Photography is often considered a straightforward way to capture moments and life memories or as a formal art form, but there are many ways to use it as a tool for self-exploration and introspection. Even if you don’t have a professional camera, the phone in your pocket offers easily accessible and highly versatile tools for visual storytelling and meaning-making. There are many books and websites that offer great suggestions for photo exercises (e.g. The Photographers Playbook), but here are a few directions that can help you get started with a more exploratory photographic process:
- Visual storytelling – Photos can tell stories without the need for words. Planned compositions or spontaneous snapshots can communicate experiences, emotions, and narratives. Go explore.
- Photography as a meditative exercise – Engaging in image-making encourages presence and attention. Framing a shot or capturing detail attunes you to your surroundings. This heightened awareness promotes connection to the present moment, a cornerstone of any meditation practice.
- Emotional expression – Colors, composition, and subject matter (as well as the use of easy filter tools and editing on apps like Instagram or Canva) offer endless varieties of ways to express or explore moods and feelings.
- Therapeutic Self-Reflection – Selecting subjects, framing shots, and reviewing images offers opportunities for self-reflection and give the chance for considering the meaning of scenes and moments.
- Empowerment – Choosing what to capture and how to capture it allows control over the narrative, an important aspect of therapeutic process.
- Healing – Photography can be used as an intentional therapy tool. Imagery related to past trauma, stress, and externalizing emotions can be quite powerful, particularly in editing and putting together images. Expressive Therapists like Dr. Robert Irwin Wolf (visit this link for a great paper on phototherapy) and Judy Weiser have written and presented extensively around the possibilities of this. I’ve worked with many therapy clients using photography, often taking pictures between sessions and reflecting on their meanings together when we meet. We also often create collages using a combination of personal and found imagery. In addition to words, this allows for an excellent means for communication, expression, and exploring emotions.
These are just some of the therapeutic ways photography can be used. There are many, many more. If you’re interested in using photography and other creative media as therapeutic tools and are considering psychotherapy or clinical supervision please read more about our practice or contact us.