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With the advent of digital technology, far more people are taking photographs than ever before. So too we have witnessed a proliferation of people sharing images, now via the Internet and digital devices, so much so that the in-person experience of a display of photographs has taken a back seat. However, again thanks to digital technology, the means to print one's own photographs has become much easier than in the past, including large and high quality prints.
As a psychologist and photographer who studies how people create, share, and react to images in this age of digital photography and online photo-sharing, I recently turned my attention back to the tradition of an in-person display of photographs. This research led to a photography exhibition Photographic Psychology: Forces that Shape the Psyche, which took place at the Rider University Art Gallery in 2012. The exhibition consisted of 60 images with titles and short descriptions for each one (see tinyurl.com/crgy29w). Each image represented a different force that shapes our sense of self and identity, such as family, emotions, dissociation, selfobjects, addiction, separation, childhood trauma, developmental stages, and the unconscious.
The purpose of the exhibition was three-fold: (1) to provide an educational event about ideas related to psychology, espcially psychoanalytic concepts; (2) to offer a type of personal growth experience in which people could learn about themselves; (3) to serve a vehicle for conducting research on the use of in-person displays of images, including the interpersonal dynamics that occur when people view the images in this physical environment. Because some people question the practicality of photography prints when sharing images digitally is so easy and widespread, I found this third aspect of the exhibition particularly interesting. What are the advantages of a real-world display?
In this article I would like to summarize the conceptualization, implementation, and outcome of this pro