Posted by Judy Weiser, Administrator
on 10/25/2009, 5:33 pm, in reply to "Model/s of photography interpretation."
216.232.100.74
Hello Richard,
As you sent your enquiry to the Discussion Group rather than to me directly (and since it's for other people to chat with each other, rather than for me to answer each message individually), I refrained from answering you immediately here, as I wanted to see what others would say...
However, it's been a few days now and so I thought I would at least share with you, my own opinion/answers to your question about "researching the process of interpreting photos taken by these varying groups of people" and "is there a proven model of photo interpretation that provides an objective assessment of a photograph taken by someone with a diagnosed mental health issue?"
I hope my answer does not disappoint you, but the entire conceptual basis underlying both the field of PhotoTherapy and that of Therapeutic Photography, is exactly opposite to that idea.
ALL of therapeutic uses of photographs is based on the fact that the meaning of the photograph lies not in the photo itself, but in each viewer. And that there is absolutely NO way to predict in advance what a person's reaction to any photograph will be...
It probably would have helped you to read through the entry page of the primary website this Discussion Group is connected with ( www.phototherapy-centre.com ), and then the home page -- as well as the page for the five techniques -- first, before posting your question here, as they all explain that these techniques are more about the emotional contents of photographs, than their visual contents.
It is about the fact that, very simply, there is no way to do what you are hoping to do -- people who tell you they CAN do this are only able to tell you what THEY themselves think that meaning should be...
One photograph can "mean" very differently to each viewer and there is no one-to-one correlation between a particular mental state -- or type of person or problem -- and the photos that the person might choose to take, view, or comment about.
I have been both a psychologist and art therapist using photos in my client therapy sessions, for over 30 years now, and I can guarantee you that it is simply not possible to do a predictive methodology here. You cannot tell which kinds of photos (or responses to photos) will be done by certain kinds of people -- not even cross-culturally, not to mention internal psyche differences...
Please go read the pages mentioned above and then especially the page for the technique "Photo-Projectives" and I think you'll begin to 'see what I mean'.
There have been graduate dissertations (and professional researchers) who tried to establish such a predictive methodology, but none of these got any kinds of sigificant results...
And THEY were psychologists as well as photographers!! It just simply "ain't that simple"...
If you want to try it and let us know what you find, please do -- maybe you'll get results that would be useful...
Thanks for finding our Discussion Group page,
Judy Weiser, Director, PhotoTherapy Centre and Administrator for this Discussion Board
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