“Untitled”: Photography as Collaborative Practice in the Creation of a Visual Memory of a Psychotherapeutic Facility

In early 2019 Andrea Eichenberger was asked to lead a workshop with a group of patients in a psychotherapy facility close to Valenciennes, France, using photography to develop artistic awareness and expression. The aim was to construct, via a corpus of photographic work, a collective memory of this facility which had received patients and had been the workplace of staff since 1976 and was to be transferred to a new location. The workshop was to allow the point of view and sensitivity of each participant to emerge, and to reveal a multiplicity of visions, stories and feelings about this place. In the course of this project conducted with a group of patients and therapeutic staff members from May 2019 to January 2020, collaborations developed nourished by dialogue, exchange of views and coordination. This chapter describes this experience and raises questions about this form of collaboration, its ambiguities, paradoxes and limitations, particularly in this context where the participants often feel they are subject to constraints and control.