging Peace is a Leverhulme Fellowship project led by Dr Tiffany Fairey in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. The project is investigating the critical and neglected relationship between photography and peacebuilding by focusing on localised photographic initiatives in countries with recent and ongoing experiences of conflict, violence, and war. In particular, it is examining how conflict-affected communities use photography to foster peace and how localised, participatory, and community-engaged photographic initiatives operate as forms of peace photography or strategic visual peacebuilding. Undertaking the first multi-country study of participatory peace photography, Fairey has collaborated with partners in diverse peace and conflict settings, including in Colombia, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, and Bosnia & Herzegovina, to build empirical evidence and co-produce knowledge on participatory visual peace methods, ethics, and impacts.

Academic articles and chapters

Fairey, T. 2024. ‘Community and Participatory Photography as Peace Photography. Cases from Latin America.’, in Picturing Peace. Albeson, T., & Mitchel, J. (eds). Bloomsbury.

Fairey, T., and Jacques Nkinzingabo. 2024, ‘The Images That Define Us. A Photo Elicitation Interview with Jacques Nkinzingabo.’ In Picturing Peace.  Albeson, T. & Mitchel, J. (Eds.), Bloomsbury.

Bellmer, Rasmus, Tiffany Fairey, and Frank Möller. 2024. ‘Peace Photography, Visual Peacebuilding and Participatory Peace Photography.’ In The Routledge Handbook of Conflict and Peace Communication.  Stacey Connaughton & Stefanie Pukallus (Editors). Routledge.

Fairey, T (2024), ‘The Home Stay Exhibitions: The Home and the Image as Hyperlocal Sites of Peace-Building.’ Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding. 

Fairey, Tiffany, Isabella Marín Muñoz, Ingrid Guyon, Edwin Cubillos, Luz Maria Sanchez, and Andrea Castillo. 2023. ‘Images from Exile: Participatory Photography as a Means for Reparation and Healing’. Membrana Journal 8 (1).

Fairey, T., Cubillos Rodriguez, E.A. and Muñoz, M. (2023), ‘Photography and Everyday Peacebuilding. Examining the impact of photographing everyday peace in Colombia.’ Peacebuilding.

Fairey, T. (2023), ‘Peace is possible: The role of strategic narratives in peacebuilding’, Media, War & Conflict.

Fairey, T., Firchow, P. and Dixon, P. (2022), ‘Images and Indicators: Mixing participatory methods to build inclusive rigour’, Action Research.