Interview: Capturing Mental Health Through Photography

Photographers often find the process of creating photography can improve their mental health. But how can people express their mental health and different states of mind within still photographs? It isn't always easy for photographers to interpret an intangible concept—like mental health—and make it visible through a still image, using connotations to evoke ideas and create feeling beyond the face value of the photograph.

Art director–photographer Lorna Allan and psychotherapist Julia Hawkins recently collaborated on a project that explores mental health through photography. In this article, Lorna Allan and Julia Hawkins discuss their project's concept and the techniques and camera equipment they used to create it.

Over to you, Lorna and Julia.

LA: In one way or another, we've all been touched by mental health issues, whether our own or someone we know. The pandemic led to a rise in cases of younger people experiencing anxiety and depression. So, I was intent on developing a photographic story on what mental health looks like. I approached psychotherapist Julia Hawkins to collaborate with and develop the idea. 

In this project, we wanted to explore the relationship between the mind and the body. How can we navigate the world with a nervous system shaped by different experiences?

We broadly examine two potential nervous system structures—one shaped by trauma and one grown in a safe space or healed through therapy—and how they respond to stress and bounce back to feelings of safety.

To convey these different structures, we felt that working with a dancer would be a great way to document the feelings we experience in each of these states, visually expressed through movement.

JH: When you feel largely safe in the world, you can be said to be operating within your window of tolerance. This means that you feel adaptable and flexible, and—if something stressful comes along—you can respond without feeling like you are spiralling out of control or feeling stuck. In other words, your nervous system is in a regulated state. 

At other times, you might be triggered or going through something stressful in your life that leaves you feeling unable to cope. You might be feeling frantic and anxious (hyper-aroused) or numb and shut down (hypo-aroused). In either state, your nervous system is dysregulated. 

Each individual's window of tolerance can grow and change throughout their life. If you've experienced trauma or you're living through a period of chronic stress, this may shrink your window of tolerance. So, the risk of becoming dysregulated increases, and you might feel stuck in those dysregulated states for longer. 

On the other hand, your window of tolerance can expand. Maybe you grew up in a safe environment, made changes to your life to support your body's needs, or you've gone through therapy. When you have a larger window of tolerance, it is harder to become dysregulated. Likewise, when dysregulated, it is much easier to return to a regulated state. The therapy process seeks to grow one's window of tolerance—as one is much more adaptable and expanded in this state—with effective tools for regulating themselves.

Lorna and I wanted to create six images to capture these movements in and out of regulated and dysregulated states. These would be divided into two triptychs capturing a hypo-aroused state, a safe state and a hyper-aroused state under a small window of tolerance, and these same states again under a large window of tolerance.

LA: After our discussion on how the structure of the windows would work, the visual concept started to come together. We decided to build a generic background—consistent throughout the shoot—so that most of the focus would be on the movement and the dancer. 

We introduced a coloured light as a visual signifier for each dysregulated state: a hint of green for hypo-arousal; and red for hyper-arousal. With our dancer, Hannah, we discussed the kind of sensations and feelings that come up with each of these states and how we could express them through the body and movement.  

For hypo-arousal, we wanted to express the shutdown of the nervous system in this state, associated with feelings of shame or depression. This evoked movements that are slow, static and tight. On the other end of the scale, hyper-arousal is where 'fight or flight' exists. Here, we used a red light to signify high tensions of fear and anger and the movement was more fierce, erratic and full of expression. The regulated, safe states were represented by making undulating body movements to represent the ease we feel when existing here.

We then wanted to further depict how each of these states would look with a small window of tolerance, and with a large window of tolerance. Under a small window, the movement was more restricted and constrained, depicting the limited space for safety and the ease with which one can become dysregulated. Under a large window, movements in the regulated state were broader and bigger, but smaller in the dysregulated states, depicting the person's greater feelings of safety and capacity for more effective self-regulation.

It was the first time I worked with the Sony A7 IV, and I was a little nervous moving from my Canon—especially as the shoot was quite technical, combining multiple exposures and long shutter speeds. But the A7 IV was very intuitive. After spending a little time playing with the functions, I felt comfortable. The faster and more accurate autofocus, due to the advanced hybrid autofocus systems, was particularly useful for capturing the fast movements of our dancer, Hannah. 

Read the Sony A7 IV review.

For the whole shoot, we used a 35mm f/1.4 GM, which was the perfect focal length for what we wanted to achieve. This lens was beautiful and surpassed my expectations. As I mainly shoot stills but am moving into video, this camera excited me to see the possibilities. It comes into its own with motion capture. 

We tested out the slow-motion and timelapse functions, which are very easy to access through the functions buttons, and gave me lots of ideas for potential video projects and ideas to realise. 

Essentially, to photograph is to paint with light. By using some very fundamental camera techniques creatively and, with imagination you can achieve results that encompass both an image of information that also extends viscerally. For example, by using a mix of light—for example, flash and constant light sources—along with long shutter speeds, you can achieve impressions of light and traces of movement alongside capturing a static image of your subject. 

I like to use this method to trace sequences of movement through space and document everything within one shot. It creates different layers and multiplicity in the image. There is so much room to experiment with ‘painting’ with light. When introducing the flash, you can choose to have your lighting trails preceding the subject—or follow them—by simply changing the curtain sync in your camera settings.

This works well with a static camera and moving subject. But you can also have a static subject and a moving camera, so the movement is made by the photographer. This long exposure technique creates a different kind of movement and aesthetic. There’s so much scope for experimentation, which can give some amazing and unexpected results. These techniques can all be done in-camera, along with using a multiple-exposure technique, which involves having numerous pictures exposed onto the same piece of film or digital file.

Thank you, Lorna Allan and Julia Hawkins. Read more articles, including how staying mindful can help improve your portrait photography, on the MPB content hub.