There are thousands of photographs on your phone. Some you have not opened in years, some you cannot bring yourself to delete. Both of those have a reason.
First, a clarification: this has nothing to do with light therapy. The word phototherapy is also used in medicine for light-based treatments of skin conditions and newborn jaundice. What I am writing about is an entirely different field — photography used as a way of reaching a person's inner world.
The founder of this field is the Canadian psychologist and art therapist Judy Weiser. When she put forward the idea of photography as a verb in 1975, her point was this: what matters here is not the aesthetic quality of the resulting image, but the relationship we form with it.
Two different things: phototherapy and therapeutic photography
These two terms are used interchangeably all the time, yet Weiser draws a clear line between them.
PhotoTherapy is the structured use of photographs within a counselling or therapy session, led by a trained therapist. It happens inside a therapeutic relationship, where photographs serve as tools that deepen the conversation.
Therapeutic photography refers to photo-based activities a person can undertake alone or within a group, without requiring the formal role of a therapist. The workshops I run fall into this second category.
The difference is not an academic footnote — it is an ethical boundary. Nobody is diagnosed in a workshop and nobody is treated. What happens is that people are given space to look at their own stories through their own material.
A photograph makes speakable the things that have not yet become sentences.
Weiser's five techniques
Weiser separates our relationship with photographs into five distinct positions. She compares them to the five fingers of a hand: they can be described separately, but they do their real work together.
- Photographs taken or collected by the person — about what we frame, what we choose to look at
- Photographs of the person taken by others — how we appear in someone else's eyes, how we pose
- Self-portraits — representing yourself, under your own control
- Family albums and biographical collections — who is in the picture matters, and so does who is not
- Photo-projective work — built on the idea that a photograph's meaning is constructed by the viewer in the moment of viewing
The fifth is really present inside the other four. Two people looking at the same photograph see two different things; what we see has to do with what is going on inside us at the time. In describing an image, we are often describing ourselves.
Why is this easier than talking?
Some experiences do not come easily into words. A person wants to explain, but the sentence will not form, or every sentence that does form feels inadequate. A photograph works as an intermediate step: instead of speaking directly about yourself, you speak about an image, and the conversation deepens on its own.
There is also this: a photograph is concrete. Something you can hold and point at. For most people, looking at an image belonging to a difficult subject feels safer than looking at the subject directly. The distance makes it bearable.
"But I am not good at photography"
This is the sentence I hear most often in workshops — and it is entirely beside the point.
We are not concerned with the technical quality of the photograph. Whether the light is right, the framing tidy, the focus sharp — none of it matters. As Weiser emphasises, this work treats a photograph not as an art object but as a form of personally symbolic communication. It is interested in what an image is about emotionally, rather than what shows on its surface.
A blurred frame you took on your phone and never showed anyone can say far more than a technically flawless landscape.
What happens in a workshop?
The format I work with usually begins with a walk outdoors. Participants use their phones, receive no technical instruction, and simply record whatever draws their attention. Afterwards we work with those images — sometimes through conversation, sometimes by printing them and turning them into collage.
What is interesting is that people usually understand what they photographed only afterwards. They realise that the thing they recorded during the walk because it seemed beautiful actually connects to something occupying their mind at the time. A repeating shape, frames all taken from the same distance, compositions that are consistently empty.
Nobody plans this in advance. If it could be planned, it would not work.
Who is it for?
Anyone who struggles to express themselves, who feels stuck in talking therapy, or who simply wants to see something about themselves from another angle. No photographic knowledge is needed; a phone is enough.
One caution as well: working with family albums can be unexpectedly intense. For that reason, in individual therapy the ground is prepared before moving into these techniques. In a workshop format the work stays within whatever the person chooses to share — nobody is required to explain anything.
Sources
Weiser, J. (1999). PhotoTherapy Techniques: Exploring the Secrets of Personal Snapshots and Family Albums (2nd ed.). PhotoTherapy Centre.
Weiser, J. (2004). PhotoTherapy Techniques in Counselling and Therapy. Canadian Art Therapy Association Journal, 17(2).
Weiser, J. (1975). PhotoTherapy: Photography as a verb. The B.C. Photographer, 2, 33–36.
Saita, E. & Tramontano, M. (2018). Navigating the complexity of the therapeutic and clinical use of photography. Research in Psychotherapy.
PhotoTherapy Centre — phototherapy-centre.com
I learned Judy Weiser's techniques through training with Francesca Belgiojoso, a trainer authorised by Weiser, and applied them under supervision. This post is for information only and does not replace individual assessment.