I am: beyond the eyes of others

I examined a community project that uses art to examine the images that people hold of themselves and explore how far these correspond to and contest others negative stereotypes. The project was designed as a space for mixed-heritage children and teenagers to come together and challenge representations that race and so collaborate positive cultural identities. The visual aspect of identity at once highlights that we cannot often avoid being seen in very particular ways (as brown or white or mixed) and that also there are so many ways of asserting / performing/ challenging what it is to be seen. The rich visual data reveal how creative photography can capture the gaze of the other and the symbolic violence of racism as well as the possibilities for recasting the self in the eyes of others. This reveals a visual politics of identity that limits and contests systems of belonging and recognition.