Tag Archives: therapeutic photography

Altered Horizons 39

Altered Horizons 39 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a fabricated landscape in dealing with seasonal affective disorder and loss.

Praying for sun. Although the winter sun in Upstate New York is cold and bleak, just a few hours of it can help melt huge snow mountains flanking both sides of doorways and driveways. All this snow would be depressing except that it sneaks up on you, falling silently from the sky either in fat fluffy flakes or tiny hard hail-pebbles. Either way it’s a surprisingly beautiful event even without the sun.

There was a mysterious dark disc seated in the middle of the pebbly rooftop at Cornell’s Heating Plant. For me, it immediately became a hardened gloomy sun in a sky dense with snowfall.

Altered Horizons 39

 

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Altered Horizons 37

 

Altered Horizons 37 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a landscape fabricated from the back of a dog as she ponders the death of pets inherited by bereaved parents.

 

At Barton Valley Farm, dogs followed the photography students as we traipsed through the fields. I was trying to focus on the horses but this dog kept creeping into my view. I don’t know what kind of dog it was but it was very friendly and had great hair.

My own dog, Suki, is so old that the county clerk phoned me this year before mailing out the annual dog license renewal, “Is Suki still with us?”

Surprised by the call, I told her the dog I inherited from my daughter eleven years ago was indeed still here.

“Well, bless her little heart,” the clerk replied. And I do. Every day. Because I’ve seen, from others whose inherited dogs die, that when this dog goes it could be like losing my daughter all over again.

 

Altered Horizons 37

 

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Altered Horizons 36

Altered Horizons 36 Robin Botie of Ithaca, new York, photoshops fabricated landscapes as therapy for depression and entertainment for all the time spent at home alone.

Walking through a snow-dusted field on a windy night is what I was imagining. If you rotate this picture ninety degrees counterclockwise, maybe you can see the rump-end of a horse with its tail hanging down the left side. Turned around, the muddy and matted tail makes a dark blustery sky. On the bottom, under the horse’s groin, I added a small portion of the horse’s backside to make it look like there was another hill in the landscape.

For me, fabricating these landscapes in Photoshop is like creating tiny, fresh, nonpolitical, unpolluted worlds. It’s therapy for depression as well as entertainment for all the time spent home alone. And it’s a wish for a kinder world with less dissonance.

Altered Horizons 36

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