Making Eye Statements: The Healing Power of Photography

“There are no unsacred places.”

- Wendell Berry, Novelist

“I listen with my eyes...

I believe in the healing powers of photography...

we need photos.”

- Amy Touchette, Street Photographer

Amy Touchette is a Brooklyn-based street photographer. Her images are candid, vulnerable, and richly layered. (Link) I first encountered her five months ago in a B&H podcast, “Intention and Interaction in Street Photography” (Link), an interview she made with another New York street photographer, Ruddy Roye (Link).

(Side note: if you are a photographer and are interested in weekly interviews with world-class photographers, consider subscribing to the B&H podcast. B&H is a huge New York City camera store (Link) with a worldwide reach. Confession: I start drooling about a block away from B&H’s Manhattan location at the corner of West 34th Street and 9th Avenue. Once inside the store, I wander around slack-jawed in bedazzlement. Sad, but true. And the arrival of the annual B&H catalogue is akin to the arrival of the Eaton’s Christmas catalogue when I was a kid.)

Back to Amy Touchette: Listening to her interview, I was left with the impression of a photographer who cares deeply about the people in her photographs, not just the ‘score’ of making those photographs. Her integrity is as impressive as her gifted eye. She avoids exploitive photography and relishes the human connections she is making. When she says that she believes in the healing powers of photography, I believe her. And I am inspired by her.

For me, the healing power of photography is two-fold:

1. The act of photography itself – cleaning the lenses, charging the batteries, checking the memory cards, clearing the time, doing the research, and then simply wandering and observing – is powerfully healing. Process is paramount. Process is healing.

2. And the photos themselves – the subjects, the composition, the beauty, the confusion, the challenging bits, the photo paper, the framing – are also healing.

The process and the photographs keep me honest.

I recently made the following photos with Amy Touchette’s healing approach to photography in mind. It’s my small way of saluting American artists who struggle to bring renewal and redemption to their work in the face of civic nastiness.

Enjoy.