Surprisingly,
PhotoTherapy is actually not new (and neither is Therapeutic Photography)! The earliest written documentation
of the use of photo-based therapy techniques found thus far dates from 1856 (by Dr. Hugh Diamond), less than twenty years after
photography itself was invented... And the earliest use of Therapeutic Photography seems to have happened even earlier, with the use of "magic lantern" slides in 1844 (by Dr. Thomas Kirkbride) as social entertainment ("as a means of education and amusement") for patients at his mental hospital during their otherwise-empty evening hours when doctors were not onsite.
The
more recent history of PhotoTherapy began when Canadian psychologist Judy Weiser, who had been using photos in her work counseling Deaf Native children starting in 1973, published her first article in 1975, using the term "PhotoTherapy Techniques" in that article's title (its first time ever appearing in print). Two years later, in the United States, a brief
notice appeared in
the
magazine Psychology Today in 1977, asking
people who were using photography in their therapy or
counseling
work to contact the author.
When over two hundred people responded, the "PhotoTherapy
Quarterly Newsletter"
was begun as a means of communicating with this growing
network.
The first Workshops taught about PhotoTherapy techniques began in 1975 in Canada (taught by Weiser), and in the U.S. (by Krauss, Stewart, Zakem, Entin, and others) a few years later. The first PhotoTherapy Workshop taught in Europe (by Weiser) happened in Leeuwarden, Netherlands in 1990.
One note of historical interest is that all this took place before the invention of the Internet, search engines, emails, digital networking, etc. -- which means that most of these early people had no way to know about each other's work. Those who happened to read the above 1977 Psychology Today article and respond to its authors, thus getting themselves onto the "mailing list" (for letters and mailed newsletters), began the North American network, but those in other countries often had no way to know about others nearby...
The
first International PhotoTherapy Symposium in
Illinois in May, 1979, drew participants
from five countries and presentations
from most of the field's early pioneers (including Entin,
Fryrear, Gassan, Hogan, Krauss, Stewart, Walker, Weiser,
Wolf,
Zakem,
and many others whose publications
form the foundation of the field's literature base).
Although none of these people has ever claimed to have
singularly
invented PhotoTherapy by themselves alone, they are nevertheless
collectively the co-inventors of its current form
of practice -- and thus
deserve
recognition in any serious study of PhotoTherapy's foundations.
Within
five years (and
three
conferences in the U.S. later), that original informal collegial
network and its simple Newsletter evolved
into the International
PhotoTherapy Association, which began publishing the
more formal journal "PhotoTherapy" as
a benefit of membership. But after a decade of publication,
that journal
became a victim of its own broader success, ceasing publication
in 1987 because other Professional Associations (psychology,
psychiatry,
social work, art therapy, and similar others) had begun featuring
articles about PhotoTherapy in their own journals directly.
Similarly,
although several International PhotoTherapy Association
Conferences initially took place independently, by
the mid-1980's it had become evident that a wider group
of mental health
professionals could be reached if PhotoTherapy presentations
and training events were held during the annual
gatherings of such larger groups instead. As
a result, the International
PhotoTherapy Association chose to de-activate in 1988,
because its original purpose of raising awareness about
PhotoTherapy
techniques had
successfully been met.
The
fourth International Conference took place in Toronto, Canada,
in 1984 (organized by Walker and Weiser), with presenters and
participants
from many countries and professional backgrounds -- and
experiences ranging through the
whole spectrum from "PhotoTherapy" (using photos during formal
therapy sessions) to "Therapeutic
Photography" applications (using photo-based activities as the
therapy itself) [for
a deeper explanation about the difference between these
two fields, click here).
The
fifth International Conference (and first to happen in Europe) took place in Turku, Finland,
in June of 2008 (organized by Halkola), and featured
three days of Pre-Conference Workshops followed by
the formal
Conference
itself. Its key Invited Plenary Presenters included the
early pioneers of both fields (Weiser, Krauss, Walker,
Dennett [for Spence], and Martin), along with many
newer key people in both fields (Wheeler, Halkola,
Avilés-Gutiérrez,
Parrella, Mannermaa, and Anor), along with many additional
current practitioners, researchers, and educators (click
here for
more information about that event).
In February, 2011, another PhotoTherapy-related Conference took place (again in Turku, Finland), but it was not intended as an "International Conference", as it instead was solely EU-focused because it was organized as part of a three-year "multi-country EU research collaboration" that had studied "the applications of phototherapy to promote wellbeing and reduce social exclusion" within the countries researched (click here for
more information about that 2011 event). It featured other presenters, but those only as "add-ons" to the main EU research study focus.
Most
of the early North American pioneers from the 1970's and 1980's
continued using these techniques in their practices and/or
teaching or writing about them, for several more decades.
For example, most provided a chapter about their own
work
in the 1983 book:
"PhotoTherapy
in Mental Health" (Krauss & Fryrear,
Eds.). But although that book contained numerous examples
of solid clinical applications, as well as two excellent
chapters (by Krauss) on theoretical foundations, it unfortunately did
not provide readers with very much "hands-on" information
about how they could actually begin using the techniques themselves.
Since not everyone could afford to attend workshops or
conferences
to get personalized training in these techniques, a newer
and more practical-oriented "how-(and-why)-to-get-started" book (authored by psychologist,
art therapist, and PhotoTherapy pioneer Judy Weiser) was
published in 1993, in order to fill that gap: "PhotoTherapy
Techniques: Exploring the Secrets of Personal Snapshots
and Family Albums"
-- which is now in second edition (1999) and third printing!
[This
1993 book has
also been plagiarized, twice -- click here
to learn about a 1995 book in Italian ("FotoTerapia")
that lawyers estimate was over 90% directly copied from
it, and here to
read about plagiarism of several pages in a 1997 chapter
by Rosy Martin, in a British book].
Additional
professional publications about
various aspects of the topic have steadily increased in
number (and in more languages now, in addition to English) -- and graduate students all over the world continue to produce new PhotoTherapy-related
writings (and research) in the form of Masters Theses, Doctoral
Dissertations, and other special-topics papers or research
project reports every year (a list of these, spanning several
decades, can by found by clicking here).
PhotoTherapy
has even been taught occasionally for university
credit
in clinical psychology and art therapy graduate programs
(beginning with the "Photo Counseling" course at Kent State
University's Counseling Department in 1979, taught by Dr.
David Krauss), and also
within
several
postgraduate art therapy training
programs -- as well as through continuing
education courses for Mental Health professionals
needing "CE Credits" for maintaining their
professional license.
For a brief time, there was also an online course for Art
Therapists available through the American
Art Therapy Association, although that course no
longer exists.
In
1982, the PhotoTherapy
Centre in Vancouver (Canada), opened for the purpose
of serving as the consulting, training, and resource
base for the field world-wide. Its Founder and Director,
Judy Weiser has been gathering archival material for over three decades of the field's development with which she will soon found the "PhotoTherapy Archives" to preserve her holdings), as well as herself teaching introductory
and advanced-level experiential training workshops,
lecture presentations and other related
events 
since
the early-1970's, both by invitation (in numerous
countries) as well as providing private
individualized
training
intensives on a special-arrangement basis
on-site at the Centre itself.
For
example, during
the past decade she has been brought to lecture,
teach workshops, and give training "intensives" not only in North America, but also in
Spain, Italy, England, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Mexico, Scotland, and Hawaii. (NOTE:
Weiser's current workshop and lecture schedule can always
be found on the "Training
and Education" page of this site).
In
addition to earlier related programs such as Krauss' "Center
for Visual Therapies" in Cleveland, OH (U.S.)
and Mannermaa's
"PhotoSynteesi" ("PhotoSynthesis")
in Helsinki, Finland, many newer Programs and Associations
have formed over the past few years. This strongly attests
to increasing interest in using photography, photographs,
and people's interactions with these, during
therapy in psychology, social work, art therapy,
and other mental health field applications ("PhotoTherapy")
and in using photography and photographic interactions
oneself, as naturally-therapeutic personal healing activities
on their own ("Therapeutic Photography").
[Note: These two concepts should be viewed
as the opposite ends of one long continuum, along which
all photo-based healing practices can be found;
for more information about this, click here].
Some
of these newer ones are the "Finnish
PhotoTherapy Association" centered in Turku,
Finland;
"PSYphoto" based in Moscow, Russia; the "Photo
Therapy Institute" at the Musrara School of
Photography in Jerusalem (which hopes to soon be connected
with a "Masters
in Art Therapy with a PhotoTherapy Specialization"
from the European Graduate School in Switzerland); "GRIFO"
("Gruppo di Ricerca in Fototerapia"), an interest
group that meets regularly in Italy; and
"ILPFOT: Instituto LatinoAmericano
de Psicología y Fotografía" ("Latin-American
Institute of Psychology and Photography") which
is currently being formed in Mexico. And a National
Mental Health Center in Lucca, Italy, has also recently
begun programs in
both PhotoTherapy and VideoTherapy applications [For
more information about the Italy programs, click here to
contact that Coordinator; and a major VideoTherapy ("TeatroVideoTerapia")
Center in Rome, which
also involves working with still photographs too]. Italy, in particular, has a large number of professionals long-experienced in using these techniques (and teaching and writing about them) -- click here to read more about these people.
The continual fascination of the general public with PhotoTherapy is evident not only from people's willingness to participate as clients using these techniques, but also from its wide coverage in the popular media over
the past twenty years. Numerous magazine and newspaper
articles, as well as several in-depth radio and television
features
and interviews, have resulted in many presentations about
it also being given to non-professional groups such
as art
museum and gallery audiences, businesses (photographic and others -- and particularly advertisers!), photo hobby groups, photo-related
businesses, special education teachers, visual anthropologists/sociologists,
visual literacy and cross-cultural researchers, art and
media critics, and so forth.
Many of the PhotoTherapy pioneers are also photographers who have had formal "interactive" exhibitions of their fine art photography -- where viewers share their emotions, thoughts, memories, and so forth, in response to viewing the
photos on display (for example the
very early "Beyond
Seeing" Gallery Exhibition produced by Joel
Walker and Judy Weiser in 1982 in Vancouver).
Of course, the "history" of PhotoTherapy will continue
to grow -- and now that digital technology is providing
new imaging
tools and additional opportunities for "cyber-therapy" applications,
its potential becomes even more exciting...
PhotoTherapy techniques have long been used by people who
may not have known it has long been called this particular
name for over 35 years now, nor that many people
might have been doing similar work
at the
same
time
someplace else, without realizing each other existed!
But now that the Internet provides a better means
for improved networking
(especially
through
the increasingly active PhotoTherapy
Discussion Group, which now has over 700 postings from
people in over 14 countries!) -- and the Facebook Group "PhotoTherapy, Therapeutic Photography, Photo Art Therapy, and VideoTherapy", it is possible
to now continually and frequently update the historical record as
soon as more
facts are brought
to light and added to the archives -- and inform about new events that occur on an increasingly-frequent
basis*.
What is most important to convey here, is that people
everywhere are already using photography for
the purposes of improving their counseling, education,
communication,
research, or personal discovery process -- even if the ha've
never heard of the actual word "PhotoTherapy" itself!
And
since people's interactions with others (and themselves)
depend primarily on nonverbal communication, it seems
only logical that the visual language of photography
will become increasingly used to access and activate
such emotionally-based information in therapy and other
mental health applications.
*
Please let the PhotoTherapy Centre
know if you have additions or corrections to contribute
to the above history.
PhotoTherapy
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