Ch. 3 — Therapy by photography: Out of the Darkroom (or a non-conforming guide on how to take better pictures)
Previously, I talked about what makes me love photography and why I enjoy the process. Here’s what I love about the photographs themselves — the result of this beautiful human endeavor.
One of the hardest challenges for us as human beings is to understand ourselves. But when emotions are involved, the lesson is easier to learn. Photos reveal what we were holding on to, what we were fighting or dreaming for, and basically, who we were back then. Neuroplasticity proved to us that different experiences bring changes to our mind. These changes in outlooks can be revealed through the above mentioned process. In doing so one can review memories, or to a certain extent even creating some. What this ends up doing is that by following the process we may find that we are building more connections inside our mind.
One thing leads to another, so photography can be seen as a form of mindfulness. Because it completes you. For me, it responded to a lot of questions about myself. It came very easy to understand my personality fluctuations over time, when seeing old photo albums.
As such, we translate emotion into a picture and the effect is clear. However, one of the more interesting parts is that it can have a lasting impact not just on our own self, but on others as well. It’s the way photography gathers people, connects ideas, and raises questions. This can be understood better simply by looking at some of the most influential photographs of all the times, dating back up to 200 years ago. You will notice how each of them tells a particular story, a moment in history.
Photography and art itself help us increase our emotional intelligence, something that a lot of people forget to improve nowadays. So, I would suggest you start looking less on the surface, and deeper into the essence. And it is up to you what “tools” you want to choose for this endeavor. I chose photography since, as a child, I was sometimes stealing my parents’ film camera to take some random, and clearly not professional, photos even if that got them really annoyed — you know, it was not so cheap to develop a bunch of photo films. Since then, this hobby has stayed by my side. And it was how I learned to tell my stories, even if they were personal or not. If you look up on the internet, you’ll find a lot of information on therapy by photography. But it’s not a theory to be learnt, it is about a process that you build and feel on your own.
A lot of memories came to my mind while writing this article. 20 years ago, my childhood friends and I got to see the live video of ourselves, on the TV screen, in real time, for the first time. It was absolutely fascinating. We didn’t know back then how much emotion we were going to encapsulate on a CD. An unlocked piece of life. A firework inside my mind.
The point of this series of articles is to say that each and everyone of us is a storyteller. Some use one medium, others use a different one. Should you decide to tell your story in your own way, and pick photography as the medium, I encourage you to do so, and will be looking forward to seeing your story unfold.
