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Vision is not only what we see with the eye. A photograph speaks to us in its own language and captures a millisecond in time. In that moment, it can conjure up all that was unseen, making the invisible visible. That seeable moment can usher in a rush of emotions that may astonish us. What does a photograph say to the viewer?
Our vision has a multiplicity: it depends on what our unconscious is experiencing at that moment, and which of our multiple selves is seeing that image. Of course, there is always more to be seen. What a person does not see or experience now, they may see at another time. If you view a painting when you are 20 years old it may look different to you at 40. Or, if you view it while joyful, it may look entirely different than if you were melancholy. Which of our multiple selves are we bringing?
In this section of Creative Literary Arts, to which I return after a meaningful hiatus, we hear how eight psychoanalysts responded to a photographic image they chose, bringing the photograph into their own realm of unconscious experience. What has been captured on these pages will remain seen. But what cannot be seen is the unconscious swirl underneath—and there abides the mystery of art.
Bonnie Zindel, LCSW, is Faculty, Supervising and Training Analyst at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, and a Founding Editor and Creative Literary Editor of Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Zindel has conducted writing groups for 25 years.