Lee

“If the eyes are a window to the soul, what does a photograph reveal about the photographer?”

Lee is a psychotherapist, writer and photographer, in private practice in Toronto and North York. She has a special interest in the creative process and how playful creativity and self-expression can enhance one’s quality of life.

Lee developed the Innerscapes Workshops and Photo Journey’s with the intention of providing participants with the opportunity to actively experience and develop their creativity.

In the workshops we shift focus from the content of the image onto to the photographer who has taken the photograph.

The recorded, chosen moment has much to tell about the photographer.

A photograph is the only time we get to really see what and how another has seen the world. When I sit with clients in therapy I’m aware that I’m are hearing about the world from their vantage point, their subjective reality. When I look at a photograph I am looking at the world as if through the eye of someone else.

When we look through the ‘viewfinder’ we select a very personal and subjective view. It’s filtered by personal history and experience. These workshops will encourage you to pay attention to your personal perspective and think about aspects of your self that work for you, while encouraging you to change those that don’t.

Without an understanding of ‘point of view’, we tend to repeat established patterns.

Private sessions are possible by appointment see photographs people bring.

Participants have found the workshops to be liberating and transformative. Using the camera as a tool for self-expression and self-understanding encourages playfulness and creativity, which in turn encourages mental well being.”

Visit Lee’s psychotherapy site to find out more about Lee Kraemer

It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self”

D.W. Winnicott

Inspiration to develop the Innerscapes workshop came out of workshops and interactions with Freeman Patterson. During his workshops, in both South Africa and Shampers Bluff, photographers became very emotional and there was nowhere to explore the emotions that arose. I like to think that Innerscapes picks up and develops this important aspect of photography.

“A photograph is a visual description of the relationship between the subject and the photographer, and a good photograph is one that clearly shows the character of the subject while revealing the photographer’s response to it. Nobody can ever hide behind a camera. Accept the fact that when you make pictures you are revealing a lot about yourself.” Freeman Patterson. Photography for the Joy of it.

"Photography - both the craft and the art - helps me to be. It allows and enables me to live creatively, which is to honour Creation and my own existence. As I consciously pursue my craft, my concerns, anxieties, fears, loves, hopes, and dreams bubble up from my unconscious. In this meeting of the conscious and the unconscious, I can acknowledge my wounds and experience healing."

Freeman Patterson, ShadowLight.

Thanks and heartfelt appreciation to all teachers and colleagues who have encouraged me in the development of these ideas. Thanks also to clients and past participants whose enthusiasm has inspired me to develop and learn. Freeman Patterson and Richard Martin have inspired me to play with the camera and with photography.

Michael Wood introduced me to the Miksang approach to seeing and being.

Participants meet early in the morning to take their photographs and meet later to show images and talk about the experiences & the photographs.