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For the past 10 years I have been working with girls who are between eight and 21 years old, inviting them to photograph their worlds inside and outside of school. Throughout these inquiries I have had a curiosity with the "evaded" curriculum-those lived experiences that are not seen, are dismissed and are institutionally ignored in both students' and teachers' lives. I have worked with girls who attend school and who actively connect their learning to subcultures of the performing and visual arts' and equestrian experiences.2 Students as imagemakers, working with horses, has meant that the girls make images that matter to them. My work continues to explore the "evaded curriculum" in the lives of girls, those stories that are instantly dismissed, ignored or considered less than. As we listen to the girls we hear stories of strength, pleasure and entitlement. These girls write their lives through stories of learning with horses outside of the classroom. My hope is to provide spaces for them to show and tell their stories of learning with horses. One of the most pleasurable experiences the girls talk about is their enjoyment of the act of photographing. What matters, for me, is the girls' excitement at being imagemakers. Hearing their voices and my desire to work visually presses me to find photography's place within my narrative inquiry. I think about how my work with girls opens spaces of possibility to question the institutionalized place of photography and story in educational research.
As an educational researcher working visually with girls I still question who is making the picture. I trouble the existing constructions, re/presentations and documentaries that make knowledge claims about girl culture. Whose gaze de/constructs the image/sign? Who listens to the story told about girls' photographs? Who is talking?. What is written on the bodies of girls and who are those authors?
Making a photo narrative
Images created with photographs thicken ways of seeing. Participants in "visual narrative inquiry" are provided with one-time cameras in order to visually document their learning relationships that connect to their subcultures (the arts and equestrian). Pictured through their "cameraworks" the students document their coming to know their subcultures and how the arts or equestrian experiences affect them as learners, as knowers. Images suggest a space...