Analyse du processus créatif en photographie et son implication clinique en photo-thérapie

Context

The author, a photographer and photo-therapist, tries to develop a new therapeutic approach based on the photographic act.

Aims

This article aims to examine the psychic processes involved in the dynamics of taking photos and to explore what can be done with the photographic medium in clinical practice.

Method

We will listen to the photographic works of the famous Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto to see what they say about clinical work involving photo-therapy.

Results

During his artistic practice, Hiroshi Sugimoto summons up memory traces related to his own history and that of his ancestors and updates them in his photos. He experiences all kinds of bodily sensations and hallucinations. His photos are already within him in the form of inner visions, even before he has expressed them materially. The elaborative transposition of the inner image, which has become pre-conscious, takes place in a very specific material: his antique medium-format camera and his special lighting not only serve to create an atmosphere, but also to take him on a journey through the history of humanity and his own inner history. He comes to identify completely with his camera, which helps to plunge him into a state of fusion with the object being photographed.

Discussion

During his creative process, the photographer goes through phases similar to those that the baby goes through during his development, in an attempt to achieve a (re)actualization of the self: alternating phases of integration and non-integration of the self with more or less chaotic regressive phenomena, a primary identification with a quasi-fusional state between the photographer and the camera and between the photographer and the photographed object, the mobilization of bodily sensations and a return to a state of fluidity in the gaze and gesture.

Conclusions

In photo-therapy, this re-actualization of the self is sought and the creative process in photography seems to contribute to this to a certain extent. The regressive states accompanied by bodily sensations, that is to say, this state of pathos that runs through the photographing patient, can, in the aftermath, restore movement in the psyche and bring back to life certain aspects that had not been (sufficiently) represented. The inner images of the psyche are expressed in the form of material external photos but this fixation allows the initial inner image to be reworked in a retroactive loop, and thus to reshape the psyche, through the body. The camera, which has the particularity of being both the tool and the surface of inscription, becomes part of the body of the photographer-patient. The transference is thus diffracted between the analyst and the photographic medium. From the subjectivity of the photographing subject and that of the photographed object, a third subjectivity is created, a kind of “analytic third:” the photo is charged with meaning that can be analyzed in therapy.