Defamiliarization

See with new eyes what you thought you knew.

Image of the Korean War Memorial, Washington DC, by the author

One of the advantages of being a reflective eclectic is I can borrow techniques from other fields and apply them to my own, psychotherapy. Some of these techniques come from surprising sources. Today I’d like to talk about something I learned from being a photographer: defamiliarization.

Photography can be a simple reproduction of the object photographed, or it can be art. When I get all artsy-fartsy with my pictures, I’m trying to enable the viewer to see something in an object that belongs to the object but she has never seen before. I‘m trying to cut through an overfamiliarity with the world that numbs us of delight and creativity.

The easiest way to do this in photography is often to shoot in black and white. When you look at a black and white photo of a familiar colored object, you can usually recognize the object, but it’s presented in a new way. This unforeseen appearance causes you to look closer and become more mindful of seeing. Suddenly new possibilities come to view. You might enjoy the play of shadows, the gradations of gray, and the stark contrasts that a black and white photo bring out. It’s funny how stripping things down to basics can enrich them.

Unfortunately, if you have seen a lot of black and white photos you can become immune to them. Black…