Crafting Stories of the Soul: The Healing Power of Photo Therapy

Natalia Salama’s photography exhibitions once created a sensation in Grodno. At one exhibition, all the viewers were under hypnosis. At another, artists, actors, and modern ballet dancers participated. Today, Natalia organizes psychological photo sessions, using metaphorical photography as a way to break free from conventions. She has even taken on the challenge of becoming the heroine of a candid photo story herself.

Exploring the World of Natalia Salama

We continue our series of articles about the women of Belarus. Today, in collaboration with mamgrodno.com, we share the story of Natalia Salama, a photographer from Grodno. Natalia is a photographer, performer, and the creator of Grodno’s first photo marathons and photo therapy projects. During her photo sessions, Natalia employs meditation practices, nail-standing, aromatherapy, and partners with a psychologist for photo therapy. Participants first need to understand why they want to learn and then reveal themselves. The results are often openly displayed on social media.

Creative Photo Sessions: A Journey of Self-Expression

Natalia’s creative photo sessions are a means of self-expression and experiencing inner emotions. Essentially, her interaction with the subject during the process is an exploration of life through a personal photo project, an opportunity to immerse oneself in the present. Such a photo shoot does not require preparation or a stylist. Natalia does not aim to correct or idealize; instead, she creates a story about the person.

Capturing Life in Motion

It all began with children’s and family photography. Thousands of kind, lively snapshots sparked a desire to strengthen and explore connections. Photo sessions evolved into thematic series, and genre stories transformed into Grodno’s first photo marathons. Women often become the main heroines, agreeing to both artistic transformations and candid nude photography.

Natalia shares, “All spots are taken within a couple of hours, and I rejoice like a child, amazed at how a marathon, just an idea, can change the course of events not only in my life but also in the lives of others. People come without stylists, sometimes even on the advice of a psychotherapist.”

Themes for the marathons arise spontaneously: capturing the last two weeks of August, understanding the “crisis” of a woman’s age, exploring the concept of “Home.” Each day features a new heroine and a new story. Locations include studios, the old town, parks, attics, and cemeteries. In the series, it is impossible to separate one photo from another, and the main focus can be a cat or a scar from an appendectomy. The visual ultimately conveys the intangible: an emotion, an impression of a person, how they perceive themselves.

“I saw that everyone was tired of retouching. People want to remember simple life. We walk, talk, laugh, tell stories, sometimes serious ones. A woman feels alive, and I love to shoot in motion.”

Discovering What’s Necessary

Natalia previously realized her creative ideas through personal exhibitions. For example, the vernissage-performance “Under Hypnosis,” where a hypnotist first plunged the audience into a trance for 15 minutes, after which people entered the hall and viewed works in the technique of multiple exposures. It was an eco-theme, a forest, and everyone saw something of their own: “Hypnosis was supposed to relieve the tension of the day, and the exhibition should be entered with a clean state, and already from it to look.”

Or Natalia’s performance-exhibition “Contact,” which united a photographer, artists, an actor, and modern ballet dancers for one evening. “It was a magical immersion in the world of water, volumes, movement, wind mixed with the activities of the audience, the world, and the universe.” Then the exhibition halls where these exhibitions took place closed, and it is simply impossible to repeat something similar.

The Birth of Photo Marathons

Natalia found an outlet for her creative ideas in photo marathons. The first marathon was an art experiment. Each day featured a new shoot in the studio.

“I chose typical dancers, actors, invited models—they work well with the body—so as not to be distracted by an ordinary person who is constrained. I just wrote to them. I invited Tonya Kologriva to assist. I used and learned to use non-standard lighting schemes, props, body art. I realized that such a base cannot be obtained anywhere without experience, no matter how much you study. When you do a lot and different things, you find what you need.”

“After the marathons, something cool always comes out. They launch something in you, some incredible possibilities, and as it turned out, not only in you.”

The Therapeutic Power of Photography

A year ago, Natalia Salama decided to explore the therapeutic aspects of photography. She discovered that photography could be very therapeutic, offering a unique way to heal the soul and express oneself.