A visual narrative research on photographs taken by children living on the street in the city of La Paz – Bolivia

This contribution aims to generate knowledge about why children and adolescents decide to live on the street or reenter the street after experiencing institutionalization, by conducting a visual narrative inquiry on a photograph exhibition, in which children presented themselves and their street life. We first describe the way in which the photograph project was conducted, then we explain how the visual and textual material was analyzed from a visual–narrative perspective, and finally we discuss how street children presented themselves and their lives in different voices, responding to different audiences and discourses about them. We defined a dependent voice in which children present themselves as in constant need for help which concurs with the institutional discourse. Secondly, we identified a street voice which reasserts the importance of a sense of belonging to the street. Thirdly, we recognize a claiming voice that expresses a refusal to attitudes of indifference and discrimination held by society. Lastly, we found the intersection of voices can give an answer to why children prefer the street over institutions or over the possibility of social and family reintegration.