ABSTRACT
This chapter explores such questions as: What helps or hinders an exploration of the most effective expressions of phototherapists’ and therapeutic photographers’ (as well as psychotherapists’ and photographers’) desire to help? Is it possible to have both justice and action? In examining issues of phototherapy and therapeutic photography as practices of ethics in terms of truth, justice, and responsibility, is there a contemporary ethical basis on which we can assist in an embodied way so that we can help others not do violence to others? Indeed, is it possible for us as phototherapists and therapeutic photographers, (psychotherapists, photographers, etc.) not to interrupt our own and others’ continuity, not to play roles in which we no longer recognise ourselves and whereby we betray not only our commitments but our own substance? In particular, what is explored is the question, ‘What does it mean then for the person who is the psychotherapist, photographer, etc. to put the person who is the client (or photographed person) first’?
