Photography as Therapy

Making images that evoke her emotions helps Vancouver artist Shira Gold cope with life's struggles.

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Mired in grief over the death of her mother and coping with undiagnosed ADHD, Vancouver photographer Shira Gold found a pathway through personal crisis by exploring art's intersection with mental health and well-being.

“It’s the only time in my life when my mind and my heart feel aligned.” Gold says of her time behind the lens. 

That's probably no surprise to wellness experts, who increasingly extol the health benefits of art. Last year, for instance, the World Health Organization reported that its analysis of some 3,000 studies shows that art can improve mental and physical health at all stages of life. And physicians in Montreal have begun prescribing free visits to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. 

If interacting with art simply as an observer has therapeutic power, what happens when an artist dives deep into her practice, searching for emotional solace, healing and equilibrium?

Gold was born in 1977 and raised in Vancouver, where she was introduced to photography as a teenager at Arts Umbrella, a non-profit arts education centre for youth. Her camera was something of an antidote to her ongoing struggles in high school, where she fought hard to meet conventional expectations and defy discouraging messages from her childhood. Her self-esteem had steadily eroded, and this lack of confidence could have been crippling.

Photography offered Gold a sliver of control. Her camera became a tool to interact with the world and express her point of view in a positive way. She learned to acknowledge and purposefully connect with feelings of discomfort, and to intentionally deconstruct experiences that felt overwhelming.

Repetitive motion is a widely accepted behavioral therapy technique for lowering heart rate and blood pressure, and can also help calm an overactive mind. On the advice of health professionals, Gold tried running, knitting, deep-breathing exercises and more. But her thoughts continued to race. 

In 2000, when Gold’s mother, Melanie, became seriously ill, Gold made the pivotal decision to leave her career in fashion design to become her caregiver. After her mother's death, she searched desperately for a mechanism to relieve the searing pain of mourning. It was photography that came to her rescue, providing urgent support to navigate this difficult time. Picking up her camera again, Gold says, was like "finding my breath.” 

What Gold discovered to be genuinely therapeutic was the simple, repetitive act of making images, regardless of the subject, the time available or the end result. Using this process, she learned to express visually what she couldn’t articulate.

“It was visual therapy,” she says.

Then, when she was 35, she was diagnosed with ADHD. Her camera became a tool to harness her distracted thinking and summon mental focus. Gold, by then a mother and the self-published author of Choosing Joy’s Empowerment Index, a book she had started with her mother, says photography allowed her to slow down and be fully in the moment during a bewildering time.

"It was like all the space in life between struggles and triumphs compressed and there wasn't room to process what I had been through," she says.

Relying on her camera, she explored the depth of her loss and allowed herself time to digest confusing feelings and fears. She sought to create images of isolated stillness and beauty parsed from complicated and painful moments. Drawing on her relationships as both a daughter and a mother, her photographs explore themes of grief, loss, identity and change.

Her body of landscape portraits, Good Grief, is composed of several series that serve as a visual dissertation of her movement through loss. Her Shock series, photographed at night around Vancouver, shows trees highlighted against a black background to represent the loneliness of grief. Her Vulnerability series pictures mist-shrouded trees, evoking a sense of frailty in the face of life's impermanence.

"My grief is a continuing landscape," Gold says. "There is no beginning and end stage; it is ongoing. I ebb and flow through this collection. The process of observing and documenting the beauty in the pain is my applied therapy. The grief, as expressed through natural landscapes, gives testimony to nature’s extraordinary healing power and sense of sacred space."

This work has earned her attention in several photo contests, including an honourable mention in the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards, an international contest for women photographers. As well, Gold received a nomination to the Fine Art Photo Awards and a semi-finalist's spot in the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series. She was also a finalist in the LensCulture Art Photography Awards.

Lately, Gold has been working on a new series, The Fine Art of Letting Go, which features images of suspended botanicals. Her goal was to evoke the paradoxical impulses to both cling to the past and release it in hopes of finding something new. 

"The past is not so easily cut off," says Gold. "The fears that limited us, our false notions of self, our disappointments and heartbreaks — these are reminders of where we came from, what has shaped us, and who we wish to become. Memories we cherish, like jewels from our youth, are held tightly, even when time causes them to lose their vitality."

Unlike some artists, Gold chooses to be speak openly about both the trials and joys of her life.

“If sharing my stories makes others feel less alone in their life circumstances, then maybe that’s the most important thing I do," she says. "My work has always been driven by my life and all the crazy, wonderful, painful experiences.

"As one who lives my days with a busy mind, there are few things that create pause and reflection. I think when we tap into our vulnerability and channel it in our art, we are being authentic. That helps us to better understand ourselves, and to find balance and beauty in life.” ■ 

An earlier version of this story was published in the spring/summer "Photography + Mental Health" edition of PhotoED magazine (@photoedmagazine), a niche publication that shares Canadian photography in a new light.  

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