03/17/2026
Documenting Care: Six Months Into the Dr. Peter Centre's “Power of Wholeness” Project.
Reflections on visual storytelling, ethical practice, and lived experience in care.
For the past six months, I’ve had the privilege of working at the Dr. Peter Centre (DPC) in Vancouver, a community organization supporting people living with HIV and AIDS who face complex challenges including homelessness, substance use, mental health struggles, and stigma. I joined the team developing “The Power of Wholeness,” a knowledge product in cooperation with human geographer and social scientist Melora Koepke, sharing DPC’s holistic model of care. Using a Carescapes approach, we explore how care is shaped by relationships, spaces, culture, and lived experience. My role is to visualize the human and relational dimensions of this model, transforming research and observations into images and narratives that communicate feeling, presence, and the lived experience of care.
This work raises ongoing questions for me:
How can a storyteller represent someone’s reality without appropriating it, while respecting their voice, agency, and the vulnerability inherent in their lived experience?
How can photography and storytelling navigate the power dynamics between observer and subject, honour relationships and trust, and involve participatory, co-authored, or dialogic approaches that preserve agency and authentic representation?
Six months in, these questions continue to guide my practice and reflection, shaping the way I approach storytelling and visualizing care. I’m curious to connect with fellow visual storytellers who have worked in similar environments. I’d love to hear about the approaches you’ve used to navigate ethical storytelling, collaboration, and representing lived experience respectfully.
