IAS Sense & Sensation Series: Why Photography and Pain are Natural Partners

Deborah Padfield (UCL Slade) will explore the limitations of available tools to assess and communicate pain, suggesting that a visual language, in particular that of photography could help navigate the chasm between those living with and those witnessing chronic pain. She will share some of the results of the recent Face2face and Pain: Speaking the Threshold projects at UCL/UCLH discussing the process of co-creating photographs with people with pain which represent their unique experience. A selection of the resulting images will be shown. Deborah will touch on ways in which she believes the arts, and in particular photography, are capable of dissolving traditional hierarchies in a clinical setting so benefitting interaction and communication. She will screen an earlier short film duet for pain (2012) exploring the intersects and disconnects between patient and clinician narratives as a stimulus to discussion.

Image credit: Deborah Padfield from the series perceptions of pain. 2001 -2006, Silver Gelatin Print. © Deborah Padfield