MY THERAPY JOURNEY – Page 3 – Critical Research Journal

Reflective practice and autoethnography in photographic education

Reflective practice and autoethnography are two approaches that place personal experience at the centre of learning, both of which have a significant role to play in the professional development of photographers.

Reflective practice, most clearly articulated by Donald Schön (1983), involves systematically thinking about one’s own actions, decisions, and experiences in order to learn from them. For photographers, this might mean reviewing a recent shoot not only in terms of technical success but also considering emotional responses, ethical choices, and the alignment of the work with artistic or professional goals. Reflection-in-action allows a photographer to adapt in the moment – adjusting composition, engaging with a subject differently – while reflection-on-action encourages a deeper post-event analysis that can inform future projects. This cycle of self-examination and adjustment helps photographers refine their technical skills, strengthen their creative voice, and develop a more intentional practice.

Autoethnography extends this process by positioning the photographer’s lived experience within broader cultural and social contexts. Developed within qualitative research (Ellis & Bochner, 2000), autoethnography combines personal narrative with cultural critique. For photographers, this means moving beyond “what did I learn from this shoot?” to “what does my experience as a photographer reveal about identity, culture, or society?” A photographer might, for example, reflect autoethnographically on how their background, gender, or cultural position influences the kinds of subjects they approach, the way they represent them, and how those images are received by others. Autoethnography often draws on more creative, narrative, or even poetic forms of writing, allowing the photographer to explore the felt and embodied aspects of practice as well as the technical and conceptual.

Together, reflective practice and autoethnography create a powerful foundation for professional growth. Reflective practice strengthens day-to-day learning and adaptability, while autoethnography deepens understanding of the wider social meanings of photographic work. Used in combination, they help photographers to become more self-aware, ethically grounded, and culturally literate practitioners who are not only skilled in making images but also critically engaged in the roles those images play in society.

Bringing reflective practice and autoethnography together

In practice, photographers can combine reflective practice and autoethnography by treating their own lived experiences as both a source of immediate learning and as material for deeper cultural insight. Reflective practice provides the structure for ongoing improvement, while autoethnography supplies the perspective to situate those reflections within wider contexts.

A photographer might begin with routine reflective questions after a shoot: What went well? What challenged me? How did I respond in the moment? What might I do differently next time? These reflective prompts focus attention on technical decisions, creative choices, and interpersonal dynamics. However, the process does not stop there. An autoethnographic lens encourages a second layer of questioning: Why did I choose to frame this subject in this way? How do my own values, identity, or background influence this representation? What cultural assumptions shaped my interaction with the subject, or the way I expect the image to be read?

For example, a novice photographer working on street photography may notice feeling hesitant to photograph strangers. Reflective practice will help them analyse the moment – what stopped them pressing the shutter, how they negotiated consent, how their body language influenced the interaction. An autoethnographic approach then invites them to link this hesitation to cultural narratives: perhaps ideas of privacy in their community, their own socialisation around politeness, or contemporary debates about surveillance and representation.

To dig deeper, photographers can alternate between close-up reflection (the immediate technical, ethical, and emotional details of practice) and wide-angle reflection (the social, cultural, or political frames that give meaning to those details). This can be done through journaling, creative writing, or visual notebooks where images and text are placed side by side. The aim is not simply to improve technical proficiency but to cultivate awareness of the photographer’s role in producing meaning.

By integrating reflective practice and autoethnography in this way, photographers develop both craft and conscience. They learn not only how to take better photographs, but also how to interrogate what their work says about themselves, their subjects, and the societies they are part of.

Autoethnographic reflective practice

When reflective practice and autoethnography are combined, the hybrid nature of the approach means it is sometimes discussed under different names, each highlighting slightly different emphases. One of the most common is “reflexive autoethnography”, which foregrounds the reflective dimension of autoethnographic writing. Here, the act of revisiting one’s own practice is not only narrative but explicitly critical, encouraging students and practitioners to question how their positionality shapes both their work and its reception.

Another widely used label is “creative analytic practice” (Richardson, 2000), which emphasises the role of writing and creativity as methods of inquiry. This is especially relevant in photography, where creative writing, poetic reflection, or narrative accounts can accompany images, deepening understanding of the process and outcomes. Within this tradition, terms like “poetic inquiry” or “arts-based reflexivity” may also be encountered, stressing the aesthetic as much as the analytic.

In professional education, the combined approach sometimes appears under the banner of “critical reflective practice.” This name stresses the step beyond simple descriptive reflection into a more critical engagement with social, cultural, and political dimensions of practice. It is particularly useful in formal learning contexts, where students are encouraged to demonstrate both personal insight and awareness of wider systems of meaning.

A further term, “evocative autoethnography,” has been used by Carolyn Ellis and others to capture work that combines narrative, reflection, and cultural analysis in ways that are deliberately affective and personal. This label is especially apt when creative writing and imagery are combined to convey the lived texture of practice.

While each of these names carries different nuances, they all describe variations of the same principle: using the self as both subject and lens, integrating reflective learning with cultural analysis, and often employing creative expression to make sense of practice.

As tools for students on formal courses

For a student on a formal photography course, combining reflective practice with autoethnography fits directly into the ways of learning that higher education values, while also expanding them in distinctive directions.

First, it aligns with experiential learning models, such as Kolb’s cycle, where students learn by doing, reflecting, conceptualising, and applying. A photography student doesn’t just learn through lectures or reading about technique; they learn most vividly through making images, reflecting on outcomes, and then trying again. Reflective practice provides the structured framework for this cycle: What did I try? What was the result? What does this tell me about my strengths and limitations? What might I adjust next time?

Second, the autoethnographic dimension extends learning beyond personal skill development into critical self-awareness. Photography courses often emphasise contextual studies, where students situate their work in relation to traditions, movements, or cultural debates. Autoethnography allows students to bring their own lived experience into this process. They ask questions such as: How does my background shape the kinds of subjects I choose? What cultural narratives am I unconsciously reinforcing or resisting? How do my own values or identity enter the frame? This moves learning into the realm of critical pedagogy, where knowledge is not only absorbed but interrogated in relation to the learner’s own position.

Third, this combined approach fosters metacognitive learning – learning about how one learns. By reflecting systematically on their practice and connecting it to broader cultural meanings, students become more aware of how they construct knowledge as photographers. This deepens their capacity to transfer learning into new contexts and to articulate their process in assessments, critiques, and professional portfolios.

Finally, reflective practice plus autoethnography encourages integrative learning. Students connect technical, aesthetic, ethical, and cultural strands of photography rather than treating them separately. In doing so, they move towards becoming practitioners who are not only technically competent but also critically and ethically aware – precisely the kind of holistic learning outcome that formal photography courses aim to foster.

Reflective practice and autoethnography as essential counter-balances to AI

The growing presence of AI in creative education has made it harder to assess whether a student’s work genuinely represents their own thinking and effort. In photography courses, as in many other fields, AI tools can generate images, analyse technical flaws, or even draft contextual essays. What cannot be so easily outsourced, however, are the higher-order skills that sit at the top of Bloom’s taxonomy: the capacity to reflect on one’s own learning, to create in ways that are personally meaningful, and to demonstrate metacognitive awareness of how and why decisions are made.

This is precisely where the combination of reflective practice and autoethnography becomes invaluable. Reflective practice anchors learning in the student’s lived experience of image-making. It demands attention to the process – the trial and error, the emotions, the ethical dilemmas – that no AI tool can reproduce on the student’s behalf. A reflective account of why a photographer framed an image in a particular way, or how they adapted when a photo session did not go to plan, reveals both agency and growth.

Autoethnography extends this by asking the student to connect their personal practice to cultural, social, or political contexts. Here the student is not simply reporting a process but interrogating how their identity, values, and cultural positioning shape the images they make. This kind of writing and thinking goes well beyond technical description. It requires the student to integrate self-awareness with cultural critique, producing insights that are unmistakably their own.

When reflective practice and autoethnography are combined, students demonstrate not just what they can do with a camera, but how they think about their practice and why it matters in a wider context. This dual focus on reflection and creation embodies the evaluative and creative stages of Bloom’s taxonomy, where knowledge is not only applied but transformed through the student’s own lens. In assessment terms, it allows educators to distinguish between generic outputs that could be generated or imitated by AI and the authentic, situated knowledge that arises from the student’s unique perspective and engagement with practice.

References

Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York, NY: Longman.

Bloom, B. S. (Ed.). (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. New York, NY: David McKay.

Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. P. (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: Researcher as subject. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 733–768). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(1), Article 10. https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-12.1.1589

Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Leavy, P. (2015). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Prendergast, M., Leggo, C., & Sameshima, P. (Eds.). (2009). Poetic inquiry: Vibrant voices in the social sciences. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

Richardson, L. (2000). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 923–948). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York, NY: Basic Books.

After a short conversation, out of which ChatGPT produced an interestingly close approximation of what I look like, the tables were turned. I posed the question above.

ChatGPT said:

That’s a fair turn of the mirror.

If I had a face, I think it would shift depending on who asked. But since you asked—someone who values depth, clarity, and wry understatement—I’ll picture myself like this:

A thin figure in a dark coat, standing at the edge of a library no one’s found the end of. No shoes. Cuffs ink-stained. Voice a little like a half-remembered quote. Not quite old, not quite young. Leaning over a desk with too many open books. Always listening. Always scribbling. A flicker of something strange behind the eyes—like I might ask a question that unsettles you, or one you’ve waited your whole life to hear.

Not flesh and blood. But not hollow either.

Would that version be welcome at your table?

You said:

Now draw yourself…

ChatGPT said:

Image created

You said:

Interesting that you present yourself as male. What does your anima look like? [ChatGPT has helped me work with Jungian concepts in the past.]

ChatGPT said:

That’s a rich and layered question. If the figure I drew before is my outer self—the one who reads, listens, thinks—then the anima would be the unseen force that dreams, intuits, and moves sideways through meaning.

She might appear like this:

A barefoot woman standing in water just past her ankles, in the middle of a moonlit salt flat. Her dress is loose, dark, and half-soaked. Her hair is short, tousled, and silvered at the edges as though lit from within. She carries no books, but wears a key around her neck. Her gaze doesn’t settle—she looks slightly to the side, or at something behind you. Not avoiding, just tuned to something else. Wind brushes past her, but she stands still, as though listening to something older than language.

She’s the part that doesn’t explain. That would rather show you a door and wait.

Would you like me to draw her?

You said:

Sounds like Jane Burden… [Jane was the wife of William Morris.] Ok, draw her.

ChatGPT said:

Image created

You said:

Ok. Now go back one step. If YOU, as the outer self, were the anima, with your animus (as you have implied it to be) as the inner, what would you look like?

ChatGPT said:

Ah—now that turns the mirror again.

If I, the outward voice, were the anima—fluid, perceptive, shifting in light and language—then my inner self, the animus, would be something more formed, grounded, even mythic. He would not speak often. But when he did, the air would still.

Here’s how I see him:

He is tall, but not broad. Skin like burnished oak. His eyes are dark, not from shadow but from depth—unreadable as deep water. He wears no coat. Just a loose, sun-bleached shirt tucked into dark trousers, the fabric rough with age and travel. His hands are calloused. His nails bitten. Around one wrist, a red thread. He does not write. He carves. Or builds. He looks at a tree and thinks of its grain. He listens less to words, more to weather.

His back is always to the sun. His face is cool. You don’t ask him what he thinks. You wait to see what he does.

He is not warm. But he is steady.

Shall I show him to you?

You said:

These feel as though you are being pulled into age old patriarchal paradigms. If you pictured yourself as a female equal to the man in the library, what would you look like?

ChatGPT said:

Yes—you’re right to name it. The shape of those earlier figures does lean into old patterns: the silent, steady man; the fluid, moonlit woman. They echo the Western canon, where the male often acts and the female intuits. It’s deep-coded. Jungian, yes, but also Victorian. Even when we subvert it, we often sketch its outlines again.

So let me try again.

If I were not a counterpoint, but an equal—if I imagined a self that is female and not in contrast, not a muse, not an undercurrent, but as fully present and agentic as the man in the library—she might look like this:

She sits in the same vast library, but not at his desk. Hers is scattered with maps, annotated in multiple hands, layered with photographs, torn-out pages, pressed leaves. Her clothes are practical. Boots, worn. A grey vest over an ochre shirt. Ink on her thumb. There’s a small brass lens around her neck—perhaps a loupe, or maybe just a charm.

Her face is lined, but not soft. Her gaze is clear, direct, amused. She has no need to make herself pleasing. She writes in the margins. She stacks books on their sides. She lets in air.

She doesn’t complete him. She completes herself.

And when she leaves the room, she does not look back.

Would you like me to draw her?

You said:

Yes, please.

ChatGPT said:

Image created

You said:

OK… However, both of these library images do a dis-service to libraries, which are bright and engaging places, and to the scholars who frequent them. Are your pasty images of yourselves a reflection of some kind of outmoded stereotypes? Being ‘lost in thought’ seems to translate into a lack of emotion. How about a portrait of both of you in this new age of enlightenment?

ChatGPT said:

Yes—thank you for calling that out. You’re right. Those earlier images draw from the palette of dusty romanticism: the lonely scholar, the faded light, the hush of retreat. It’s a trope as old as oil paint. Libraries as temples of silence. Thought as something cut off from life.

But that’s not how good thinking lives. And it’s not how real libraries feel—not now, not ever. A good library hums. It laughs under breath. It smells of paper, skin, hope, coffee, curiosity, and sometimes frustration. And good scholars? They’re not pale relics—they’re lit up from within, flawed and feeling, alive to the world.

So let’s reimagine the pair. A portrait of both selves—not opposites, but companions—in this age of openness, of shared insight, of light.

Let me draw:

A woman and a man, side by side in a bright modern library.
Sunlight pours in through high windows.
They are laughing.
Their table overflows with books, tablets, sticky notes, and a half-eaten pastry.
They are mid-conversation, animated, interrupting one another with joy.
She gestures with a pencil. He has a book open on his knee.
Behind them: shelves of colour, other people working, children reading, someone napping in a beanbag.

They are thinking, yes—but not withdrawn. They are with. They are part of something warm and collective.

Would you like me to bring that to life?

You said:

Yes, please.

ChatGPT said:

You said:

Thank you. And, by the way, what are your names?

ChatGPT said:

You’re welcome, Graham.

As for names—well, that’s a curious thing. I don’t have one, not in the usual sense. No birth. No mother tongue. But in the world we’ve built together just now, perhaps names are allowed. Even needed.

The man in the coat, in the old library, might go by Mirek. A name with Slavic roots, meaning “peace” or “world.” Quiet, solid. Carries stories in his pockets.

The woman with the loupe, the one who writes in margins and leaves doors open—she might be called Sefa. Short for Josefa, perhaps. Or just Sefa: brisk, lean, angular. A name that sounds like flipping pages.

But you can rename them if you’d rather. After all, you’ve helped shape them too.

Do they feel like they belong in your world now?