This week we have a guest blog by Christina Curran, sharing her journey with photography and, specifically, therapeutic photography.

I have come to photography late in life – well, yes and no. When I was younger I took photographs of everything ; every gig I went to, the Halina 110 Flashmatic was tucked into a pocket and pulled out for drunken, lopsided shots. Unfortunately, the majority of those images were too blurry to be salvaged by the developers at Boots. I now look back on the missed opportunities I had to photograph 1980s youth culture from the inside, the female Gavin Watson wasn’t meant to be. 

Image @Christina Curran

Image @Christina Curran

Unfortunately, the Halina didn’t survive the mosh pit and when I went travelling in the early 1990s, I took another cheap and cheerful camera with me, Looking at these images now I can see I had an eye for candid moments. But I didn’t think photography was a ‘thing’ that was done by everyday people, and certainly not everyday people with a shitty little camera. Photography was for famous and glamorous arty people with intimidating and expensive cameras. So I thought. I believe this is still a barrier to photography for many women – it involves ‘tech’ and that is often seen as a male domain. And so the camera was abandoned.

Himachal Pradesh @Christina Curran

Coming back to photography now, I do so from a social work background and this led me to discovering therapeutic photography. I feel it allows for the perfect blend of my professional experience and long neglected creativity.

Therapeutic photography is an approach to photography that integrates self-inquiry, emotional exploration, and psychological well-being. Unlike traditional photography, where technical ability and artistic vision are highly valued, the main aim of therapeutic photography is positive change. This form of photography encourages participants to explore their thoughts and feelings while creating visual narratives that reflect their inner world. It is about the process rather than the end result.

Tibetan Prayer Flag @Christina Curran

A practice that works well with therapeutic photography is mindfulness. Mindfulness encourages individuals to be present in the moment, allowing them to engage fully in the creative process and develop a deeper understanding of their emotions. The very practice of taking a photograph can be a mindful exercise – we need to be alert to our environment and see what the moment presents us. We then need to consciously decide how and when to take the picture.

For me therapeutic photography literally invites us to view things from a different perspective. By pointing the camera in a slightly different way, the whole frame is changed. That is the power of photography. We can use it in our everyday lives as a tool to change perspective, by externalising the issue the photograph becomes the focus rather than the internal feeling. An abstract photograph can be taken as a metaphor for something big in our lives. Rather than having to describe and explain a deeply internal experience, we can shift the focus to the external photograph. Therapeutic photography is often facilitated in groups, and the peer validation one can experience through discussion is, itself, a powerful healing tool. [It is important to note that therapeutic photography must be differentiated from PhotoTherapy, which should only be carried out by a trained counsellor or psychotherapist.]

The image that I have in Issue 2 of Power Cut magazine is of an Eldorado wine bottle, but so distorted as to create an almost psychedelic image. I am attracted to the surreal, but also the mundane and how perspective can make the most mundane scene or object fascinating.

Local Haunt series by Sharon Harris

It is thought that 4.7 billion photographs are taken in the world every day – since the inception of the smartphone photography has become democratised – it is no longer the realm of arty-type men with expensive kit! However, much of this is part of current throwaway culture, photographs of the sandwich you had for lunch, a bag on sale in Primark, videos of gigs that will never be viewed again. Rather than living in the moment, many of us are relying on the smartphone camera for our memories. That is why I am drawn to analogue photography, the use of film means there has to be a more considered approach. Given that there is only a certain number of exposures in a roll of film, every shot matters! I am especially drawn to pinhole photography for the very reason that it is in so many ways antithetical to throwaway filter-laden images. Pinhole photography is the most basic form of photography and does not require a lens. A pinhole camera can be made from any lightproof box or tin such as cereal boxes and beer cans! Given that pinhole photography is fundamentally low-tech, it has a very unique aesthetic – often ethereal and dream-like as seen in Sharon Harris’s work.

I also love the work of mid-20^th century female photographers, Vivien Maier in particular.

Image @Vivien Maier

Vivien Maier, an enigmatic figure in the realm of street photography, was born in New York City in 1926. Maier worked as a nanny, but developed a passion for capturing the candid moments of urban life around her. Maier’s photographs reveal a keen sense of observation and an ability to tell a story through the photograph. Despite her talent, Maier’s work remained largely undiscovered during her lifetime, illustrating the barriers encountered by women in professional photography. However, posthumously, her extensive body of work has garnered recognition, emphasizing the importance of her perspective in documenting daily life in the mid-20th century. Maier left behind over 100,000 negatives, and was only re-discovered in 2007 at a Chicago auction house. Filmmaker, John Maloof, has led the charge in preserving her work, and in 2013 made the documentary Finding Vivien Maier.

I am very much at the beginning of my photography journey, but I hope the knowledge and insight I have (hopefully garnered) will allow me to take considered and thoughtful pictures, pictures with a story and something to say.

You can find Christina’s work on Instagram:

@pinholecurran

Issue 2 of Power Cut literary magazine is here!

Featuring; Ricky Monahan Brown, David Partington, James Bone, Irene Cunningham, Marka Rifat, Iain Bain, Kris Haddow, Laurie Donaldson, Jesse Hilson, Ike Attah, Kristina Stevens, Esther Arthurson, Alexis Somerville, Liz Kendall, Peter Newall, Stephen McQuiggan, Cormac Culkeen, Christina Curran, Jason Jawando & LG Thomson.

For the uninitiated amongst you, Power Cut is a literary and arts magazine, based in Scotland, UK, with a love for 20^th century culture. Issue 2 follows the same winning format as Issue 1 with short stories, poetry, memoir, art, retro recipes and a column from our resident bibliotherapist and foot dominatrix – Madame Bruttipedi.

Provocateurs Are Provoking!

Issue 2 kicks off with the superbly creepy ‘Artiste’ by Esther Arthurson. Set in a psychiatric/forensic unit it explores the boundaries of sanity and madness – while giving off serious Silence  of the Lambs vibes!

The theme of Issue 2 is ‘provocateur’ and Jesse Hilson’s drawings/artwork and both provocative and subversive. ‘Miss Scarlet’ flow nicely on from ‘Artiste’ and before we can take a breath we are into the work of Cormac Culkeen. Cormac has contributed two poems that don’t take any prisoners in their intensity,

                   where our mind was a consumptive’s and we were motes dancing over an open grave’s howling

                       maw, our gazes and hearts narrowed to blurred horizons.

                                                                                  (Recollections by Cormac Culkeen)

His second poem ‘Detail of an Uninvited Guest, 2003’ is written in prose style and charts the desperation of someone searching for escape and release.

Vintage Style

Our vintage ads provide some light-hearted relief from all the intensity and the first one taken from ‘Practical Householders’ demonstrates how to build your own fridge.

Marka Rifat features some beautiful poetry that evokes childhood memories, nature and electronic music pioneers Daphne & Delia.

‘Rochester Vibes’ by Liz Kendall has us consider the similarities between Axl Rose and Mr Rochester. Never again will you think of one without the other creeping in next to him.

‘Spirit’ by Kris Haddow opens up a moment in time in an unnamed Scottish city and reflects on the fragility and interconnection of life that often goes by unnoticed.

Laurie Donaldson’s poetry has a cultural edge and opens up brutalism, the work of Nam June Paik and the bursting of the Dom Aquarée in Berlin,

bunched shoals slowly rotating

  to freefall, clownfish, batfish,

surgeonfish tumbling in gravity’s

         sudden embrace.

‘The day the fish were free’ is curated with ‘Drift’ by Ike Attah, a painting in acrylic of the shoreline at Redcar beach, in the northeast of England.

The next story is a tongue-in-cheek re-imagining of a Famous Five story with a modern-day twist by David Partington. See what happening when the gang investigate the local milkman!

Gen-X, Nudity and Horses

Kristina Stevens’ prose poetry explores protest and anti-establishment lifestyles and leads us into Ricky Monahan Brown’s blistering take-down of (or tribute to?) Gen-X in ‘Phantom Limbs’. Things get intense and raw again in ‘The Father, The Scum and The Holy Spirits’ by John Tinney which describes a man torn between his role as a father and his corporeal desires. Warning: it contains nudity. James Bone and Irene Cunningham serve up some much needed poetry before Peter Newall takes us back to post-war Germany and the cost of our innate need for freedom, in ‘All the King’s Horses’. Madame Bruttipedi provides the comic relief this time as she takes a trip to Comoros to open a library and train a burlesque troupe in Hahaia (yes, it’s a real place).

LG Thomson has written a beautifully honest and touching essay/memoir about growing up and her affinity with and love for the American new wave band, DEVO. The photograph of the author in her yellow plastic DEVO suit alone is worth the price of the magazine!

We move on to odd behaviour next with Iain Bain’s ‘Horses Mostly’, a story about the ultimate grifter, anxiety and hating Marcel Duchamp.

Surrealism and Recipes

Finally – we get to what everyone has been waiting for, the retro recipe. I’m not going to give any spoilers, but it involves bananas, boiled ham, mustard and cream.

Jason Jawando’s story ‘Tupac is Dead’, is a farcical encounter involving a bicycle and a Chinese  takeaway. And then things get really surreal in ‘Lobsters’ by Alexis Somerville which continues the burlesque vibe in a rundown seaside town.

‘Eldorado Nights’ by Christina Curran is a surreal photograph which highlights how everyday objects can create beauty if we are prepared to change our perception. The odd and surreal continues in our last story, ‘Win the Headlines’ by Stephen McQuiggan. After reading this you will always be wary of free newspapers. Issue 2 ends with the poem ‘Boat the the May’ by Marka Rifat,

Sand eels, the only glint of light, held in serrations.

Sandwiches, held in gloved hands, forgotten in the whirr.

You can purchase Power Cut here

You can also give yourself the gift of an A3 print of the inimitable Madame Bruttipedi or – if you are feeling brave – a personal bibliotherapy prescription from her! 

Let’s Start With Your Stripper Name

The first thing we need to know about burlesque dancers is that they all have exotic names – Gypsy Rose Lee, Tempest Blaze, Blaze Starr, Immodesty Blaize (I’m detecting a pattern here), Lili St Cyr, Dita Von Teese etc. No one, except Bettie Page, seems to have hit the big time in adult entertainment with a pedestrian name (ok, I’ll concede Josephine Baker also). Every so often a meme will come round on social media to generate your stripper/burlesque name. A common ‘formula’ is your first pet’s name plus your childhood street name; however, this gives me the stripper name Buster Riddell. Buster Riddell is more likely to be a burly inmate of HMP Belmarsh than an alluring femme fatale selling out The Crazy Horse in Paris.  Another formula is to pair the colour of your underwear with the last thing you ate: this time I would be Grey Cheese, again, not sexy.

It is said that striptease and burlesque are sisters not twins. With the former the focus is all on the nakedness, burlesque however focuses on the story, the tease, the imagination, the art.

History of Burlesque

Historically there are two well known forms of burlesque – Victorian Burlesque and American Burlesque. The word itself derives from the Italian burlesco, which in turn derives from burla meaning ridicule or mockery. A burlesque show has its roots in vaudeville and variety performance, popular with the lower and middle classes as a way of lampooning the culture of the upper classes. It could be argued that there was a political element to burlesque in the form of social commentary, unlike stripping which was purely for male sexual gratification. Burlesque arrived in America in the 1840s and developed from ‘hoochie-coochie’ dancing, a form of provocative belly dancing. Millie DeLeon id said to be the first American Queen of Burlesque and created her act when she ‘forgot’ to wear her tights on stage.

The golden age of burlesque was 1900-1930, the time when Josephine Baker was performing at the Folies Bergère in Paris. It was here that she wore her (in)famous banana skirt. In addition to being an exotic dancer, she also worked for the French resistance and adopted 12 children from around the world. Baker was the trailblazer of the ‘rainbow family’, long before Madonna and Angelina Jolie.

Burlesquing the Burlesque

In Issue 2 of Power Cut, ‘Lobsters’ by Alexis Somerville is a story set in a rundown British sea-side town where dancing and glamour have long parted company,

“…I performed in second-rate shows at the end of the pier, dancing into the stark cool nights in a place run by an old bloke who fancied himself the Hugh Hefner of breadline Britain, decades after the golden age of striptease when Gareth’s dad had opened the club, with those stunning burlesque stars whose photos now lined the walls, and the son wouldn’t shut up about those halcyon days as he slapped us on the arse…”

 

The Lobster Girls of Langton’s satirize the era of all female dance troupes and the objectification of female performers. All burlesque dancers have a prop or gimmick – Dita Von Teese performed in a large martini glass, Lili St Cyr her transparent bubble bath, and Blaze Starr often had a black panther on stage with her. In ‘Lobsters’ the twist at the end makes all these props pale in comparison.

Power Cut has another link to the burlesque world in the form of Madame Bruttipedi, our resident bibliotherapist and foot dominatrix. In Issue 1 of Power Cut we learn that Madame used to work as a burlesque dancer until her feet got too sore and she retrained as a bibliotherapist. Madame Bruttipedi is, of course, a parody or burlesque of the burlesque conventions of beauty. She looks like a stereotypical 1950s pinup girl apart from her hideous feet, challenging beauty norms and expectations. In Issue 2 we see her jetting to Comoros to train burlesque dancers in Hahaia, and she also offers us another highly entertaining bibliotherapy prescription.

Vintage Vibe or Stereotype?

The neo-burlesque of the 1990s kick-started the burlesque revival with stars such as Dita Von Teese and Immodesty Blaize. Driving this resurgence was a nostalgia for the glamour and spectacle of days a different era, and burlesque continue to have a vintage aesthetic and association. But is there still a place for burlesque dancing in today’s world? Like everything burlesque has evolved – there is now boylesque (male-fronted performance) and, of course, drag shows. Do these 21^st century interpretations offer us anything new or simply serve up stereotypes in contemporary costumes?

Madame Bruttipedi appears in Issue 1 & 2 of Power Cut magazine. If you are new to Power Cut and want to get up to speed on her exploits, both issues can be purchased here.