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“This practice of asking, listening, looking and interpreting fed into my photography for the general public. I began to ask who and what the pictures were for, and then in collaboration, we would produce such different views as seemed feasible or as the sitters gave themselves permission to show me. It was only years later when I was in therapy and trying to ‘speak’ to various parts of myself that I began to make connections with this earlier practice and seek a way of portraying psychic images of myself.”
– Jo Spence, Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political, Personal and Photographic Autobiography
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Jo SPENCE (1934-1992) emerged as a key figure in British photography in the mid-1970s. Engaging with a range of photographic genres, from commercial to documentary and photo therapy, Spence took a unique approach to the camera, swerving academic theories and embracing a model based on experimentation and personal experience.
Though we know Spence as an activist, feminist and social photographer, she began her career as a commercial photographer. Weddings, family portraits and baby photos were her mainstay, opening her eyes to how images are encoded with performance and value – the staging of the beautiful bride, perfect family and angelic children.
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Rosy Martin and Jo Spence undertaking a photo therapy session using childhood portraits from their family albums
© Jo Spence, courtesy Terry DennettThrough her Photo Therapy series, first developed in collaboration with Rosy Martin, Spence sought to understand how photographs operate in the construction of age, class, identity and notions of beauty. Drawing on her experience of co-counselling, psychodrama and therapy, these works allowed Spence to work through her own personal histories and traumas; her feelings of being infantilised; her mother and feelings of abandonment; her relationship with her body and the idealized female form; her emotional roots to patterns of eating; and her battle against her working class roots. Spence later used photo therapy as a tool to document her fight against cancer.
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“Two elements make up photo therapy – photography and therapy – and each word has come to have a number of meanings for me, both as a former professional photographer and a cancer person. I arrived at these formulations mostly through actual practice, so my ideas may not be the same as those of an academic or professional therapist. Any theory I have now acquired came to me slowly from a variety of sources...”
– Jo Spence, Beyond the Perfect Image
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Photo therapy presented new forms of representation that allowed for multiple, fragmented selves and a tool to deal with this multi-faceted nature of being. For Spence, the central question became: how can individuals – namely children, women and the working class – use photography to represent themselves and take control of their own visual narratives?
The series further extended her lifelong interrogation and decoding of sexuality, family and class, whilst highlighting her rejection of artistic givens, favouring process over object and collaboration over sole ownership. Spence continued collaborating with others, including the psychotherapist Dr Tim Sheard and artist Valerie Walkerdine as well as her artistic and romantic partner Terry Dennett, until her death in 1992.
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Jo Spence: Photo Therapy
Current viewing_room
