There was a time I couldn’t decide between psychology and photography—I chose photography. It was my first attempt at making sense of the world through a lens. A short stint, but the love never left. I was drawn especially to black and white film—the starkness, the shadow, the space between things. The work of Diane Arbus haunted and held me. She had a way of seeing people that felt unflinching, but never cold. Her portraits—often of those living on the edges—were intimate without being sentimental, revealing something raw and deeply human.
One image in particular stayed with me: Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967. Two girls, mirror-like in dress and posture, yet undeniably distinct. Their sameness is disrupted by subtle differences: one smiles faintly, the other frowns. It’s unsettling, and that’s the point. Arbus once said, “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.” That paradox speaks to something at the heart of therapy too. In Gestalt, we’re curious about what’s on the surface and what’s just beneath. We attend to both the visible and the hidden—what’s trying to come into contact, even in silence or stillness.
Years later, when I trained as a therapist, I realised how deeply that lens had shaped me. Gestalt therapy shares something with photography at its best: a way of meeting the world without trying to neaten or fix it. A way of holding complexity with clarity, of seeing someone fully and letting that seeing be enough.
