NOTE: The above photo-collage was created by a graduate art therapy student for a mural that was assembled by the American Art Therapy Association showcasing creative contributions from all graduate art therapy programs in the USA. While the artwork identifies The College of New Rochelle, it was presented here because the entire graduate art therapy program, that had a successful history for over 40 years at CNR, with all the Phototherapy courses and the Advanced Certificate in Phototherapy Training, has now been transferred, entirely intact, to The College of Mount Saint Vincent.
The application of photography, as a tool to gain personal insight for emotional growth, has been divided into two areas of application. "Therapeutic Photography" implies that photographs may be used by people for their own personal growth without the help of a certified or licensed professional therapist. These exercises are designed to promote reflection and self-awareness for the photographer viewing their own photographs (or anyone viewing another person’s photographs), leading to deeper understanding of the unconscious meaning that is often contained within the image. Photographs are like visual metaphors, that contain many levels of meaning, as found with dream images. The other application of photography, "Phototherapy" is conducted by a trained therapist who integrates photography into their clinical work with clients. I also have found that people often don't realize how unconscious material seeks expression in their lives and using photographs becomes a way to explore this in a safe, playfully creative manner.
While it may still be somewhat rare today for many clinicians to integrate photography in their clinical work, I have been publishing articles on using and teaching phototherapy, taught within several graduate art therapy programs and conducted training seminars for professionals since 1976. About 40+ years later, there are now many currently practicing art therapists who have had this unique training enabling them to integrate the use of photography within their clinical work.
Early History of Phototherapy
Before teaching Phototherapy on the graduate level, during the period from 1973- 1980, while simultaneously training in psychoanalysis at The National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis, I had the opportunity to work as the clinical director of the Henry Street School, a special education junior and senior high school run by the Henry Street Settlement in NYC. I staffed the school’s clinical program with social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists and graduate art therapy interns from the Pratt Institute graduate art therapy program. In this way, art therapy was literally woven into and integrated within the fabric of the school curriculum. ‘Individual Art’ sessions and Art Therapy Groups utilized the unique creative expertise of each graduate student. During this period, Daisy Nelson-Gee, an art therapist at the Blueberry School in NYC and Judy Weiser, a colleague in Canada and I, began to publish a series of articles on phototherapy. These became the formative years for the development of the field of Phototherapy. In addition to my work, since then, many other clinicians in related fields have also written about Phototherapy and Therapeutic uses of Photography.
At Henry Street, I had secured equipment grants from the Polaroid Foundation for cameras and film to explore their therapeutic use with our students. These inner-city adolescents were failing in the regular school system for a variety of reasons including learning disabilities, emotional problems and truancy. I found that the cameras allowed these teens to express themselves through the photographic media in a way that they were often reluctant to do through more traditional art modalities. This was likely due to the limitations they often discovered in their educational experiences. Facing a blank piece of paper would, for these children, confront them with their 'fear of failure', often causing them to hesitate to use traditional art materials. However, they would readily take cameras out into their world and bring back images of themselves, others and their environment, that we would then work with therapeutically. I gave these children the opportunity to explore various ways they could work with these photos using their innate creativity. The Polaroid Foundation asked me to write a report to each year, describing how we were using their products. These reports were interesting enough to be picked up by professional Art Therapy journals and published as a series of articles that were eventually combined into a chapter in a book, Phototherapy in Mental Health, edited by Kraus and Fryrear and published by Charles Thomas in 1983.
During my years at Henry Street, there were two stories that stand out about how we successfully used photography with students. We had a wonderful photography teacher, Nancy Starrels, whom I supervised to enable her to work with our challenging students. She inspired her students, who were often reluctant to use new technology and made the ‘darkroom’ experience exciting and creative for them. Using the black-and-white film processing lab/darkroom at the Settlement they could create photos that were integrated into their social studies class by photographing people all over their community as they worked on different jobs. The AFLCIO sponsored these photos by organizing them into an exhibition and sending them to their regional offices all throughout the country, along with a tape recording of interviews by students of these workers. Schools from around the country brought classes to these exhibitions and those students who viewed the exhibition then wrote letters to our students expressing their reactions to the exhibition. This event promoted wonderful affirmation of their skill as photographers that overcame their previous sense of failure, as well as providing wonderful exposure of inner-city life to students living in different areas of the country.
Another story that stands out from this period is about a young man who was quite physically small compared to his same age peers. We believed he had suffered from nutritional deficiencies as a young child and therefore had experienced a ‘failure to thrive’. He suffered from his sense of physical inferiority so we gave him a camera to frame and capture on film and share his physical world with us. He brought back amazing photos of body builders whom he had been secretly visiting at a local gym on a rooftop in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. One of his photos was selected for the Time Life Photography book of the year! This gave him a wonderful sense of confidence. We believe he went on to become an avid photographer.
Phototherapy Training
In 1980, after completing my psychoanalytic training, I left the Settlement to become a full-time faculty member at the College of New Rochelle where I began to initiate a series of courses focusing on training art therapists to use photography in their clinical work. These courses evolved over many years, from first using a 35-mm black and white darkroom into focusing on digital photography. The unique experiential nature of these courses was written up and published first in an article titled Visceral Learning and later elaborated in another article, Advances in Phototherapy Training, and later included as a chapter in a book, Integrating Expressive Arts Therapy and Play Therapy with Children and Adolescents. These courses evolved into a 12 - credit, NY State-approved Certificate in Advanced Phototherapy Training that graduate students could achieve taking four designated courses within their regular degree at CNR. This unique and intensively focused training opportunity did not exist elsewhere in the world, and as a result, CNR drew many international student into their graduate art therapy program.
In 2017, after NY State licensing of LCATs required additional ongoing training, the college was granted status as a Provider for Continuing Education credits (CEs) for practicing Licensed Creative Art Therapists, (LCATs) who took these courses. In 2019, The College of New Rochelle closed due to financial issues however, the completely intact Graduate Art Therapy program was provisionally transferred by NY State Dept. of Education to The College of Mount St. Vincent and fully transitioned in April 2020. The NY State approval for the Certificate in Advanced Phototherapy Training was then successfully transitioned to from CNR to CMSV in December 2020 and is now available to both graduate students and LCATs. I am proud, as one of the pioneers in this field, to be able to continue to offer and share my expertise and experience in this unique area, with other clinical professionals that will enable them to apply this exciting and creative modality within their clinical work.
Other Applications of Phototherapy
Another application of Phototherapy has been with clients in my private practice. Since I work exclusively online due to COVID, I ask them to email me photographs that they have taken prior to a session. We then explore the unconscious content of these photos during their online sessions. Clients have been amazed by how much unconscious content may be unknowingly expressed through seemingly random photographs. The power of the unconscious, along with the power of their creativity is then appreciated and understood as having a special role that can be used to enhance self-understanding, personal insight and promote emotional growth.
I have also used many other techniques and creative projects using photography with clients and students that have been published in articles and book chapters. You can find this material on my website, www.robertirwinwolf.com under the subcategory: Professional Vitae under the subcategory titled Professional Publications.
All this material is available as PDF files for downloading.