How Photography Can Heal

Focus Group Description

Photography can become something far deeper than documentation when it enters spaces of grief, loss, and transformation. This focus group opens an intimate and thoughtful discussion on how personal documentary work can help process difficult experiences while preserving meaning and connection. Using lived experience as a starting point, the conversation centres on the emotional and ethical questions that arise when photographing those closest to us.

The discussion will explore moments of choice and vulnerability: when to photograph and when to put the camera down, how to include yourself within the story, and how metaphor and visual language can carry emotions that words cannot. Participants are invited to reflect on their own hesitations, boundaries, and motivations, and to share how they navigate personal moments with honesty and care. The session is framed as a safe and respectful space for open dialogue around work that carries emotional weight.

About the Mentor

Ana Backhaus is a documentary photographer based in Dubai, specialising in intimate family storytelling grounded in unposed, real life moments. Her long term work explores connection, memory, and transformation, shaped by her experience of documenting her mother’s cancer journey during the pandemic. Through this process, photography became a tool for processing grief, preserving family legacy, and finding meaning in moments of profound vulnerability, culminating in her project Legacy: The Circle of Love and Life.

Format
This is a 40 minute interactive roundtable discussion. The mentor will introduce the topic with selected examples from his own work, then guide a participant led conversation focused on shared learning, practical insight, and open discussion rather than formal instruction.