The best way to understand another person is to first look within ourselves. However, we can best understand ourselves through the reflection of others. This reciprocal process forms the core of my project, which seeks to uncover the essence of images through a therapeutic approach to photography.

This self-reflective, biographical, and narrative exploration is rooted in logotherapy. This psychological movement, developed by Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, views life as a continuous search for meaning.

Logotherapy, derived from the Greek “logos” (meaning) and “therapy” (healing), primarily works with language and formulation, which I convert into the language of photography, inventing a sort of ‘image-formulation’.

The photographs were created in close collaboration with the participants, who were not only subjects, but co-creators in the process. The image making was preceded by guided individual conversations, during which I collected stories, emotions, and experiences from the participants.

This mutual exploration was structured around the method of “guided autobiography”, a self-awareness technique from logotherapy, developed by psychiatrist Elisabeth Lukas, a student of Viktor Frankl. Lukas divides a person’s life into nine defining chapters:

Chapter 1: My parents

Chapter 2: My childhood

Chapter 3: My school years

Chapter 4: My adulthood

Chapter 5: My present

Chapter 6: My near future

Chapter 7: My distant future

Chapter 8: My death

Chapter 9: What I leave behind

During these discussions, I asked participants to imagine and design an image or a series of pictures related to each life chapter. Then I created photographs based on the ideas discussed.

These personal reflections manifested in images which form a collective emotional map that spans across different nationalities and generations and prompting us to engage in our own analysis. Flipping through the photo books feels like peeking into personal diaries, but instead of finding some secrets, we find stories. These in the absence of personal familiarity, are becoming fictions, impressions of feelings and experiences that offer keys to understanding ourselves and reflecting on our own life journeys.

Click here to read the publication (in Hungarian)