Photography: Mourning, Reparation and Creativity

Abstract

This essay analyzes the many psychological processes that characterize photography. It is considered both in its essential dimension and in particular in relation with the pattern of transience and death (which so establishes its close relationship with the theme of mourning), and in the dynamics that affect the emoziona reactions of those who photograph and of those who are photographed. In the first case defense mechanisms are prevalent: photography is a form of omnipotent control over reality, that is rendered harmless by a process of objectification and domestication. There are here aggressive and perverse implications, especially related to introjective identification mechanisms. In the second case, the one who is photographed undergoes a transformation from subject to object: in the words of Roland Barthes, he lives a "little experience of death" which leads to strong effects of "uncanny". The text also highlights some of the mechanisms of enjoyment involved when we are looking at photographs, but in particular, the author considers the mental processes that are activated when a person is induced to choose his/her own picture. This last aspect is already part of the psychology of the self-portrait, to which is devoted the last part of the text.