Photo psychology

Photo psychology or photopsychology is a specialty within psychology dedicated to identifying and analyzing relationships between psychology and photography. Photopsychology traces several points of contact between photography and psychology both through history and in the present. As a result, a fresh understanding of the origins of several current therapeutic and psychological testing practices based on the use of photography emerges. Photopsychology also provides a framework and appreciation for future developments, such as the full articulation of Reading Pictures—a profound new way of looking and thinking about photographs.

The three principal goals of photopsychology:
1. Tracing the historical interactions between psychology and photography;
2. Identifying past and present psychological uses of photography in research, assessment and therapy;
3. Proposing new applications for psychological uses of photography, principally "reading pictures". Photopsychology is being developed by Professor Joel Morgovsky, senior member of the Psychology Department at Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, New Jersey. There he specializes in Social Psychology and Positive Psychology. This Positive Psychology course he developed and teaches is the only one offered in higher education in New Jersey. He has been a fine art photographer in black and white, color and now digital photography since 1977 and serves on the Portfolio Review
Committee of the Soho Photo Gallery in New York City. Professor Morgovsky is a frequent lecturer and judge at photographic societies across New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania and is a speaker with the New Jersey Federation of Camera Clubs.

Currently he chairs the Committee on Psychology and Photography for Division 1 of the American Psychological Association. He has delivered four presentations to the American Psychological Association at its Annual Conventions on the subject of the psychological dimensions of photography. Included was a symposium at the 2007 APA Annual Convention titled Psychology on the Couch: Psychologists Analyze Photography; and a presentation at the 2008 APA Convention called Photopsychology co-sponsored by Division 1 (General) and Division 10 (Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts). An active and ongoing component of Photopsychology is a traveling exhibition of photographs by psychologists, Psychologists in Focus, which Professor Morgovsky created and presented three times, in three cities, most recently at Northwest University in Kirkland, Washington. The exhibition is scheduled next for exhibition as part of the 2010 Eastern Psychological Association Annual Meeting in Brooklyn, New York.

Source: Wikipedia.com