Been reading ‘Phototherapy and Therapeutic Photography in a Digital Age’ (Ed Del Loewenthal) this week – the book was kindly suggested by fellow a-n blogger Rodney Dee (www.a-n.co.uk/p/2422257) who is studying for an MA in Art Psychotherapy at Roehampton. I also met with M, an art psychotherapist based in Rochdale, who an art therapist friend put me in touch with.
The book is really tremendous. I was especially pleased to read an essay by Rosy Martin, who developed photo re-enactment techniques with the late Jo Spence. Martin has developed these tecniques further since Spence’s death in 1992 and uses it within her own practice. I am delighted to discover Martin’s work in this area, as when I first discovered the joint work by Spence and Martin via Spence’s book ‘Putting Myself in The Picture’ it had a big impact on me. That was way back on my Foundation course in 2001. Martin has written a fantastic article on their and her practices which can be found here
The meeting with M was also really valuable – talking about her practice with photographer both as a fine artist and an art therapist. We talked around the possibility of her being involved in the knowledge sharing part of the family photography project I’m developing. I’m very pleased that she is interested in the project and is going to think about it.
I showed her some autobiographical work I had done with one of my own photographs (of myself at 8 years old) and also the exhibition catalogue from Fotomanias 2011 showing the collaborative photography project I did with my mum
On my foundation course, I made a book called ‘1978’, using an image of myself taken in a photobooth. The image was printed on tracing paper, on each page, becoming fainter with each turn of the page until it almost disapears. Although the book is quite crudely executed (I was just learning) this, I realise now it is a significant piece, marking the beginning of my explorations of personal and family photographs in my work, which has taken me up to this point.
I’ll tell the story of the photo in my next post.
