THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC FRAME

Section II: Methods

Thesis submitted by MARCIA WEBSTER

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts in Expressive Therapies

LESLEY COLLEGE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS & SOCIAL SCIENCES

MAY 1, 2000

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The Experience of the Photographic Frame Section II: Methods

by Marcia Webster

VI. Research Method and Creative Avenues

• Overview....................................................................... 44 • Finding Meaning, Purpose and an Audience ............... 48 • Interviews...................................................................... 52 • Processing Photographic Frames................................. 55 • Construction of a Model................................................ 63 • Integrating the Collage into the Body ........................... 67

VIII. Literature Review........................................................................... 69 References..................................................................................... 81

Index of Images

Research Method & Creative Avenues Photo by B. Smith p. 37 Self Portrait p. 47 Pastel #1, #2 p. 51 4x5 p. 55 Wrapped p. 56 Dash p. 57 Trashed Toyota p. 58 Whoops p. 59 Stopped p. 60 Model #1 p. 64 Model #2 p. 65 Model #3 p. 66 Literature Review Work p. 80

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Research Method and

Creative Avenues

• Overview • Finding Meaning, Purpose and an Audience • Interviews • Processing Photographic Frames • Construction of a Model • Integrating the Collage into Body and Show

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Overview The principle of heuristic research process provided structure of this thesis. I

began work by focusing on the question of what my involvement in photography

has meant in my life and what it means currently, as I study expressive arts

therapy. I use a variety of artistic modalities, including photography,

construction, drawing, journaling and poetry, as tools to explore my thesis

questions; “How have I experienced the unique process of framing

photographs? How do other photographers experience it? What makes the

photographic frame such a powerful tool in the therapeutic process?”

My interview with Donna Hamil Talman adds another perspective to my personal

inquiry. Donna brings the photographic experience of using alternative

processes to the thesis. The complete transcript of our hour-long interview can

be found in the Appendix.

The sensory experience and the placement of the photographic frame is at the

core of both Donna’s and my experiences as artists and as healers. The heart of

this thesis was revealed! My efforts to sift, highlight and review all of the images

and writings I gathered and generated produce the following themes:

• Context • Referent • Measure • Reciprocity • Shift • Respect • Evolution • Home These patterns of experience associated with the photographic frame are familiar

and are validated by my studies of trauma theory, storytelling, philosophy,

expressive arts therapy, ecology, and the psychology of place. They are about

the context and sensory experience of the photographic frame, but were left

loose and unorganized for much of the process.

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In my second interview, I ask Daniel Yalowitz, a male photographer who shoots

with a photojournalist’s sensibility, “How does introducing the frame of

photography effect you?” This interview, more of a dialogue, can also be found in

the Appendix. My conversation with Daniel confirms the themes I identify as

core elements in the framing experience. Daniel helps me to further define

photography as unique among the arts. Following this interview, I describe the

four defining factors of the photographic frame. Without seeing it at the time,

these factors provided structure for the thesis relate directly to the therapeutic

frame.

• The photographic frame is introduced by the photographer to a place. • The physical nature of the photographic frame has integrity. • The photographic frame acts as a witness to the photographer’s experience

of place, time and sensation. • The act of framing a photograph is relational. I write about where the photographic frame has been in relation to my life stories

in “Before This Thesis Began”. Along with my reviewing my photographs, this

writing was essential to organizing the thesis and to creating the body of the

thesis. After many years of wanting to share them in some valuable way, the

images and connections between my experiences were vivid and ready to be

expressed. The many times and levels from which I decided to write makes

room for the chapter to unfold. The photographic frame that weaves through my

experiences is a natural vehicle for this story and guides the editing process.

Throughout the nine months of the research, I allowed room for being “side

tracked” and for seeming to “procrastinate”. Unanticipated learnings about my

relationship to the photographic frame and about the process have come from

these avenues. The adventure of exploration gives me energy to be more

productive. The model project is one example of an unplanned avenue that

moves the research in useful ways.

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The model is of this thesis in context. The themes needed to be put out there in

three dimensional space, to relate and to move around. I approach creating the

model with the same focus that I had writing “Before This Thesis Began”. As with

“Before...”, I wonder if I have simply distracted myself from the “true” thesis task

of academic writing. It had become overwhelming, however, to articulate in a

linear fashion, on the computer, the relationships between so much material and

my topic of photographic frame.

Expressing concepts, hopes, ideas and feelings through objects in physical

space relieves the stress and offers some distance from my internal process.

Much like shooting does. I am energized and begin planning a show based on

these themes. As I construct the model, I read Sight and Sensibility, by Laura

Sewall (1999). Though the book is not about the photographic frame, it served to

illustrate and highlight the themes I incorporated in my model. The fundamental

need and striving that human beings have toward seeking, recognizing, making

and being home, in every sense of the word, resonated strongly with my

experience of the photographic frame. I understood it as a place and a process

for recognizing one’s home. The grounding truth of this journey home and its

relationship to the therapy process, however, comes and goes as I continue work

toward finishing the thesis.

I am surrounded by an unfinished collage of photographs, poems, words, papers,

books and calendars. As I prepare to leave Lesley for the next place, the four

defining elements of the photographic frame and the eight experiential stories

come together. A picture forms of the therapeutic process contained and shaped

by the photographic frame; of the framing process as a creative space for

experience, with the potential for shift and evolution toward healing.

• The photographic frame is introduced by the photographer to a place. Context Home

• The physical nature of the photographic frame has integrity. Referent Measure

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• The photographic frame acts as a witness to the photographer’s experience

of place, time and sensation. Respect

• The act of framing a photograph is relational.

Reciprocity Details about the avenues and methods taken toward this synthesis follows in the next chapter.

Self Portrait, October 1999

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Finding Meaning, Purpose and an Audience

The hour is striking so close above me, so clear and sharp, That all my senses ring with it. I feel it now, there’s a power in me to grasp and give shape to the world. I know nothing has ever been real without my beholding it. All becoming has needed me. My looking ripens things and they come toward me to meet and be met. No thing is too small for me to cherish and paint in gold, as if it were an icon that could bless us though I’ll not know who among us will feel this blessing. ---Rainer Maria Rilke (Sewall, 1999, p xii)

What is the point? To create value based on the concept of “frame” using the concrete, accessible and uniquely suited process and experience of photography. Marcia Webster From journal entry 1-2-00

I resisted considering the heuristic research process for my thesis for weeks

before learning anything substantial about it. Finally, out of curiosity and guilt

about being behind in my studies for research class, I read the slender Heuristic

Research by Clark Moustakas (1990). In one sitting. It was remarkable! My

naive, misguided image of heuristic research as self-engrossed and akin to

“staring at one’s belly button” was both confirmed and shattered. Here was a

timeless, documented and respectable method for penetrating to the essence of

one’s presence at any moment. Of course the individual experience is most

important! It is, always, where we start, in the context of the universe and in

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relation to the experience of others. All of these realms are considered in

heuristic research. My nine years of Buddhist practice and study, socio-political

background, education and experiences with the arts and with change have all

prepared me to participate in the heuristic, experiential process.

Despite the deep comfort and excitement I felt reading about heuristic research, I

had difficulty believing that my own, seemingly limited perspective and

experience could be the basis of a useful academic research project. I needed to

know that what I produced would be valuable to other people in large numbers.

The further removed from me, the better, I thought.

My limited assumptions and expectations about the value and potential of my

thesis were transformed, in part, by participating in the thesis seminar. In

December, before most of us could state our thesis question with particular

clarity or confidence, we shared our work-to-date. Presenting and witnessing

these mid-semester performance improvisations shifted my sense of being an

artist and a clinician in a substantial way. I saw that my photographs, my choice

of music and my questions brought about shifts in other people. I felt the energy

and movement that other people’s work inspired in me. Every student’s thesis,

no matter how academic or theoretical, was grounded in personal experience

and expressed here, for us, through visual art/words/movement and individual

presence. I could appreciate and understood that this intimate audience was a

fabulous gift. In fact, the 8 of us could be viewed as infinity in the process of

turning.

Learn the darkness. Gather round you all the things that you love, name their names, prepare to lose them. It will be as if all you know were turned around within your body. Journal entry by Martha Manning (1994, .p. 68)

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First, I acknowledged this thesis’s initial question, “Why is my seemingly inactive

relationship to photography asserting itself into my life as an Expressive Arts

Therapy student?” This was particularly difficult because, at the time, it meant

letting go of my clear and present interest in pursuing research in trauma theory

and community development, using the creative arts process. I did try twisting

photography into this topic by designing research that explored issues of trauma,

family and the evolution of culture. My ambition was to impact the philosophical

foundations and systemic structures of society with my thesis. Wow!

My very personal questions and anxiety about becoming an expressive arts

therapist, however, succeeded in propelling me toward a thesis topic that would

support me where I stood. “What is it about taking photographs? For me? For

others?” I have been humbled and relieved to step out of the way of the pressure

I generated early on. My vision of expansive change, however, has not

dissipated. Instead, it has become clear and grounding energy. For this

Master’s Thesis, I feel very fortunate to have an audience of fellow students and

expressive therapists, family, photographers, friends and Soka Gakkai members.

I am sharing with people who have supported my efforts and whom are

interested in considering this thesis and a possible showing of this work in the

future.

Then... well... not exactly “then”, as I have already jumped ahead of myself!

Having identified the realm, at least, of my thesis question, I started noticing odd,

unexpected, familiar, enormous and obscure shards from stories around me;

memories, photographs, images, literature, knowledge, and personal, sensory

experiences that seemed important. I unraveled this “data” , sorting and

sifting it through my daily life in my journal and in my photography. I was led,

quite directly in the case of my visual art, to wonder about the actual frame of

photography. [Photo of Pastel #1 & #2, 10/00]

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Pastel #1, #2

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Response to Pastel Don’t be afraid Your vision is held Trust Beautiful and worthy in the center Vulnerable to the past to the activity of life. Don’t wretch yourself. It needs community and space. The darkroom permeates adding images and seeing them again Trust the color and vibrancy of your experience. Marcia Webster October 19, 1999

Interviews Before describing the interviews that I taped and transcribed and reviewed with

such concentration for this thesis, I want to acknowledge the many people who

responded with energy to the topic of photographic frame. Over the many

months of research, I had a number of informal, far from casual, conversations

about the impact of frame and of the photographic frame on perception, choices

and on people’s lives. Without precise data, I would like to note that everyone I

spoke with had some relationship to taking and seeing photographs. I could

have interviewed any number of people on the topic and found valuable

experiential data about their relationship to the photographic frame. In fact, I did

interview Julia Byers, Director of EXTH at Lesley, but was not able to salvage our

conversation from the tape recording I made.

I asked Donna Hamil Talman for an interview for a variety of reasons. I know

Donna from many years of sharing membership and darkroom space at the

Worcester Center for Crafts. Our photographic technique and visual work is

quite different from each other’s. I remembered Donna’s soft, multi-media

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images that defied the strict Zone V technical standards of our teacher. I was

interested to find out where our photographic experiences were shared and

where they differed. Donna was present for, though not part of, my personal

story during the years around my hospitalization. Donna wrote a book about her

own early recovery from Lupus (1991), which I read years ago. From this, more

than from our darkroom conversations, I was aware that Donna is a therapist

who used alternative, body-based techniques.

I asked Donna in the interview, “What is your experience as a photographer and

how has it related to other parts of your life?” I was also interested in finding out

what Donna remembered of me and of my photographs from a distance of over

ten years. The full transcript of our conversation can be found in the Appendix. I

enjoyed the interview tremendously. I wrote over ten pages of notes exploring,

reframing and hearing again what Donna shared of her experiences as a Gestalt

therapist, a photographer and of her creative and healing processes. The actual

work of transcribing our conversation and of identifying themes contributed a

tremendous amount to my formulation “frame” as central to my thesis question.

My second interview came much later. I wanted to speak with a male

photographer to balance the female voices that Donna and I contributed. From

my experience and in published, successful collections, men seem to be more

attracted to the photographic frame than to other artistic modalities. I do not

pursue this perception or the issue of gender further in the thesis, but it may be a

valuable question to explore, both to validate or refute the perception and from a

practical, clinical perspective.

I first knew of Daniel Yalowitz through our common membership and friendships

in the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a lay Buddhist organization which

promotes peace through culture, education and the arts. Daniel is also the

administrator of the Peaceable Schools Program at Lesley College. I had

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noticed Daniel’s black and white photographs on exhibit at Lesley early in the

year. The images I saw were in a journalistic style, quite different from Donna’s

more contemplative, abstracted images.

I introduced myself to Daniel with my thesis question clear. Daniel’s response to

my invitation to be interviewed about the photographic frame was enthusiastic,

“Sure! I think about photography a lot.” We met for half an hour in Daniel’s office.

A transcription of our conversation is included in the Appendix. Daniel amplified

and articulated my strong sense of place in understanding the process of

framing. Our conversation was critical to my formulation of “photographic

frame”, defined earlier in the thesis. Daniel spoke very much from his

perspective as a teacher and a facilitator of change. His framing process, more

than was apparent in the interview with Donna, extends and is directed toward

the viewer and toward choices and change.

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Processing Photographic Frames Following my first “official” review of my black and white contact sheets I wrote:

Thesis topic emerging as something like, “What is the relationship between frame and change?” or “frame and courage” or “frame and strength” or “What is the nature of frame?” So I tried to attend to the question of frame in reviewing April 1985 through September 1985. So far: I like looking up I shoot with a lot of attention to the edges, more as I go along Tend to get close and tight I am surprised at how in people’s face I am I shoot in series more than I realized (I see this as a good thing. Why??)

4x5, March 2000

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Wrapped, March 2000

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Dash, November 1999

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Trashed Toyota, November 1999

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Whoops, December 1999

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Stopped, March 2000

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I looked at many of my color photographs while in the process of packing to

move, just two months before beginning my thesis. As I formulated my questions

about the “What is it?” of photography, I looked through nine three-ring binders

of contact sheets and piles of prints from the past fifteen years. My hope was to

look at my old journals and other visual art pieces as well. I was entranced by

my naive use of what expressive arts therapist call the “intermodal transfer

process”. I had created new meaning for myself by moving from photography to

writing to drawing on my own. As valuable as this was, however, it seemed that

my photographs held something for me, over time, in a way that the other arts

had not. The question of intermodal transfer would have to wait for another time.

I had rented darkroom time at the Boston Photo Collaborative even before

choosing photography as a thesis topic. It was a delight to shoot with the old 4x5

camera that I had used years earlier. I shot self-portraits, trees at Arnold

Arboretum and my home; familiar subjects, well suited to the big camera on the

tripod. [“4x5”, 4/00] I shot and worked in the darkroom with more ease and less

expectation than I had in the past. Attending to the photographic frame with my

evolving attention was both an allusive task and an intriguing element in my

shooting trips. New perspectives gave me a great deal to write and think about

as an artist, an expressive arts therapist and a human being:

So I’m shooting on this oddly quiet, urban street, the ‘nature struggles to survive despite the decimation of human beings’ theme strong in mind. Familiar, correct, true, apparent at every turn. Then I start to see more. I notice that the trunks of the young trees lining the street, surrounded by cement, are wrapped in some kind of protective material. There was care, here, for the trees. These trees were planted, purposely. My perspective shifts and I forgive a little. The shooting and framing has changed somehow. I leave. And pull over almost immediately when I notice that on this nowhere street there are three public phone booths within two blocks of each other. I frame and shoot, knowing that phone booths will not be obvious in the b & w image. But I want to note and remember that the people here, having decimated much of the landscape and clean air and earth are also, apparently, desperate to connect. [“Protected” 4/00]

From journal entry 1-8-00

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The most exhilarating frame-breaking work I did for the thesis was in and around

my car. I shot with the 4x5, on a tripod, in the car, in the parking lot of Shattuck

Hospital, determined to capture the image of a leaf on the dash. I did so in both

color and black and white. [“Dash”, 11/99] A few weeks later, my car, the Toyota

I bought a few months before my hospitalization and had driven for all of its ten

years and 160,000 miles, was totaled while parked on my street. I used the 4x5

to frame the image of its traumatized back end the next day. [“Trashed Toyota”,

11/99] Once I found a replacement Toyota, I photographed from inside the car to

entertain myself on the hour-long commute to Worcester I made three days a

week. For just a few frames, I deluded myself into thinking that I could safely

shoot from the Mass Pike while driving. I pre-set the manual camera and then

shot out the window without looking through the view finder. [“Whoops”,

12/99] I found multi-tasking in this way ridiculously difficult and not safe! The

frame demands attention, which I was wise enough to realize before I created an

accident.

But I was hooked on something about shooting from the car, beyond the

challenge of overcoming the speed and danger issues. At a full stop and out the

driver’s side window, I began shooting again during snow storms, on the Jamaica

Way, and in city traffic. The perimeter of the car’s frame, in addition to the frame

of the photograph, provided a challenge to play with. [“Stopped”, 4/00] The

photographic frame became a place difficult to predict and exciting to be in,

experiences I came to enjoy with new appreciation as a photographer and as a

therapist.

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Construction of a Model First, I laid down the context of the thesis: On my kitchen table, the foundation

began with an expanse of black paper, “the world”, under a smaller green

rectangle representing Lesley College. Audience members, including professors,

students, my second reader, family and friends, were made from clay spheres. I

indented each one with rectangles, photographic frames. They collected at

Lesley, but scattered beyond. I added coffee beans later for diversity. My

interview with Donna was drawn in the green paper. It held my internship site, an

uneven clay bowl-shaped figure. My interview with Daniel is a blue shape added

to Lesley, extending beyond, representing my association with the Sokka Gakkai

International. The three legs of the candle stick represent the past, present and

future. In retrospect, they also stand for the camera’s three legged tripod. The

spiral on the candlestick signifies the mystic law of cause and effect. The candle

(not lit in every photo!) is the Buddha nature inherent in all of us. [Model #1, #2

#3]

I wrote out the themes that I had identified with a calligraphy brush and ink, This

medium brought me a great sense of power in my one experience with it during

the thesis presentations. Next, I moved the themes, which I later understood to

represent the therapeutic and creative processes, out of a linear format. I

unearthed the softball that I had found in a field many years ago while shooting.

It was a perfect base for the long, sharp curtain hanger points that held each

theme on rice paper. I arranged them in relation to each other on the softball and

placed the structure in context on the paper. I photographed the model whole

and in parts on and off for two days. It stayed on my kitchen table until my first

draft was completed, at which point the energy seemed to turn to dust and

annoyance.

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Model #1

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Model #2

66

Model #3

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Integrating the Collage into Body and Show

My artistic and data-sorting followed more and more of a dialogue format as the

research progressed. In Conversations Before the End of Time (1995), Suzi

Gablik describes her decision to utilize this ages-old approach to inquiry,

encouraging me in this already familiar direction. It is no accident that on the

cover of her book are three photographs framing a man and a woman on the

crest of a road in the mountains, moving and shifting, deep in conversation,.

The photographic frame holds many areas of my life. My Buddhist practice and

activities allowed me to trust my wisdom and daily decisions about how to direct

my attention and energy during the research. I read and studied and viewed the

work of other photographers, writers and clinicians throughout the research

process. The frame of nature, my work as a case manager, classes at Lesley,

work at my internship site and supervision have all been integral to the process.

I am increasingly aware of the physical and sensory relationships that I and that

each of us have to our surroundings. All of these learnings and associations

come together as I re-view my photographs, write and, particularly, as I return to

looking and shooting with the photographic frame.

I wove the strands and shards and precious grains of “data” I had collected into

the body of the thesis; visual and poetic stories. They embody the kinds of

experiences that I and other photographers have while engaged with the

photographic frame. From these stories and from an expansive body of literature

about creative change, a series of framing ideas are developed. They have risen

to the top of months of research, creative dialogue and from the photographic

frame itself. I do not believe that they are definitive. The body of the thesis, the

literature review and the show that is being planned for the summer of 2000 are

all structured in the same way: By understanding that the therapeutic process

can be contained and shaped by the photographic frame and that this process is

a creative space for experience, with the potential for shift and evolution toward

healing.

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• The photographic frame is introduced by the photographer to a place.

Context Home

• The physical nature of the photographic frame has integrity.

Referent Measure

• The photographic frame acts as a witness to the photographer’s experience

of place, time and sensation. Respect

• The act of framing a photograph is relational.

Reciprocity

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Literature Review

I have researched the framing experience from the photographer’s point of view,

apart from the clinical setting. I found no research specifically about the nature

or the experience of the photographic frame. My primary source of literature on

the topic comes from the individual experiences and stories of photographers,

writers and healers. Literature is included from studies on sensory perception,

from the emerging field of ecopsychology, from the philosophical foundations of

art-making and expressive arts therapy, from relational and spatial models of the

therapeutic process and from work in the field of traumatic stress. This review

offers glimpses and occasional depth from these overlapping fields of study, all

related to the topic of photographic frame.

The thesis does not attempt to study, evaluate or develop ways to apply

photography to the clinical practice of therapy. It does review some of the many

studies and writings about the use of photographs in therapy (Fryrear & Corbit,

1992; Loellback, 1982; Phillips, 1986; Weiser, 1984: Weiser 1985; Weiser, 1993:

Weiser, 1998;). A wealth of activities that utilize the camera and photographic

images in therapy for various populations were found in the literature. The field

of phototherapy is growing. Valuable work is being done to offer standardized

training. Judy Weiser (1998) and the PhotoTherapy Centre in Vancouver, B.C.

offer practical support and information about the field.

The memoirs and life stories referenced offer role models for writing personal

narrative (Dillard, 1988; Jamison, 1995; Kaysen, 1993; Lesy, 1985; Manning,

1994; Maynard, 1999; Millet, 1990; Rogers, 1995; Talman, 1991). The one story

I began reading, (Kavanaugh, 1992) written by a male psychiatrist about his

journey as a “wounded healer”, was not compelling or well written enough to

keep me engaged. Each woman writer cited brought me into their

creative/healing process. All offer their story in the frame of literature. Most of

the women engage with images in a number of forms, in addition to the written

word. Most, but not all, write about their experiences as patients of mental health

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treatment and therapy (Jamison, 1995; Kaysen, 1993; Manning, 1994; Millet,

1990; Rogers, 1995). All look for support from the larger perspective of the

universe.

An American Childhood (Dillard, 1988) is unique among the group for its vivid

recollections of light and learning. Annie Dillard seems to have experienced a

sound and healthy growing up. She was given room to notice and to voice her

experiences and her surroundings. In contrast, Joyce Maynard (1999) comes to

the telling of the story of her dishonest, classically alcoholic family life only after a

lifetime of writing about relationships. Maynard refuses therapy or treatment for

her eating disorder and depression. At forty-something-years-old, she speaks of

how writing; how framing and reframing a life, finally finds her “at home in the

world,” as she titles her memoir.

An Unquiet Mind (Jamison, 1995), Undercurrents (Manning, 1994) and A Shining

Affliction (Rogers, 1995) are all particularly well written and engaging accounts of

each women’s experience as a professional provider and as a client of mental

health treatment. In her Afterward, “To My Clinical Colleagues”, Rogers offers a

remarkable account of her decision to write as she did, “with integrity”:

I had to say clearly how I was wounded and healed in my personal psychotherapy, or my book would not be able to sustain the emotional truths at the heart of my relationship with Ben [Annie’s client]. (1995, p. 317)

She acknowledges the relationships and responsibilities that connect her to her

young client, to supervisors and to her therapists. Throughout A Shining

Affliction, Rogers shares her poetic verse and describes the special place that

she finds in her art-making in the wake of traumatic experiences, past and

present.

Martha Manning’s story (1994) is remarkable for its poetry and journaling. She

tells of her decision to pursue electroconvulsive shock therapy (ECT) to treat the

persistent and disabling depression she suffers from. She writes about terrible

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fear and confusion with faith, humor, wit and healing. Like Donna Hamil Talman

(1991, 1999 Interview in Appendix), Manning found that she could continue her

work as a therapist despite, and maybe because of, her own suffering at the

time.

Kay Redfield Jamison (1993) is an accomplished researcher and academic in the

field of manic-depressive disorders. It took Jamison decades of experiencing

manic-depressive cycles and a number of suicide attempts before she was

willing to take Lithium. Her story is particularly interesting in terms of how

significant poetry is in her life. In the same way that this study explores the

experience of photographic frame and its relation to the therapeutic process,

Jamison devotes herself to an extensive study of manic-depressive illness and

the artistic temperament, particularly the poetic temperament, in Touched With

Fire (1993). In her memoir, An Unquiet Mind (1995), Jamison refers repeatedly

to the presence of poetry on her journey toward and away from healing.

Books about the art of writing include: The Writing Life (Dillard, 1989), Mornings

Like This (Dillard, 1995), Writing Down the Bones (Goldberg, 1986), Bird by Bird

(Lamott, 1994), The Power of Personal Storytelling (Maguire, 1998) and Roget’s

Thesaurus, (1933). The Writing Life is an inexhaustible source of

encouragement and grounding for the artist in any medium, including the

photographer:

The body of literature, with its limits and edges, exists outside some people and inside others... In working class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said, ‘It is the trade entering his body.’ The art must enter the body, too. (p. 69)

The Power of Personal Storytelling (Maguire, 1998) offers a framework and

directives for engaging in the process of personal storytelling, even for the first

time. It is useful to other storytellers, including photographers. Maguire speaks

about the story’s capacity to move an abstraction into reality, a particular strength

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of the photographic frame. Readers are encouraged to practice recognizing

memory and sensory experience in the process of recalling, revisioning and

telling a story.

Roget’s Thesaurus (1933) began as a tool for making choices about the use of

words, particularly in the artistic body of the thesis. Soon, however, the

connections that Roget makes between the images and ideas of language

become a story in themselves.

Photographers use the frame, often in collaboration with other people and other

words or images, to express themselves, create a memory. Photographers

expose us to their experience and take the risk of inviting a response (Berger &

Mohr, 1982; Brandenburg, 1998; Featherstone (Ed.), 1989; Ikeda, 1992; Ikeda,

1995; Ikeda, 1996; Keogh, 2000; Lesy, 1985; Siskind, 1988; Stephenson, 1999;

White, 1978). Some of their work is described below.

Brandenburg is an award-winning nature photographer accustomed to shooting

anywhere from 10,800 to 36,000 frames on a three-month assignment. In

response to this pace and perspective, he decided to make only one image for

each of ninety consecutive days. Chased by the Light collects these color

photographs. The images, with accompanying accounts of his days, are

evocative and technically superb. Brandenburg did not intend these images for

publication or shoot for an assignment. He is successful in returning to the

experience of framing in nature.

Andrea Kovacs, interviewed in Visible Light, describes her work as an artist and

photographer in relation to her many battles with chaos and a chronic eating

disorder. She describes her artistic and emotional journey toward her work as an

intuitive photo-collage artist. Andrea’s struggle becomes one based on faith,

which she describes as her ordinary, random and repetitive images grow into

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mandalas representing universal rhythms. The book includes interviews with

three other photographers, none popular or financially successful, but each with

their own unique relationship and history with the photographic frame.

Daisaku Ikeda is the only photographer I know of who shoots, literally, from the

heart rather than from the head. Photographs of Ikeda show him holding his

camera out from his body at heart level, present for each shot. He frames with

trust rather than burying his head behind the viewfinder. Color images and

poems in the three volumes of Songs of Light (1992-1996) capture the essence

of moments as Ikeda, President of the Soka Gakkai International, travels to

speak with and welcome people all over the world. W. Eugene Smith’s black and white photographs of jazz musicians are stunning

(Stephenson, 1999). They are raw and intimate, framed by the rhythm of the

music they evoke. In quantity, quality and form they express the man’s

unsuitable passions. In addition to taking photographs, Smith carefully

documented jam sessions on reel-to-reel tape. He persisted in working despite

the suffering of drug addiction and a failed marriage. Smith created this wealth of

images by leaving a brilliant career which lacked the creative freedom he sought.

In the grimy expanse of a musicians’ loft, Smith was energized toward, “...just a

truer quality of seeing.” (p. 50) Smith brought what had meaning for him into the

frame of his photographs.

Charles Traub says of Aaron Siskind, “In his perceptions he discovers the magic

of his energy and he renews himself.” (1989, unpaginated) In his seventies,

Siskind declared that he is was only interested in his own nature. Siskind is

triggered to work, to frame and shoot, by the feeling of rapport he experiences

with a place. His black and white work is all about energy, often abstracted from

context.

Dubois, Adams and Imes (Featherstone (Ed.), 1989) are documentary portrait

photographers. Each describes his use of the photographic frame to tell the

story of self in relation. For example, Dubois writes of the anxiety and isolation

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that accompany his photographs of family members, “The act of photographing

becomes a gesture of embarrassment.“ (p. 48) In contrast, Adams says of his

portrait work, “The eyes of my subjects reveal a kindness and curiosity, and their

acceptance of me is rewarding. My greatest fear as a photographer is to look

into the eyes of a subject and not see my own reflection.” (p. 56) He depends on

the participation of his subject to frame each portrait, building a portfolio over

many years. Imes describes a specific place and community as his “touchstone”

for a loosely organized documentary project.

Minor White was a prolific photographer, writer and teacher until his death in

1976. In Rites and Passages (1978), White documents his conscious, daily

efforts to embody the whole of things, including himself, in all of his activities:

It is hardly surprising that I have concluded, after five years of research, that camera is both a way of life and not enough to live by...Glass between me and the world is both a channel and a barrier. To live through a lens, to live out my inner conflicts and brambles through a camera, to turn to the camera to help me return to the world was an experiment I set out to explore five years ago. I knew it was headed for failure in some way, but I persevered because little else was left open. Camera as a way of life, and this included teaching, especially teaching, is still the least impossible way for me to develop and to maintain a state that I can call mine. (p. 110)

White edited Aperture, a highly regarded magazine celebrating photography and

the creative arts, for twenty-three years. His life and teaching have had a

profound impact on thousands of students and colleagues.

Keogh (2000) published a recent article about The Sunday Group, a long-

standing gathering of photographers in central Massachusetts, led by Peter

Faulkner from the Worcester Center for Crafts. The article describes the monthly

gatherings at Peter’s house, where photographers “strip themselves bare” (p. 3)

as the frame of their black and white images become the center of attention.

Over time and between them, these ten photographers and the places they have

75

been interact and create a synergy. Members of the Sunday Group describe

being motivated to recognize new images by this ongoing community of work and

appreciation.

Laura Sewall’s book, Sight and Sensibility: The Ecopsychology of Perception

(1999) is an accessible source for understanding how the eye functions as well

as a wonderful analysis of ecopsychology. The book is founded on the science

of visual perception, Sewall’s experience with improving her own vision and her

studies of and experiences in the sensory and spiritual world.

Sewall’s basic premise is that vision is a participatory event, an evolving

dialogue. She describes how the visual system interacts with natural and man-

made environments in an evolution of seeing. She shows that visual perception

is actually a multimodal process involving all of the senses. Sewall is concerned

that as our environment becomes more toxic and difficult to see and to

acknowledge, people will continue to loose the capacity for depth, patience and

detail in their visual and other sensory processes. The only mention made about

photography is to observe that the invention of the camera and lens moved the

study of vision toward an increasingly mechanistic model.

The Experience of Place (Hiss, 1990) is a well-written analysis of the perceptual

experiences people tend to have in various environments. Hiss looks at what

people attend to as they chose and interact with their surroundings. He

describes “simultaneous perception” as a relaxed, safe state where one feels

separate from but engaged with a complex, but not overwhelming environment

(p. 20). Hiss applies his work to planning and development. Berger writes about many of the same principles in his essay “Field” (1980). He

describes his experience of passing by, but not actually visiting, the “ideal” field

on his daily route. He includes a photograph. Berger says:

The experience which I am attempting to describe by one tentative approach after another is very precise and is immediately recognizable. But it exists at a level of perception and feeling which is probably preverbal---hence, very much, the difficulty of writing about it.

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Undoubtedly this experience must have a psychological history, beginning in infancy, which might be explained in psychoanalytical terms. But such explanations do not generalize the experience, they merely systematize it. The experience in one form or another is, I believe, a common one. It is seldom referred to only because it is nameless. (p. 193-194)

Berger goes on to attempt to name aspects, as Hiss does in his work, of the

“ideal” field.

Christopher Manes, a radical environmentalist and an artist, identifies the frame

of ecology as a home that people do not know how to talk about (Gablik, 1995,

p. 94). Suzi Gablik is a long-time art critic who chose dialogues over time as the

format for her book, Conversations Before the End of Time (1995). She speaks

with a diverse group of artists about what relationship they see between the arts

and the future of the earth.

Ellen Dissanayake discusses her stunning thesis with Gablik (1995).

Dissanayake’s research, published in Homo Aestheticus (1995), is about the pre-

Paleolithic role of art. It finds that human beings have an evolutionary and

biological propensity for aesthetic behavior. We need to “make special” to live as

fulfilled human beings. “There is a germ in human behavior that wants to make

special things you care about, to show your regard for them. You want to do

something special to show that investment and concern.” (Gablik, 1995, p. 42)

That something special might be introducing the photographic frame.

Steven K. Levine writes in Poiesis (1992) about the philosophical foundation of

self. He references Heidegger and Winnicott to describe the environment and

relational frame necessary for the self to heal and to thrive. As the self evolves,

the arts have a unique capacity for embodying and keeping safe, for holding and

for witnessing what can not be put into words.

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Imagination, Understanding and Virtue of Liberality (Norton, 1996) builds a

philosophical foundation for the author’s thesis that “transcendental imagination”

must be cultivated for survival in a multicultural world. Norton describes the

qualitative leap, made pressing in adolescence, for people to let in and entertain

the experience of others. This requires a temporary letting go of one’s own

beliefs, causing bewilderment. Norton goes on to show that this bewildering

experience of another’s thoughts and feelings is only possible when one has the

potential for the same thoughts and feelings in themselves. (p. 33)

Norton’s work identifying the primacy and difficulty of transcendental imagination

for individual and cultural growth supports the work of expressive arts therapists.

In Art as Medicine (1992), Shaun McNiff describes how speaking with and from

an image, dialoguing, promotes this kind of imaginative capacity. He promotes

study of the impact of the studio space on the clinical process. Susana Pendzik

(1994) is a drama therapist who compares the stage of the theatre to sacred

space. She describes its transcendental qualities, even as there are rules, even

taboos, about form and behavior in each space.

Trust the Process, by Shaun McNiff (1998), includes a chapter titled,

“Reframing”. McNiff notes a number of therapeutic issues that can come up when

reframing occurs. There may be fear that the self will be lost if perspective is

changed. By definition, a singular focus on the stable center of a system or the

visual field cannot bring about the change that the extremes of the edge are

more vulnerable to. The issue of intimacy becomes critical when one’s frame

shifts.

The necessary interdependence of self and other and the value of creating

relationships are fundamental to principles of the relational model of

development. The Stone Center at Wellsley College has articulated and studied

this model of women’s development in response to the failure of the traditional

self-individuation-driven model to make sense of and to acknowledge women’s

78

experiences. Janet Surrey describes what is sought through attention to

language and to the experience of women, “Rather than ‘self-images,’ what we

need are new models of connection or ‘relational images.” (1990, p. 4) These

images are of dynamic exchange that moves all participants at a variety of levels.

Themes of mutual development and of process vs. power-over are at the

foundation of The Stone Center’s work. The theory and the practice of relational

counseling are gathered in Toward a New Psychology of Women (Miller, 1987),

Women’s Growth in Connection: Writings from the Stone Center (Jordan et al.,

1991) and The Healing Connection: How Women Form Relationships in Therapy

and in Life (Miller & Stiver, 1998).

In object relations theory, I found a bridge from the photographic frame to the

therapeutic use of space, relationship, time and sensory experience. Arthur

Robbins (1998) offers an sensory-based and succinct overview of transference

and countertransference which resonates precisely with the topic of photographic

frame. In one brief chapter, Affect and Therapeutic Presence as a Diagnostic

Indicator (p. 87-104), Robbins builds a structure that holds the themes and

elements that correspond to the experience of the photographic frame,

particularly in terms of witness and the sensation of frame.

Sheila McNamee (1992) gathers research on the social construction of identity,

trauma theory and family therapy in order to understand how to help a client in

crisis. She uses the metaphor of center and edge to describe therapeutic and

systemic change. A basic premise of her work is that, by definition, “crisis” is an

issue of boundary. When one feels isolated and apart from the group, a sense of

crisis occurs. In order to get off the edge, then, an individual will either try to find

a way to the center or will continue across the boundary into another group. (p.

188)

The literature on trauma theory incorporates a range of studies related to

preventing, understanding and responding to overwhelming experience. All of

the literature seeks to keep professionals, politicians and individuals in a

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traumatized society present to the seemingly impossible experience of

overwhelming stress. Most important to understanding traumatic stress is to be

aware that the victim is responding to a real and overwhelming event. First

published in 1992 and a classic, Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman (1997)

breaks the necessary elements of the recovery process into a sequence:

establishing a healing relationship and safety, remembrance and mourning,

reconnection to one’s self in the present and experiencing commonality with

others.

Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and

Society (Bessel van der Kolk et al (Eds.), 1996) is a comprehensive volume

including aspects of the topic ranging from the history of society’s response to

traumas, the bio-chemistry of overwhelming stress, acute and long term

adaptations to trauma, the development of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

(PTSD) as a diagnosis, to an analysis of cultural and societal definitions of

overwhelming stress. In his book and presentations, van der Kolk focuses on the

role that memory plays in processing traumatic experience. He asserts the

primacy of body in the treatment of PTSD and challenges clinicians to seek

creative avenues toward supporting a healing process that often begins in the

non-verbal realm.

Bearing Witness: Violence and Collective Responsibility (Bloom & Reichert,

1998) applies trauma theory to the current state of American society’s response

and relationship to violence. ln a world overwhelmed by violence, the authors

approach the issue from a public health perspective. Using the foundation of

trauma theory, Bearing Witness identifies work that can be done to prevent

violence. “There are two social institutions available to us, through which we

could help ourselves to grieve: the arts and religion, both with common origins in

the human need for shared meaning and performative acts.” (p. 192) In addition

to tertiary prevention, measures that fix what is broken, secondary and primary

prevention strategies are offered. People living in poverty, women and children

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are identified as at most risk for catching the infection of trauma. Secondary

prevention is aimed at containing and treating the “traumatic infection” in places

were people are at most risk, including families, schools, jails and health care

environments. Ending the cycle of violence through primary prevention is a call

to respect basic human rights. A re-working of institutions, including the justice

system and the media, is needed while resilience can be fostered.

Work, 1995

81

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