Event overview
Rosy Martin is an artist-photographer, psychological therapist, workshop leader, lecturer and writer. She explores the relationships between photography, memory, identities and unconscious processes using self-portraiture, still life photography, digital imaging and video. Through embodiment, she discerns the psychic and social construction of identities within the drama of the everyday. Rosy has worked collaboratively: from 1983, with Jo Spence, she pioneered re-enactment phototherapy; with Kay Goodridge she made a body of work exploring ageing (Outrageous Agers); with Emma White she made work exploring the dynamics of power and the ability to effect change; with Seija Ulkuniemi working on grief and loss within the Lappish landscape.
The invention of re-enactment phototherapy:
"I've got cupboards full of dressing-up clothes that I never wear anymore, and I love to play," I said. "I've got a camera, we could use it," said Jo. So, the next time we met, we tried on a variety of roles, through dressing up, within the safety and trust of the co-counseling relationship we had already built during the preceding year. We photographed one another as we experimented with inhabiting these roles. Conflicting emotions were brought up in the process, and we used our counseling skills to work through these and find ways to transform them, both visually and psychically. Deep emotions surfaced, both in the photographic sessions and when viewing the photographs we had produced, and we worked through these, using our therapeutic relationship as the containing frame. Quickly, very quickly, we realized that we had discovered a very powerful way of working. Through experimentation and risk-taking, facilitated by the permission we gave one another as co-counselors, and the containment and safety already established in our therapeutic exchange, "re-enactment phototherapy” evolved.”
(excerpt from The performative body: phototherapy & re-enactment, published in Afterimage 2001 copyright Rosy Martin)
Rosy has exhibited internationally and published widely since 1985. In 2013 her work was exhibited in Focus Photography Festival Mumbai and ‘Il Corpo Solitario’ Perugia, in 2014 at Peltz Gallery London in ‘Family ties: reframing memory’ and in 2015-6 ‘Libido uprising’ in ‘Jo Spence Spotlight’ Tate Britain
Recent publications include essays in The photograph and the album (2013), Phototherapy and therapeutic photography in a digital age (2013) and Ageing femininities, troubling representations (2012).
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 6 Feb 2019 | 5:30pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
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