LISA LYONS, PhD
When I photograph, I focus both inside and outside. I am in a state not unlike the state I am in when I am with a patient – my attention hovering, shifting. As a photographer I am particularly drawn to texture, contrast, light, and shape. As an analyst and as a photographer I look for the unexpected in the ordinary.
This photograph was taken at Joshua Tree National Park – a place I love, full of Joshua Trees, desert cacti, other- worldly landscapes, ancient rock formations. I find it beautiful, and ghostly. There was a heavy snowstorm the night before I took this picture – an unlikely, surprising and eerie occurrence for that arid hot desert location.
Joshua Tree
(Photograph)
The unexpected image of a Joshua Tree in the snow, the light, and the sadness of a landscape being decimated by climate change (many of the hundreds of year old trees in the park have been scarred or destroyed by fire in recent years) drew me in.
I see in this photo things that capture my attention as an analyst – stark contrasts, the revelation of something new in something old, the wonder and surprise at the complexity of the landscapes of my patients’ internal worlds.
But this photo particularly for me captures something of the aloneness, the dismal horror I – and many of my patients – felt as we settled in to what for many was a solitary life in quarantine. The single tree, alone, surrounded by a cold, bleak landscape, seems so like what I was hearing and feeling ,day after day, as I sat in front of my computer screen, longing for the in person presence of my patients.