The Self as Auteur: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of Self-reflective photography.

Abstract

The Self as Auteur: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of Self-reflective photographs In addition to our many snapshots of friends and family, holidays and special events, many of us also make photographs …just because we liked the way something looked, often without considering why it attracted our attention. We might photograph two children playing in a park, an old house, or a bicycle lying on the grass – but we don’t know those children, or the people who lived in that house, and that’s not our bicycle. While all of the details within our visual field are transmitted to the brain, we are conscious of only a small proportion of these, while others may be retained within the unconscious to serve as ‘symbolic speech’ in dreams (Krauss and Fryrear, 1983; Naumburg, 1958) as a way to express thoughts and emotions repressed from, or otherwise not accessible to conscious awareness (Gorman and Heller, 1964; Panagiotou and Sheikh, 1977; Williams, 2003). This interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) project takes the position that when our attention is attracted to a scene with which we have no conscious connection, it may be because in the elements of the scene or in their juxtaposition, we intuitively recognised a symbolic description of an affective memory or belief to which our unconscious is trying to bring to our attention. These scenes might be allegorical descriptions of the way we perceive the world – or metaphorical Self-portraits of the person we have become in our efforts to navigate through it. Like a flashbulb that briefly illuminates a dark street and reveals the goings-on in the shadows only when we see the resulting photographs, some of our photographs can bring to light the places within us we seldom see. This project investigates the ways in which we make sense of the insights found in our photographs of the scenes and tableaux to which our attention was intuitively attracted – and how we incorporate what we learn into our personal narratives. This project serves as a capstone for my 40-year investigation into the practice of what I term Self-reflective photography which began with my Shadow of the photographer project in 1982. If we are prepared to give up conscious, rational control over the composition of our photographs and allow our intuition to ‘choose’ the scenes, events and moments we record, we can sometimes find visual metaphors which describe those truths we ‘know’ – but which our conscious mind cannot or will not see (Rutherford, 2019 pp.233). In this iteration, participants were offered a transformative lived experience in which they were supported in reflecting on insights into themselves or their situations, although some participants did not recognise (what appeared to be) potentially relevant symbols within their photographs. The project’s two main contributions to knowledge include: i. the ‘phenomenological snapshots’ of the participants’ efforts to make meaning of the Self-reflective photographs they gave themselves permission to make, and ii. the delineation of the risks in overlooking the influence of the photographer’s decisions on the content and appearance of photographs used in a photo therapeutic setting.