Picturing dis/comforting geographies : place, punctum and photography

This chapter addresses dis/comforting geographies via an exploration of my own practices of engaging with place through therapeutic photography. I seek to position this piece at the junction of cultural geography and therapeutic photography (which I will explain below), employing a practice-based approach to understanding dis/comforting geographies. This chapter largely comprises a photographic essay, offering imagery that materialises my dis/comforting encounters with local environments in the form of visual language. I choose these words quite deliberately. The images are not just representations of my affective relationship with, detachments from or attachments to place(s). Rather, I argue that these photographs, produced through processes of self-directed therapy, are the very objects that embody and crystallise how I sought to work through my personal geographies of comfort and discomfort" my sense of self, place and wellbeing together" at a particular 'fateful moment' of life. The psychologist Judith Weiser describes such photographs as 'representational objects', using them in her work with clients (Weiser 2014: 165). In this textual introduction, I provide context for the photographic essay that follows. I delineate an understanding of dis/comfort, self and place; outline the circumstances that led to my engagement with place-based therapeutic photography; describe the type of therapy employed (existential therapy with a phenomenological approach); explain the nature of place-based therapeutic photography and thread it with concepts from photography theory (especially punctum); and then give the chapter over to the visual language of the images themselves.