Why Make Photographs?

I went to a lecture a few weeks ago at the Art Therapy Department at my Alma Mater that made me chuckle, gave voice to something I’ve been contemplating for a while, and made me think.

I chuckled at the beginning of this lecture because the speaker, Judy Weiser, Ph.D., LPAT, (a psychologist and licensed art therapist) asked the attendees which among them made photos? Everyone raised their hand. She then asked who kept their pictures? Everyone raised their hand once more. Then she asked, “why?”

Silence.

I chuckled.

I get it. That is a difficult question to answer, even for trained therapists highly skilled in introspection. We have difficulty answering that question. It’s a personal question. It is also a universal question. Why do we take pictures? Why do we keep them?

Each of us knows why. We just have difficulty articulating it. It is just that the “why?” is beyond words, and words don’t do much justice to the answer. It is a feeling state that can only be pointed to, suggested, or implied with words. And even then, if using words, we depend on the other – our audience – to have experienced something similar in order to understand, to empathize. Some folks have a gift with words that way and can touch a place within us we didn’t know we had. Gifted photographers do the same with a different medium. But those moments and memories that touch the deepest parts of ourselves are usually created by ourselves – or someone emotionally near to us – and so they arrive in the world, and stay in the world, full of deep, wordless, meaning.

The photographs that illuminate these memories touch us emotionally; they help us remember; they are a crystalized representational moment of the stream of time we experience as life; they help give shape and form to those people, pets, things, events, experiences that might no longer exist (and that we know at some deep unconscious level – at the very least – will cease to exist one day); they keep memories alive; they help provided meaning; they express our inner world of feelings and context; and they are beautiful; and they are ours; and they matter.

Why do you take pictures? Why do you keep them? Who sees them? Who does not see them? What do they mean to you? How do you relate to them? Which pictures make you the happiest? Which did you not care for in the moment but, years later, were you ever so grateful were made? Which pictures do you wish had not been taken?  Which are you proud of? Which would you not part with for anything? Which anger you, hurt you, haunt you? Which bring unimaginable joy?

I started photographing in earnest only about 5 or 6 years ago in response to an inner urge to examine the unconscious material that emerges in my images. I also started because it made me happy and I needed some of that feeling at the time. I continue because I choose to not put down something that makes me happy. It turns out I was doing photography as therapy; who knew?

Ms. Weiser mentioned during her presentation that, “…if something inside is going to out, it will out! And if it can’t out through words it will out through photos and art.” (As an aside, part of one psychological theory is that if something wants to out and doesn’t have a generative way to do so, it will do so in degenerative ways, through addictions, compulsions, self injurious behavior, etc.)

Well ok, then. It will out. Best to give it a medium to out, no?

During the past 10 years, and especially the past 5, there has been an absolute boom of photography. Many lament this democratization of the craft. They call it the dumbing down of the art, that so many ships on the waters have resulted in lowering the water level. Hogwash. Sure, the economic opportunities for professional photographers has changed. But this is not what this paradigm shift is all about: it is about people claiming a voice for their experience that does not require words, or cannot be said in words. To my mind, since words are merely representational – they simply point to an idea, they are not the idea itself – giving a visual voice to millions of people is a good thing for those people. It matters. Photos matter.