Jo Spence

Joe Spence’s photographs are about the idea of using photography as therapy. Whether this is for an illness, like it is in Joe Spence’s book ‘Putting myself in the picture’ where she goes through MRI scans and appointments for her breast cancer, most of the images are very explicit photos of her breasts while she is getting scans done, but also images to document the changed that are happening to her body, to make her come to terms with the fact that she has cancer. An idea which Joe Spence writes about in the book is using family photos as therapy. For this therapy to happen it is not about just talking to family and friends about the images or the past, it is about looking at the image with a Councillor. In this section of the book Joe Spence has included a few photographs from her childhood and also dialogue from the conversations. I think this idea of placing dialogue into documentary work is really interesting as it gives the viewer an insight into the conversations and the lifestyle that someone leads, which sometimes helps to understand what is happening in the images. Jo Spence plays with the idea of a photographer/therapist while she assists people in helping them get better with their mental or physical illness. In most of these images Jo Spence is in them herself, where she is the main ‘character’ in the images.

“We are not trying to show familiar objects in unfamiliar ways, but rather to denaturalize the genres of photography which already consist of fully coded visual signs” – JO SPENCE

This image is of Jo Spence when she found out that she had breast cancer and she went to go for scans, she photographed this moment to document this part of her life and what was happening at this point in time. This image is a very explicit images and it brings up questions about ethical reasons for posting an image like this, however because it is an image of Jo Spence herself the image is not as shocking.

I think that this image is very alarming as Jo Spence has taken this image as a type of therapy for herself, and it shows the deformity in her breast because of what the cancer has done to it. I think that the idea behind Spence wearing the helmet is that she wants to protect herself, and this implies that she is scared, maybe scared of the cancer. As this image is in black and white it makes this image more plain and documentary like in my eyes. 

This image is of the perspective that Jo Spence has while she was having some treatment, i think that this is interesting as it shows what she can see from her perspective and you can see how frightening that it must be.