DEVELOPING HUMAN BONDS WITH NATURE THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY
Alexander Kopytin
Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Department of Psychology, St. Petersburg Academy of Postgraduate Pedagogical Studies (St.-Petersburg, Russian Federation)
Abstract
The role of photography in providing a meaningful human connection to nature is analyzed. Some reasons why photography can be a valuable means of nature-based practices supporting the development of environmental consciousness are presented and illustrated with examples of photographs and projects that took place in different countries. Considerations are also provided which show why photography helps to explore and change people’s perception of nature, to feel in control and appropriate the environment, maintain and develop ecological identity, and to develop mindfulness and a sense of physical presence in the environment.
Key words: photography, nature-based photo-taking, personalization, subjectification of nature, mindfulness, narratives
Introduction
Currently, a “environmental turn” in the arts takes place. The arts play an increasingly significant role in the environmental agenda of humankind. Along with science, the arts present and make their attempt in their own way to solve key issues of the human relationship with the world of nature, have their own means of designating and solving environmental and human problems, their own methods of socio-psychological reflection, ways of thinking and acting.
As a form of visual art photography can reflect the environment and provide an opportunity to focus on natural objects and processes, help to find meaning in the environment, frame and reframe the reality of nature, and render complex dynamics implied in nature. It can empower humans, help them to appropriate and personalize the environment and even come to more active participation in its design, management and restoration.
Environmental or nature-based photo-taking practices represent a growing segment of expressive and creative arts, based on the new understanding of the role of nature in providing public and environmental health and establishing more harmonious and supporting relations of humans with nature.
The role of photography in providing meaningful human connection to nature
There are many reasons why photography can be a valuable means of nature-based practices.
Photography helps to explore and change people’s perception of nature, develop environmental consciousness and knowledge.
One of the significant effects of photography is that ‘…the camera invariably gives people or objects some kind of distinctive meaning, relevance and status.’ [7, p. 28] Photography can help people to come to a new perception of nature and recognize its meaningfulness and beauty, even if people initially didn’t recognize such qualities. This is also true when a ‘dark’ side of nature is being confronted. When we are focused even on the most depressed, sad and colorless environment and start looking beneath the superficial exterior of things or places, we can often see some spark of life, healthy and unique aspects that characterize them. As Berman [1] puts it, taking photographs ‘…brings out the inherent qualities in the miserable, the poor and the oppressed, so that they become dramatically interesting. This is a paradoxical aspect of photographs that has echoed in therapeutic work.’ (p. 37)
Sontag [7] comments on the effect of photographic selectivity in the following way: ‘While a painting or prose description can never be other than a narrowly selective interpretation, a photograph can be treated as a narrowly selective transparency. But despite the presumption of veracity that gives all photographs authority, interest, seductiveness, the work that photographers do is no generic exception to the usually shady commerce between art and truth.’ (p. 6)
As President of the “Golden Turtle" International Wildlife Festival, underwater photographer Andrey Sukhinin puts it, ‘at present ‘photography promotes environmental values. Influencing the feelings and emotions of people through the positive energy of creativity which is perhaps one of the most accessible and effective channels for involving people in environmental protection, developing their ability to see the beauty of the natural world and understand its life and connection with humans. Photography use social and cultural codes that are understandable to everyone on any continent to communicate our common goal to preserve the ecosphere. He emphasized the role of Festival as an educational program aimed at photographers of all levels, from beginners to experienced professionals. The wildlife photography festival provides this target audience with the widest opportunities for communication and exchange of experience.’ [4]
Another wildlife photographer Michail Korosteev believes that the main thing that he understood is that many animals do not deserve a very bad reputation. It turned out that if he does not disturb them, observe carefully and with respect, do not forget that he is their guest, then they do not show aggression, do not attack, and let humans to be included in their environment. Thanks to this, he can shoot hippos, crocodiles, bears and sharks underwater.
Through photography, he even found a common language with animals and that a kind of dialogue, when two sides understand each other is possible. ‘Sometimes animals do not want to communicate, often they just pass by. Sometimes fleetingly look eye to eye. But there are also long-term interactions. Sometimes it's just a game. But sometimes there were significant contacts.’ [5]
Photo 1: Michail Korostelev. Indian elephant. Andaman Islands. India.
Photography helps people to feel in control of the environment and participate in its management and restoration.
Since the goal of ecotherapy and eco-arts is to facilitate people’s interaction with the environment in order to achieve not only health-promoting for themselves, but also environmental health outcomes, photography can be used to promote human’s active position in their relationship with the environment and develop their perception of themselves as those who are able to exert a certain amount of influence on it. Environmental psychology supports the idea of participation and strives to enhance citizen involvement in environmental design, management and restoration. Nature-based photography can support achieving these goals. This can be a result of people’s better understanding of environmental issues and their relation to personal and community agendas. Often photography reflects various natural scenery and environmental public activities in order to bring public attention to environmental problems and ways to resolve them.
Photo-taking can even help people to feel safe and in control of the situation, whenever it evokes uncomfortable reactions as a result of being confronted with difficult outdoor situations and less ‘beautiful’ and pleasurable sides of nature. Sontag [7] emphasized that ‘To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge – and, therefore, like power’ (p. 4).
Photography supports ecological personalization and subjectification of nature.
Our perception of the constructive human interaction with nature through photography can be enriched by concepts of personalization of the environment [2]. This concept is related to psychosocial aspects of human experience, a sense of territoriality, belonging, ownership and control over spaces and objects. Personalization can also be understood as a human behavior that aims to express certain distinctive features of the individual in the environment. Environmental photography can be understood as an ecological form of personalization based on the empathic and supportive human interaction with the world of nature. Photography and other activities involving creative personalization of the environment can promote an environmental ethic and a more active and participatory position in people’s relationships with the world around, as well as supporting their self-esteem and empowerment.
Personalization of the environment can involve subjectification of natural objects, which means that natural objects and environments are perceived as having their own subjectivity, and are able to be in some form of reciprocal relationship and in dialogue with humans. Subjectification implies both empathy and identification with natural objects and perceiving them as sharing similar qualities with human beings.
An arts psychotherapist, and photographer, Carolina Herbert [3] has a passion for how the expressive arts, especially photography, can support us to respond to the complex challenges we face in our world today. She believes that slowing down and focusing in on a landscape, a moment when light brushes the earth alight after a storm or to gaze into an animal's eyes in the wild is like an awakening of our relationship with the earth becomes real: ‘In times where we are increasingly disconnected or even separated from the wild, the therapeutic use of photography can draw us back into the intimacy that is at the essence of our nature. It can restore hope and a relationship of compassion, care and appreciation of beauty.’ As a photographer she sometimes feels ‘fully present to this sacred relationship, when is no longer separation with nature, we are of one spirit, one breath—such is this mystical participation, this union, this communion.
Photography helps to develop individual and group ecological identity
Through nature-based photography development of new characteristics of people’s identity, in particular, eco-identity can be supported. According to environmentally-grounded personality theory, one’s relationship with nature occupies a special role and is a vital factor in healthy personality formation and functioning. Thus, establishing an Earth-based sense of Self, an eco-identity based on human identification with the world of nature, has the same significance as one’s relations with people. Our emotional bond with nature and the attachment of human beings to nature, together with our bonds with other people, are integral to the psychological growth of a person, beginning with the early developmental phase and ending with the final stage of the human lifespan.
Revealing and developing eco-identity can be achieved, in particular, through realistic or symbolic/metaphoric self-portraits, when people perceive natural environments or objects as representation of themselves. In order to support the formation of healthy ecological identities of children and young people, a Finnish photographer Miina Savolainen [6] developed empowering photography. While working in child welfare she started ‘The Loveliest Girl in the World’ project that spanned over a decade. It was the children and young people who could define how they were to be viewed in the photos. The natural environments chosen by them presented fictional and symbolic worlds through which they could express their inner experiences of themselves and others. Nature offered consolation, beauty, protection and embracing arms, and enabled the children to look at and overcome pain and loss. In the fairy-tale-like photographs, each individual’s right to believe in her own worth and wholeness through heathy bonds with nature was brought to view.
Photo 2: Monna Makkonnen and Miina Savolainen. ‘The Loveliest Girl in the World,’ 2006.
Another photography project dealing with eco-identity is Eyes as Big as Plates based on ongoing collaboration between the Finnish-Norwegian artist duo Riitta Ikonen and Karoline Hjorth. Starting out as a play on characters from Nordic folklore, Eyes as Big as Plates has evolved into a continual search for modern humanity belonging to nature.
The series is produced in collaboration with retired farmers, fishermen, zoologists, plumbers, opera singers, housewives, artists, academics etc. Since 2011 the artist duo has portrayed seniors in Norway, Finland, France, US, UK, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Sweden, South Korea, Czech Republic, Japan, Senegal, Outer Hebrides, Tasmania and Greenland. Each image in the series presents a solitary figure in a landscape, dressed in elements from surroundings that indicate neither time nor place. Here nature acts as both content and context: characters literally inhabit the landscape wearing sculptures they create in collaboration with the artists.
Photo 3: Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen. Eyes as Big as Plates # Momodou Toucouleur (Senegal, 2019)
Engaging in environmental photography supports mindfulness and a sense of physical presence in the environment.
Some environmental photo-taking activities can be considered as a way of developing somatic awareness and an embodied sense of self in one’s relation to the environment. This effect is most obvious as a result of environmental photo-taking activities which balance time between mindfulness and creative expression, when emphasis is placed on meditative journeys as a form of mini-pilgrimages in the ‘green area.’ Often, the projective nature of photo-taking activity enables a person's identification with natural objects and environments on a physical level.
Mindful photo-taking activities can be integrated into ecotherapy practices and support the goals of ecotherapy by fostering reconnection and a return to experiencing ourselves in the here and now as embodied beings. This requires attention to physical sensations in their relation to mental states evoked by one’s presence and interaction with the environment. It should be emphasized that the healing powers of nature are enhanced by the degree of mindfulness and mental focus one brings to these interactions. People can immerse themselves in a state of presence in the environment, and use photography to explore experiential awareness and practice mindful attention by documenting responses to sensory stimuli. For instance, they can be asked to take pictures of what they move toward as pleasant and to also photograph what they experience as unpleasant, in ways that are used in a new mindfulness-based art therapy intervention, which represents an example of a palliative environmental program.
Through environmental photo-taking activities people can be encouraged to immerse themselves in a kind of meditation, with their absorption in physical and emotional processes on the one hand, and attentiveness to the environmental stimuli on the other. They can walk or act mindfully, keeping a sense of their presence in the environment with immediate experience in the here and now, appreciating their physical contact with the natural objects and sensory qualities of the ‘green space’ with its ‘field effects’.
Mindfulness-based environmental photo-taking activities can include an introduction with mindfulness instruction and emphasis on the role of attention in health. Warm-up exercises involving breathing and relaxation and exploratory walkabouts in certain environments can be introduced as helping to provide deeper effects.
Photography as a means of confronting nature experiencing distress and illness.
At present the obvious ecological losses associated with the disappearance of species, landscapes and ecosystems, changes in weather conditions, disruption of the usual way of life or loss of livelihood become more evident and often reflected through art, especially, photography. By doing so, photography provides modest but compelling acts of regeneration, an adaptive response to healing not only of human beings, but of the multitude of places on the planet that experience distress and ‘illness.’
The arts become a front row seat to witness the happenings of our planet. As Sarah West [8] puts it, the dramatic happenings of our planet, politically and environmentally ‘have been paired with a deeply cultivated, loving, personal relationship with the lands and waters, and stimulate people to center their life around advocating for creating spaces where we can heal - ourselves, our communities and the land - and fold us back into the web of connection. This intense connection with the earth has also meant a lifetime of experiencing eco grief.’
The visual scenery of planetary and ecosystems’ damage evokes ecological grief as an emotional response to various environmental losses, especially among those people who until recently sought to maintain close ties with the natural environment and attached increased importance to this connection.
Photo 4: Philippe Echaroux. “Painting with Lights” (2014). Light projection onto the forest - light “graffiti”
French artist Philippe Echaroux gained worldwide fame in 2014 thanks to the project “Painting with Lights”, in which he used a digital projector and light “graffiti”, to project photographs of indigenous people’s faces unto tree crowns as a screen. With this project, he, in particular, defended the tropical forest in Brazil, 600 hectares of which were destroyed as a result of predatory logging. Every day, 300 trucks loaded with logs leave this area. This means that 600 hectares of forest were cut down. And this continues, despite the fact that, according to the Brazilian constitution, cutting down forests on the territory of indigenous peoples is prohibited. The projection of a face of indigenous people onto the trees of a tropical forest creates the impression that the forest has acquired its own agency.
Environmental photography facilitates narrative activity
Narrative construction can be effective ways to assist with appropriation and personalization of the environment via photography. When people create and tell stories that concern their relationship with the environment, they have rich possibilities to discover and maintain their individual or group identity, formulate complex earth-based meanings and bring their intentions and the sense of a goal into the narrative.
Creating narratives as a part of phototherapeutic environmentally and nature-based activities can activate these inherent qualities in people. Different photographic material can be used to facilitate narrative activity. This can be photo-albums or other personal collections of pictures, photos taken in various environments to illustrate certain events. Significant memories and biographical meanings can be revealed, for instance, when people are showing and commenting their photographs related to certain places and natural environments.
Since photo-taking is a process and a result of it can be a series of photographs able to facilitate narration based on a sequence of micro- or macro-events that took place in the process of picture-taking and are reflected in the photographs. These could be natural processes observed by a person and related to her/his inner reactions. Thus, one of effect of photo-taking during some periods of time can be story-making that helps with a sense of cohesiveness of their lives and perception of natural objects and ecosystems.
Nature-based photography can include some special activities facilitating narration, such as photo-journaling or keeping photographic diaries, illustrating personal stories, or some cultural and archetypal themes, poetry, or myths with photographs. People can present their narratives together with a series of pictures selected from those taken during their outdoor journeys. Creating narratives is also possible with the use of people’s collection of personal photographs or albums, as a result of their choice of most significant photographs or a series of photographs related to their experience of the environment.
Photo 5: Leonid Tishkov. “The Private Moon” project
According to the plot of “The Private Moon” art project, a man saw a Moon falling from heaven in the attic of his house. He covered the Moon with a blanket, drank tea with her, treated her to apples, and then transported her across a dark river to a bank with lunar pines, descended into the lower world, and then returned back, illuminating the path with his personal Moon. Together with the Moon, man crossed the boundaries of worlds, fell into sleep, and became a mythological creature that can live in the real world as if in a fairy tale.
The romantic fairy-tale quality of the project is ambiguous: it allows us to see the world in a new light, to introduce notes of poetics, mystery, fabulousness, childhood, tenderness, care, reciprocity, contemplation into a person’s perception, and highlights everything around. A meeting with the Moon revives in us the ability to perceive the world as a living universe, sharing with a person the feeling of loneliness, pain, and the joy of meeting, and living together, and wanderings. In order to tell his story Leonid Tishkov constructed a lantern in the form of a moon and made many photographs of it installing it in different locations including those that experience ecological problems in order to attract people’s attention to them.
Conclusion
Photography embraces various forms of creative activities able to support public and environmental health and establishing more harmonious and supporting relations of humans with nature. This article presented environmental, nature-based applications of photography. Information on how photography helps to explore and change people’s perception of nature, to feel in control and to appropriate the environment, maintain and develop ecological identity, to facilitate narrative activity in order to integrate various aspects of experience concerning people’s relationship with nature, and to develop mindfulness and a sense of physical presence in the environment. was provided.
References
- Berman, L. (1993). Beyond the smile: The therapeutic use of the photograph. London: Routledge.
- Heimets, M. (1994). The phenomenon of personalization of the environment. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 32(3), 24-32.
- Herbert, C.A. (2022). Communion: Encountering the other through photography. Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice, 3(2). [open access internet journal]. – URL: http://en.ecopoiesis.ru (30/01/2024)
- Kopytin, A. (2022). "The Folden Turtle" International Wildlife Festival. Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice, 3(1). [open access web-based journal]. – URL: http://en.ecopoiesis.ru (30/01/2024)
- Kopytin, A. (2023). Interview with wildlife photographer Mikhail Korostelev. Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice, 4(2). - URL: http://en.ecopoiesis.ru (30/01/2024)
- Savolainen, M. (2016). Empowering photography – participating in someone else’s world. In A. Kopytin and M. Rugh (Eds.), Green studio: Nature and the arts in therapy. – p. 234-245. Happauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.
- Sontag, S. (1990). On photography. New York: Straus and Giroux.
- West, S. (2022). Ecological grief is a real thing. Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice, 3(1). [open access internet journal]. – URL: http://en.ecopoiesis.ru (30/01/2024).
Reference for citations
Kopytin, A.I. (2025). Developing human bonds with nature through photography. Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice, 6 (1). [open access internet journal]. – URL: http://ecopoiesis.ru (d/m/y)