This website has three goals. The first is to show, through images and prose, how I used photography to cope with depression and anxiety (and the various manifestations they exhibited in my life, such as OCD, and ADHD, etc.) as the result of PTSD. The second goal is to develop a repository of helpful and interesting resources that link photography with better mental health. The third goal is to highlight some of my photographic work. If someone would like to speak with me about obtaining a photo – printed or digital – please contact me (psdixon@gmail.com).

The title of this website, “Photo Anchors”, came from process I hope to illuminate through the first goal: the use of photography to anchor the psyche to the best reality we can experience under the circumstances of mental illness. Even now I suffer from the pull into the darkness, thinking that the universe will put mental illness obstacles in my way, right when I am on the cusp of important work, as some kind of sick joke, a joke played on me many times throughout my life. I try to remember that these thoughts are the result of mental illness, and I will not listen to them. Even now, as I write this, photography works to anchor me.

For me, depression and anxiety result in a detached, or free-floating frame of mind not unlike a fog bank or sensory deprivation chamber. It is safe, but lonely. For the first third of my life my only defense was to withdraw into a private safe world. A world where I had to stay aware of the danger signs of imminent violence, both physical and psychological. I became pretty good at sensing when someone was on the verge of rage. When that happened, I would then go into automatic “good-child” mode to placate them in any way I could. I was willing to sacrifice the real me in order to achieve some sort of safety and peace, although this was the peace and quiet of a battlefield full of corpses – nothing but the buzzing of flies as white noise. Then I would go back into my cloud bank of safety – if I didn’t engage in reality, reality couldn’t hurt me. Later in life I used drugs and alcohol to create a safe place.

I see now that depression and anxiety are, for me at least, the defense mechanism of childhood trauma. And I floated there for much of my life. I recall a trip I took on peyote as a young man of 20. The vision I had was one of terrible loneliness and fear. In my dream, I was in a life support chamber not unlike a deep-sea bell on the surface of an alien planet. There was a port-hole window that I could peer out of if I stood on tiptoes. Every so often a large bat-like creature flew up the porthole and looked in. It was intelligent in a terrifying way, waiting for me to emerge. I knew it was on a planet of life-consuming vampires and that I could never leave that vessel. It was either waste my life in the safety of the vessel or throw myself out onto certain horrifying death. I see now that it was indeed a powerful personal vision – a gift – that showed me the essence of my life: a bleeding of my life through sacrifice to cope with terror in childhood. The more I understand this process the less I feel like I have to sacrifice myself, but rather I am free to celebrate myself and life, such as with photography.

Depression, anxiety, bi-polar cycles, and the drugs and alcohol I took to “treat” them, result in a safe place free of time and space – a sensory deprivation chamber. There is no need to plan or strive to achieve because it seemed that all achievements and plans would be ultimately thwarted at some point anyway, so why try? And even the meager achievements I allowed myself seemed so pitiful as to not even be worth acknowledging to my family. This feeling of worthlessness even encompassed my photography, until recently. I printed only about 20 photos in my 20 years in photography. No one could criticize my images if nobody saw them. Safety is depression, as one therapist recently told me.

Photography gave me a purpose and anchored me in space, time, and people. It would be a reason to go out of the house, to step into blessed nature and capture a moment, or to walk around in the city looking for interesting visual stories in back alleys. When I returned home, I would have a handful of photons on a silicon sensor that I would hold tightly in my fist and never show anyone but my wife. She was so patient with me. While she was earning a living and changing the world of health care, I was in the basement holding on to photons and looking for reasons to live. The ultimate reason I did not commit suicide was effect that my father’s suicide had on the family in 1965. It was so disturbing to those who loved and needed him. I promised myself that I would not do that to the people who loved and needed me. I admit that I might have acted on the impulse several times if it wasn’t for that pledge that I made. As a result, life became a marathon of fear and boredom, until I found photography.

Anyone who has spent time as a depressive, bi-polar, shut-in, alcoholic/drug addict, or other related issue will understand why I use the term “anchor”. I hope that this website may offer some support and peace to my fellow travelers.