Dr Deborah Padfield
Lecturer (Teaching)
London
Biography
Deborah Padfield is a visual artist specialising in lens-based media and intersectional practice and research within Fine Art and Medicine. She is currently a Lecturer (Teaching) at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL (where she also received her PhD) and Senior Lecturer in Arts & Health Humanities at IMBE, St George’s, University of London. She has collaborated extensively with clinicians and patients exploring the value of visual images to clinician-patient interactions and the communication of pain. In 2001 her collaboration with Dr Charles Pither at Input Pain Management Unit, St Thomas’ Hospital, led to an Arts Council funded touring exhibition, pilot study and book, Perceptions of Pain. Her recent collaboration with Professor Joanna Zakrzewska and facial pain clinicians and patients from University College London Hospitals, NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) led to several exhibitions, symposia and an interdisciplinary research project based at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, Pain: speaking the threshold. This allowed her to bring together a distinguished multi-disciplinary team with whom she continues to publish with papers in medhum BMJ, the Lancet , Lancet Haematology and a unique volume, co-edited with facial pain consultant, Prof Joanna Zakrzewska, Encountering Pain: hearing, seeing, speaking published by UCL Press in February 2021.You can download an electronic pdf of this unique collection of perspectives for free here.
She was awarded funding to further develop the work transnationally, collaborating with partners in India on a knowledge exchange project co-creating images reflecting pain patients’ individual experience of pain with colleagues in the UK, Delhi and Mumbai, India and recently received a small grant to further develop collaborations with colleagues at Osaka University, Japan.
She lectures and exhibits nationally and internationally, most recently in Delhi, India collaborating with Dr Satendra Singh from the University College of Medical Sciences & GTB Hospital, Delhi, the Royal Society of Medicine, London, SEC Glasgow for the BSH Annual Scientific Meeting, the Medical University of Sofia, Bulgaria, Kobe University, Osaka, Japan, the Houston Center for Photography, USA, the 16th World Congress of Anaesthesiologists in Hong Kong and the Wellcome Trust, London and as a visiting lecturer at Universities across the UK. She co-organised the Encountering Pain Conference at University College London (UCL) in 2016, a ground breaking event which brought together leading academics, clinicians, patients and artists to share insights and stimulate discussion on an equal playing field. (See https://www.ucl.ac.uk/encountering-pain) She is the recipient of a number of awards including, Sciart Research Award, UCL Arts in Health Award, the UCL Provosts Award for Public Engagement 2012, British Pain Society Artist of the Year 2012, UCL Public Engagement Beacon Bursary 2015 and winner of the Lancet Highlights photography competition 2017. She is a council member and trustee for the Association of Medical Humanities, UK (AMH).
https://deborahpadfield.com/face2face-1
Research Summary
My research focuses on the role of images and image-making processes to the diagnosis and management of persistent pain. In particular, I argue that photographs can facilitate improved interaction and mutual understanding between patients and clinicians in the pain clinic and between those living with and those witnessing pain.
I have collaborated with leading pain specialists and academics from a range of disciplines and institutions and believe firmly in collaborative approaches to art making, research and teaching. My research heavily informs my teaching and emerges from my arts practice, both of which focus on bringing people together with diverse expertise and talents to forge connections, suspend their critical voice towards unfamiliar methodologies and foster new knowledge together. I believe it is only by bringing together different disciplines that we can address many of today’s global health challenges. I also believe that the arts are a vital resource to support & health and wellbeing and am hopeful that their increased use within social prescription will continue to enrich and benefit lives.
I am co-PI on a seed funded collaboration with Osaka University (2021) exploring ways in which the arts and humanities can contribute to Healthcare Education and facilitate improved intercultural understanding in Japan and the UK.
I am also PI on the Visualising pain: towards an international iconography of pain to improve the communication and management of pain in India and the UK (2019) collaborating with Dr Satendra Singh from the University College of Medical Sciences & GTB Hospital, Delhi, India and Dr Mary Wickenden from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.
I continue to collaborate with the pain: speaking the threshold research team I brought together with Prof Joanna Zakrzewska in 2013. We continue to co-author and present papers integrating interdisciplinary perspectives on the value of images and image-making processes to the assessment and management of chronic pain.
In 2016 I co-organised the Encountering Pain Conference at University College London (UCL) in 2016, a ground breaking event which brought together leading academics, clinicians, patients and artists to share insights and stimulate discussion on an equal playing field. We continue to engage with and build this community and have launched an innovative edited volume published by UCL Press in February 2021 arising out of the conference. You can download an electronic pdf of this unique collection of perspectives for free here.
For further collaborative projects such as perceptions of pain and face2face, please see entries on the Slade website, and the following pages on my personal website and research gate pages where projects and publications are listed.
https://deborahpadfield.com/Perceptions-of-Pain
www.researchgate.net/profile/Deborah_Padfield
Book: Padfield, D., and Zakrzewska, J.M. (eds.). 2021. Encountering Pain: Hearing, seeing, speaking. London: UCL Press.
Teaching Summary
I am currently a Lecturer (Teaching) in History and Theory of Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, where I supervise BA3 independent research projects and some MA dissertations, also providing individual tutorials for students on both the BA and MA programmes, and examining external PhD’s. I designed and taught courses for BA2 Fine Art students.
During my first post at the Slade as an early career interdisciplinary Research Fellow, I co-delivered and co-designed BFA2 Critical Studies courses alongside initiating opportunities for students to engage with their peers from other disciplines across the University. Much of my intersectional research and collaborations feeds into my teaching. I collaborated with Guy Noble, Curator of UCLH Arts & Heritage and Slade colleagues to put on an exhibition of Slade student work in the Hospital Street Gallery at UCLH, worked with the Psychoanalytic Unit, UCL, on several collaborations with Slade students (later expanded to art students across London) responding to research undertaken at the Psychoanalytic Unit, subsequently exhibited at the Freud Museum London and set up a series of workshops at the UCL Pathology Museum, based at the Royal Free Hospital, for Medical Students and Fine Art students to learn alongside each other with an interdisciplinary team of facilitators. Students from this went onto found their own interdisciplinary network, convening their own interdisciplinary Reforming Anatomy conferences at the Royal Society of Medicine. Within my regular teaching I attempt to bring in facilitators with expertise across a range of disciplines and run creative writing and collaborative drawing workshops. I collaborated with Tomas Kador and Helen Chatterjee to design and draft a new undergraduate module for the BACs programme.
I also work as a Senior Lecturer in Arts & Health Humanities at St George’s, University of London, where I co-teach on a range of SSC’s and arts and humanities offerings within the MBBS and Global Health programmes and am involved in a drive to expand arts and humanities teaching across the University. I am Director of the new extra-curricular programme at St George’s, bringing science, medicine and healthcare into dialogue with the arts, humanities and enterprise.
Exhibitions
Art, Access and Agency
2021Gallery at the Javett, University of Pretoria
Film
Film: Pain under the microscope, revised version, 2018 Situated somewhere between fine art, documentary and talking heads, the film takes a series of connected microscopes as its blue-print, to examine pain from multiple perspectives including interviews with international experts from history, linguistics, pain, medicine, neurobiology and psychology (respectively Profs Joanna Bourke, Elena Semino, Joanna Zakrzewska, Maria Fitzgerald and Amanda Williams) interspersed with patient testimonies (Chandrakant Khoda) and a musical and visual score (Lucie Treacher). The visual imagery derives largely from metaphors co-created with people living with pain, in particular, that of a shadow sandwich, where the material of the metaphor, for example mouldy bread from the sandwich, is placed under the microscope, magnified x 64 and subsequently re-integrated with more recognisable imagery to create a multi-layered and surreal backdrop to the unfolding exploration of pain. Scientific and neuronal images weave their way throughout the more abstract imagery asking ‘what is this thing called pain?’ The film provides no answers but invites viewers to assemble their own meanings out of the immediacy of patient testimonies and the cutting edge science and research presented. The film grew out of the pain: speaking the threshold interdisciplinary project at University College London, click here. After the screening Deborah Padfield will give a short talk exploring how the work arose followed by a Q & A session.
The Royal Society of Medicine: Explain pain through art, language and movement.
2019Royal Society of Medicine
Although healthcare professionals are taught communication skills, little emphasis is put on how explanations are given. A plausible clear explanation is of special importance for patients who have chronic pain which is invisible, subjective and poorly understood. Through the use of a multidisciplinary team, participants will have the opportunity to enhance their skills at providing meaningful explanations to their patients. This event will start with a patient describing her experience of obtaining an explanation, and its impact on her ability to manage pain. A Professor of Linguistics, Professor Elena Semino, will demonstrate the importance of words and metaphors to provide explanations, this will be complimented by Professor Peter Salmon, a health psychologist who works in the field of medically unexplained symptoms. The distinguished and highly respected Professor Lorimer Mosley, an Australian physiotherapist whose explanation of chronic pain on YouTube and in TED talks are appreciated by thousands of viewers. Delegates will also be introduced to Dr Deborah Padfield, a Visual Artist who will be showing her film “Pain under a microscope”, which is a culmination of over 10 years worth of work with pain patients. Some of the images created during the project will be used by Pain Medicine Physician, Professor Joanna Zakrzewskato, to illustrate the impact of pain management courses. To finalise the event Ms Rachel Stovell, Senior Physiotherapist, will facilitate group work to ensure all delegates leave with the tools needed to provide an explanation of chronic pain in a personalised way.
Shadows and Ashes, Sofia, Bulgaria
2018The Medical University of Sofia, Bulgaria (MUS)
Pain under the microscope 2018. Padfield & Omand. Film 35 min duration. Situated somewhere between fine art, documentary and talking heads, the film takes a series of connected microscopes as its blue-print, to examine pain from multiple perspectives including interviews with international experts from history, linguistics, pain, medicine, neurobiology and psychology (respectively Profs Joanna Bourke, Elena Semino, Joanna Zakrzewska, Maria Fitzgerald and Amanda Williams) interspersed with patient testimonies (Chandrakant Khoda) and a musical and visual score (Lucie Treacher). The visual imagery derives largely from metaphors co-created with people living with pain, in particular, that of a shadow sandwich, where the material of the metaphor, for example mouldy bread from the sandwich, is placed under the microscope, magnified x 64 and subsequently re-integrated with more recognisable imagery to create a multi-layered and surreal backdrop to the unfolding exploration of pain. Scientific and neuronal images weave their way throughout the more abstract imagery asking ‘what is this thing called pain?’ The film provides no answers but invites viewers to assemble their own meanings out of the immediacy of patient testimonies and the cutting edge science and research presented. The film grew out of the pain: speaking the threshold interdisciplinary project at University College London, click here.
16th World Congress of Anaesthesiology, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre,, Film Screening, Pain under the Microscope
2016Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
Padfield & Omand. Pain under the microscope. Film. \j 2018 . 35 duration. Situated somewhere between fine art, documentary and talking heads, the film takes a series of connected microscopes as its blue-print, to examine pain from multiple perspectives including interviews with international experts from history, linguistics, pain, medicine, neurobiology and psychology (respectively Profs Joanna Bourke, Elena Semino, Joanna Zakrzewska, Maria Fitzgerald and Amanda Williams) interspersed with patient testimonies (Chandrakant Khoda) and a musical and visual score (Lucie Treacher). The visual imagery derives largely from metaphors co-created with people living with pain, in particular, that of a shadow sandwich, where the material of the metaphor, for example mouldy bread from the sandwich, is placed under the microscope, magnified x 64 and subsequently re-integrated with more recognisable imagery to create a multi-layered and surreal backdrop to the unfolding exploration of pain. Scientific and neuronal images weave their way throughout the more abstract imagery asking ‘what is this thing called pain?’ The film provides no answers but invites viewers to assemble their own meanings out of the immediacy of patient testimonies and the cutting edge science and research presented. The film grew out of the pain: speaking the threshold interdisciplinary project at University College London, click here.
TRANSLATIONS (BODY TALK: WHOSE LANGUAGE?). Heritage Gallery, Greenwich
2016Heritage Gallery, University of Greenwich, London
This exhibition brings together Catherine Greenwood’s work on body images with Deborah Padfield’s on metaphors of pain. Translations explores how aspects of visual and verbal language, their form, content and structure can present readers with different ways of seeing, reading, knowing and relating to visual media. It forms part of the Association for Medical Humanities 2016 Conference Body Talk: whose language? at The University of Greenwich. Bringing art together with medicine is not new. The close links between aesthetics and ethics in Western ideals of beauty and morality was written about in Ancient Greek philosophy, but these are closely linked in many cultures and religions. Today, working on what it means to be human and bringing the human back into medicine through patient-centred care presents exciting possibilities for new forms and mergings of art and medicine, through which art can become a form of tool or even a form of treatment. The exhibition is supported by the Wellcome Trust
Wellcome Trust, In Pursuit of Pain, Exhibition, Images from Perceptions of Pain and Face2face within solo pop up exhibition for Friday Night Spectacular
2016Wellcome Trust
Studio INSTALLATION Visualising Pain 19.00–23.00 | DROP IN It can be surprisingly difficult to explain your pain to a doctor. See photographs co-created by artist Deborah Padfield and people being treated for pain at UCLH. By creating these images, those in pain retain control of how their pain is visualised and can have a more negotiated dialogue in the consulting room
Encountering Pain Conference, UCL, Film Screening, Pain under the microscope
2016University College London
Pain under the microscope 2018 Situated somewhere between fine art, documentary and talking heads, the film takes a series of connected microscopes as its blue-print, to examine pain from multiple perspectives including interviews with international experts from history, linguistics, pain, medicine, neurobiology and psychology (respectively Profs Joanna Bourke, Elena Semino, Joanna Zakrzewska, Maria Fitzgerald and Amanda Williams) interspersed with patient testimonies (Chandrakant Khoda) and a musical and visual score (Lucie Treacher). The visual imagery derives largely from metaphors co-created with people living with pain, in particular, that of a shadow sandwich, where the material of the metaphor, for example mouldy bread from the sandwich, is placed under the microscope, magnified x 64 and subsequently re-integrated with more recognisable imagery to create a multi-layered and surreal backdrop to the unfolding exploration of pain. Scientific and neuronal images weave their way throughout the more abstract imagery asking ‘what is this thing called pain?’ The film provides no answers but invites viewers to assemble their own meanings out of the immediacy of patient testimonies and the cutting edge science and research presented. The film grew out of the pain: speaking the threshold interdisciplinary project at University College London, click here.
Photofusion SALON/12 - Photograph from Fragile Boundaries series
2012Photofusion Gallery
Now in its fourth year, our Annual Members’ Photography Show has undergone a complete makeover. Due to the growing popularity of this event, AMPS is adopting a new salon-style hang, allowing a much larger number of Members to showcase one of their images. The images exhibited reflect the diversity of work being made by our Members, encompassing all genres from the traditional to the avant garde. Examples of social documentary and classic portraiture can be seen alongside contemporary constructed imagery, still life, and digitally manipulated photography. This year, 118 photographers have been selected to exhibit on the walls, along with a further 43 presented on a showreel. Many are Members who have been with Photofusion from its inception and have longstanding careers as professional photographers, while others are recent Members and newly emerging in their careers.
Pain and its Meanings, the Wellcome Trust, Film Screening, Duet for Pain.
2012Wellcome Trust
Duet for Pain 2012 (Duration 12 mins) Duet for pain is a response to working as artist in residence at UCLH in a facial pain management environment. It explores the construction of identity and narratives of pain juxtaposing two perspectives: those of the pain sufferer and those of the clinician. It focuses on the face as an expression of identity and means of interacting with the outside world asking what happens when that face is itself in pain.
Pain Less Exhibition at the Science Museum, London, film screening of Fragmented Lines. Film co-created with adult participatory pain group
2012Science Museum, London
Film co-created with adult participatory chronic pain group and with film editor Helen Omand
Mask: Mirror: Membrane Exhibition at the UCLH Street Gallery
2011UCLH Street Gallery, London
Here’s one for your diary, an exhibition of images by Deborah Padfield, in collaboration with patients & clinicians at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, entitled Can you see Pain? Anyone who knows Deborah’s work from her previous exhibition and book entitled Perceptions of Pain won’t want to miss this. http://www.dewilewispublishing.com/PHOTOGRAPHY/Perceptions.html face2face: What can art bring to a clinical context and medicine to a gallery context? Can an exploration of facial pain inform our understanding of portraiture and vice versa? MASK:MIRROR:MEMBRANE is the result of a collaboration with pain specialist Professor Joanna Zakrzewska and facial pain clinicians and patients at UCLH. The images exhibited evolved out of a two-year artist’s residency investigating facial pain and the role photographs can play in its communication. It involved co-creating photographic images with patients that reflected their personal experience of pain. Chronic pain is invisible, complex, and notoriously difficult to communicate via language. With facial pain, difficulties of communication are exacerbated, as the very ‘canvas’ normally used to express it, is itself in pain. The face becomes either a mask hiding the emotions behind it or a frozen mirror reflecting the projections of others. Difficulties in communicating their experience serve only to increase the isolation, fear and loneliness of sufferers. The work gives visual form to this invisible and subjective experience. With a focus on facial and oral medicine and portraiture, it explores whether images can help us negotiate between different perspectives – how we perceive and what we project onto ‘the other’. Featuring photographs co-created by Deborah Padfield with patients, the exhibition also includes an original film installation, drawings and photograms resulting from joint workshops with patients and clinicians at the National Portrait Gallery, as well as self-portraits by facial pain sufferers. Context is provided through personal testimonies, medical texts, and artist and patient notes exploring facial pain and the portrait from multiple perspectives. The project is also developing an image resource in the form of a pack of ‘Pain Cards’ as an innovative communication tool for use within the NHS. Visitors will have a chance to experiment with the cards and are invited to give their responses to them. The exhibition demonstrates that images can capture aspects of the pain experience difficult to describe in words alone, and elicit new information for both patient and clinician. It explores the means by which aesthetic spaces allow access to other ways of ‘knowing’ illness. Blog by Dr Ayesha Ahmad for the medhum BMJ about the exhibition which was shown at both the Menier Gallery London and the UCLH Street Gallery London in July 2011
Mask:Mirror:Membrane Exhibition at the Menier Gallery London
2011Menier Gallery London
Can you see Pain? How can an exploration of facial pain inform our understanding of portraiture and vice versa? MASK:MIRROR:MEMBRANE is the result of a collaboration with pain specialist Professor Joanna Zakrzewska and facial pain clinicians and patients at UCLH. The images exhibited evolved out of a two-year artist's residency investigating facial pain and the role photographs can play in its communication. It involved co-creating photographic images with patients that reflected their personal experience of pain. Chronic pain is invisible, complex, and notoriously difficult to communicate via language. With facial pain, difficulties of communication are exacerbated, as the very 'canvas' normally used to express it, is itself in pain. The face becomes either a mask hiding the emotions behind it or a frozen mirror reflecting the projections of others. Difficulties in communicating their experience serve only to increase the isolation, fear and loneliness of sufferers. The work gives visual form to this invisible and subjective experience. With a focus on facial and oral medicine and portraiture, it explores whether images can help us negotiate between different perspectives ' how we perceive and what we project onto 'the other'. Featuring photographs co-created by Deborah Padfield with patients, the exhibition also includes an original film installation, drawings and photograms resulting from joint workshops with patients and clinicians at the National Portrait Gallery, as well as self-portraits by facial pain sufferers. Context is provided through personal testimonies, medical texts, and artist and patient notes exploring facial pain and the portrait from multiple perspectives. The project is also developing an image resource in the form of a pack of 'Pain Cards' as an innovative communication tool for use within the NHS. Visitors will have a chance to experiment with the cards and are invited to give their responses to them. The exhibition demonstrates that images can capture aspects of the pain experience difficult to describe in words alone, and elicit new information for both patient and clinician. It explores the means by which aesthetic spaces allow access to other ways of 'knowing' illness. Two evening events accompanying the exhibition will promote discussion of the issues raised: an Artist's Forum on Thursday 7th July at 4.30pm before the opening, and an interdisciplinary discussion with invited panellists on Thursday 14th July at 6.30pm. Some of the participating patients will be present at both events.
Perceptions of Pain Exhibition at Napp Headquarters, Cambridge Science Park
2008Napp Headquarters, Cambridge Science Park
Perceptions of Pain An exhibition about the science and art of the pain Experience Although we all experience pain, it remains extraordinarily difficult to define or communicate. ‘The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love has Shakespeare and Keats to speak for her, but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ (Virigina Woolf) This exhibition shows the result of a Sciart collaboration between Deborah Padfield, Dr Charles Pither and patients from INPUT pain management unit, St Thomas’ Hospital. Chronic pain patients worked with the artist to create photographs which expressed their pain in a visual medium. The project finding a visual language for pain is a moving and startling collection of images that explores the interface between doctor and patient, photographer and subject, maker and viewer, science and art. ‘I have always found it hard to explain my pain to doctors. You have to explain it so that they can understand it … I have found this really beneficial. It is a wonderful idea’ (participating patient)
Science Museum, London, Pain, Passion, Compassion, Sensibility , photograph from perceptions of pain
2004Science Museum, London, UK
Perceptions of Pain at Guy's Hospital, Atrium 1, London, UK
2002Atrium 1, Guy's Hospital, London, UK
Perceptions of Pain An exhibition about the science and art of the pain Experience Central Hall St Thomas’ Hospital, London Atrium, Guy’s Hospital, London Although we all experience pain, it remains extraordinarily difficult to define or communicate. ‘The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love has Shakespeare and Keats to speak for her, but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ (Virigina Woolf) This exhibition shows the result of a Sciart collaboration between Deborah Padfield, Dr Charles Pither and patients from INPUT pain management unit, St Thomas’ Hospital. Chronic pain patients worked with the artist to create photographs which expressed their pain in a visual medium. The project finding a visual language for pain is a moving and startling collection of images that explores the interface between doctor and patient, photographer and subject, maker and viewer, science and art. ‘I have always found it hard to explain my pain to doctors. You have to explain it so that they can understand it … I have found this really beneficial. It is a wonderful idea’ (participating patient). Funded by: • The Sciart Consortium • The Arts Council of England • Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charitable foundation.
Perceptions of Pain at St Thomas' Hospital, London, UK
2002Central Hall, St Thomas' Hospital, London, UK
Perceptions of Pain An exhibition about the science and art of the pain Experience Central Hall St Thomas’ Hospital, London Atrium, Guy’s Hospital, London Although we all experience pain, it remains extraordinarily difficult to define or communicate. ‘The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love has Shakespeare and Keats to speak for her, but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ (Virigina Woolf) This exhibition shows the result of a Sciart collaboration between Deborah Padfield, Dr Charles Pither and patients from INPUT pain management unit, St Thomas’ Hospital. Chronic pain patients worked with the artist to create photographs which expressed their pain in a visual medium. The project finding a visual language for pain is a moving and startling collection of images that explores the interface between doctor and patient, photographer and subject, maker and viewer, science and art. ‘I have always found it hard to explain my pain to doctors. You have to explain it so that they can understand it … I have found this really beneficial. It is a wonderful idea’ (participating patient). Funded by: • The Sciart Consortium • The Arts Council of England • Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charitable foundation.
Untold at the SW1 Gallery, London in association with Arts & Minds, Westminster, London, UK
SW1 Gallery, London, UKSeries of photographic portraits of participants at the Pullman Day Centre, Pimlico, London and photographic work co-created by them within a larger exhibition in association with Arts & Minds, Westminster, London, UK.
Houston Centre for Photography, USA, Group Exhibition - Inside the Metaphor series exhibited
Houston Centre for Photography, USAImage from Inside the Metaphor exhibited. Inside the Metaphor 2015 - 2018 Inside the metaphor is a series of images emerging out of my interest in exploring a visual language with which to communicate pain, and a long held fascination with how we look and how we interpret what we see through different lenses. I experimented with putting the metaphoric material under the microscope – quite literally - for example extracts of moulding apples and strawberries, crumbs of rotting bread, drops of water/ice or newspaper ink etc. I have then integrated these microscopic images with the original metaphoric ones. The result is a series of new works which don’t so much seek to communicate pain as to question how we see it and what it is we see when we hear of another’s pain. There is a memory of an individual’s pain left within each image but it has been mediated in a way much of our communication is mediated by the time it is received, but here the transformation is made explicit. I am intrigued by how we understand metaphor and wanted to experiment with putting the metaphors depicted in the images under the microscope - literally. I took samples of materials from these metaphors such as extracts of rotting apples, mouldy bread, ice, strawberries etc. and placed them between glass slides and photographed them at magnification x 64. The magnified images revealed different structures and relations within the material used –metaphor. I then integrated these literal depictions of the inner structure of the metaphoric material with the original imaginative representations of the same metaphors and created a series of new photographs called Inside the Metaphor. One of the aims of this series is to ask what we see when we look intensely, what are meaningful ways of looking, do we misrepresent when we try to reduce subjective experience such as pain to something objectifiable and evidencable?
Perceptions of Pain photographs within group exhibition for Trans-Art Laboratori, Vic, Barcelona, Catalyst, Reversible Actions Exhibition
Vic, BarcelonaDuet for Pain screening at the National Portrait Gallery, London as part of Facial Likeness
National Portrait GalleryDuet for Pain 2011, Revised 2012 (Duration 12 mins) Duet for pain is a response to working as artist in residence at UCLH in a facial pain management environment. It explores the construction of identity and narratives of pain juxtaposing two perspectives: those of the pain sufferer and those of the clinician. It focuses on the face as an expression of identity and means of interacting with the outside world asking what happens when that face is itself in pain.
Expressions of Pain and Self-directed studies, International Symposium, Osaka University, Japan
Osaka University, JapanPerceptions of Pain at Novartis Headquarters, Basel, Switzerland
Novartis HeadquartersPerceptions of Pain An exhibition about the science and art of the pain Experience Although we all experience pain, it remains extraordinarily difficult to define or communicate. ‘The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love has Shakespeare and Keats to speak for her, but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ (Virigina Woolf) This exhibition shows the result of a Sciart collaboration between Deborah Padfield, Dr Charles Pither and patients from INPUT pain management unit, St Thomas’ Hospital. Chronic pain patients worked with the artist to create photographs which expressed their pain in a visual medium. The project finding a visual language for pain is a moving and startling collection of images that explores the interface between doctor and patient, photographer and subject, maker and viewer, science and art. ‘I have always found it hard to explain my pain to doctors. You have to explain it so that they can understand it … I have found this really beneficial. It is a wonderful idea’ (participating patient).
Perceptions of Pain at the Sheridan Russell Gallery, London, 2002
The Sheridan Russell Gallery, London, UKPerceptions of Pain An exhibition about the science and art of the pain Experience Although we all experience pain, it remains extraordinarily difficult to define or communicate. ‘The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love has Shakespeare and Keats to speak for her, but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ (Virigina Woolf) This exhibition shows the result of a Sciart collaboration between Deborah Padfield, Dr Charles Pither and patients from INPUT pain management unit, St Thomas’ Hospital. Chronic pain patients worked with the artist to create photographs which expressed their pain in a visual medium. The project finding a visual language for pain is a moving and startling collection of images that explores the interface between doctor and patient, photographer and subject, maker and viewer, science and art. ‘I have always found it hard to explain my pain to doctors. You have to explain it so that they can understand it … I have found this really beneficial. It is a wonderful idea’ (participating patient). Funded by: • The Sciart Consortium • The Arts Council of England • Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charitable foundation • Paintings in Hospitals
Perceptions of Pain at the Gallery, Loughborough University, 2003
The Gallery, the University of LoughboroguhPerceptions of Pain An exhibition about the science and art of the pain Experience An Arts Council Funded Tour with accompanying interdisciplinary symposia and events Although we all experience pain, it remains extraordinarily difficult to define or communicate. ‘The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love has Shakespeare and Keats to speak for her, but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ (Virigina Woolf) This exhibition shows the result of a Sciart collaboration between Deborah Padfield, Dr Charles Pither and patients from INPUT pain management unit, St Thomas’ Hospital. Chronic pain patients worked with the artist to create photographs which expressed their pain in a visual medium. The project finding a visual language for pain is a moving and startling collection of images that explores the interface between doctor and patient, photographer and subject, maker and viewer, science and art. ‘I have always found it hard to explain my pain to doctors. You have to explain it so that they can understand it … I have found this really beneficial. It is a wonderful idea’ (participating patient). Funded by: • The Sciart Consortium • The Arts Council of England • Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charitable foundation.
Photographs from the series face2face and perceptions of Pain at London Pain Consortium’s, Insight, Wellcome Trust Anniversary Exhibition
Guy's Hospital LondonPerceptions of Pain at the Gallery, the Great Western Hospital Edinburgh, 2003
The Gallery, the Great Western Hospital, Edinburgh, UKPerceptions of Pain An exhibition about the science and art of the pain Experience An Arts Council Funded Tour with accompanying interdisciplinary symposia and events Although we all experience pain, it remains extraordinarily difficult to define or communicate. ‘The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love has Shakespeare and Keats to speak for her, but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ (Virigina Woolf) This exhibition shows the result of a Sciart collaboration between Deborah Padfield, Dr Charles Pither and patients from INPUT pain management unit, St Thomas’ Hospital. Chronic pain patients worked with the artist to create photographs which expressed their pain in a visual medium. The project finding a visual language for pain is a moving and startling collection of images that explores the interface between doctor and patient, photographer and subject, maker and viewer, science and art. ‘I have always found it hard to explain my pain to doctors. You have to explain it so that they can understand it … I have found this really beneficial. It is a wonderful idea’ (participating patient). Funded by: • The Sciart Consortium • The Arts Council of England • Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charitable foundation.
A stitch in time, photographs at the Association of Photographers Gallery at their Annual Exhibition, London
Association of Photographers Gallery, LondonPerceptions of Pain at the Thackray Medical Museum, Leeds, 2004
Thackray Medical Museum, Leeds, UKPerceptions of Pain An exhibition about the science and art of the pain Experience An Arts Council Funded Tour with accompanying interdisciplinary symposia and events Although we all experience pain, it remains extraordinarily difficult to define or communicate. ‘The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love has Shakespeare and Keats to speak for her, but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ (Virigina Woolf) This exhibition shows the result of a Sciart collaboration between Deborah Padfield, Dr Charles Pither and patients from INPUT pain management unit, St Thomas’ Hospital. Chronic pain patients worked with the artist to create photographs which expressed their pain in a visual medium. The project finding a visual language for pain is a moving and startling collection of images that explores the interface between doctor and patient, photographer and subject, maker and viewer, science and art. ‘I have always found it hard to explain my pain to doctors. You have to explain it so that they can understand it … I have found this really beneficial. It is a wonderful idea’ (participating patient). Funded by: • The Sciart Consortium • The Arts Council of England • Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charitable foundation.
Photographs from the series Evolutions, shown at the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery
Shrewsbury Museum and Art GalleryPerceptions of Pain at the Royal College of Physicians, London, UK, 2002
The Royal College of PhysiciansPerceptions of Pain An exhibition about the science and art of the pain Experience Although we all experience pain, it remains extraordinarily difficult to define or communicate. ‘The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love has Shakespeare and Keats to speak for her, but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ (Virigina Woolf) This exhibition shows the result of a Sciart collaboration between Deborah Padfield, Dr Charles Pither and patients from INPUT pain management unit, St Thomas’ Hospital. Chronic pain patients worked with the artist to create photographs which expressed their pain in a visual medium. The project finding a visual language for pain is a moving and startling collection of images that explores the interface between doctor and patient, photographer and subject, maker and viewer, science and art. ‘I have always found it hard to explain my pain to doctors. You have to explain it so that they can understand it … I have found this really beneficial. It is a wonderful idea’ (participating patient). Funded by: • The Sciart Consortium • The Arts Council of England • Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charitable foundation • Paintings in Hospitals
Publications
Chapter 8. The photograph as a mediating space in clinical and creative encounters
Collaborative drawings: blue-prints of conversation dynamics’
The Routledge Handbook of Well-Being explores diverse conceptualisations of well-being, providing an overview of key issues and drawing attention to current debates and critiques.
Being in Pain: using images and participatory methods to explore intercultural understanding of pain
This book approaches notions of Being, Interculturality and New Knowledge Systems, through a team of expert contributors who share their evidence-based knowledge.
Encountering Pain: Hearing, seeing, speaking
What is persistent pain? How do we communicate pain, not only in words but in visual images and gesture? How do we respond to the pain of another, and can we do it better? Can explaining how pain works help us handle it? This unique compilation of voices addresses these and bigger questions. Defined as having lasted over three months, persistent pain changes the brain and nervous system so pain no longer warns of danger: it seems to be a fault in the system. It is a major cause of disability globally, but it remains difficult to communicate, a problem both to those with pain and those who try to help. Language struggles to bridge the gap, and it raises ethical challenges in its management unlike those of other common conditions. Encountering Pain shares leading research into the potential value of visual images and non-verbal forms of communication as means of improving clinician–patient interaction. It is divided into four sections: hearing, seeing, speaking, and a final series of contributions on the future for persistent pain. The chapters are accompanied by vivid photographs co-created with those who live with pain. The volume integrates the voices of leading scientists, academics and contemporary artists with poetry and poignant personal testimonies to provide a manual for understanding the meanings of pain, for healthcare professionals, pain patients, students, academics and artists. The voices and experiences of those living with pain are central, providing tools for discussion and future research, shifting register between creative, academic and personal contributions from diverse cultures and weaving them together to offer new understanding, knowledge and hope.
Introduction 1 encountering pain
How do we respond to the pain of another, and can we do it better? Can explaining how pain works help us handle it? This unique compilation of voices addresses these and bigger questions.
Absence and presence: the potential for art to facilitate improved communication about pain
Visual Imagery: A Tool to Explore the Impact of Burning Mouth Syndrome
New Contexts: what art psychotherapy theory can bring to an understanding of using images to communicate the experience of pain in medical pain consultations
Mirrors and shadows: Photography as a way of sharing pain experience in medical pain consultations
Collaborative drawings: Blue-prints of conversation dynamics: The role of images and image-making processes in improving communication and well being - a series of workshops at the National Portrait Gallery
Images as catalysts for meaning-making in medical pain encounters: a multidisciplinary analysis.
The challenge for those treating or witnessing pain is to find a way of crossing the chasm of meaning between them and the person living with pain. This paper proposes that images can strengthen agency in the person with pain, particularly but not only in the clinical setting, and can create a shared space within which to negotiate meaning. It draws on multidisciplinary analyses of unique material resulting from two fine art/medical collaborations in London, UK, in which the invisible experience of pain was made visible in the form of co-created photographic images, which were then made available to other patients as a resource to use in specialist consultations. In parallel with the pain encounters it describes, the paper weaves together the insights of specialists from a range of disciplines whose methodologies and priorities sometimes conflict and sometimes intersect to make sense of each other's findings. A short section of video footage where images were used in a pain consultation is examined in fine detail from the perspective of each discipline. The analysis shows how the images function as 'transactional objects' and how their use coincides with an increase in the amount of talk and emotional disclosure on the part of the patient and greater non-verbal affiliative behaviour on the part of the doctor. These findings are interpreted from the different disciplinary perspectives, to build a complex picture of the multifaceted, contradictory and paradoxical nature of pain experience, the drive to communicate it and the potential role of visual images in clinical settings.
Deborah Padfield case study
Encountering pain: hearing, seeing, speaking - a conference with a difference
The body as image: image as body
Encountering Pain: Hearing, Seeing, Speaking - A Conference With A Difference
Encountering Pain
Can images of pain enhance patient–clinician rapport in pain consultations?
Thresholds of pain: photography and pain communication
Pain is common and difficult to communicate or reduce into the verbal or numerical scales commonly used in clinical practice. Some academics have argued that pain resists description in language while others have argued conversely that it generates language. This chapter identifies the limitations of verbal language and current standardized scores for assessing pain, highlighting the social and economic (as well as individual) costs of pain’s incommunicability, so often resulting in inadequate treatment and increased suffering. It explores the specificities of the photographic medium demonstrating that visual images (in particular photographs) can be alternative vehicles for eliciting language and narrative capable of expanding and improving communication and clinician-patient interaction within medical pain consultations. Against the backdrop of other work exploring the value of arts and humanities to pain medicine, it focuses on a fine art/medical collaborative project, face2face, at a leading London teaching Hospital, which co-created images of pain with pain sufferers and piloted a selection of these in the clinics of ten experts. Giving examples of images from the project as patients progressed through their management, it also reports early research findings suggesting that the verbal language is enriched and the non-verbal interaction impacted on. It concludes that further investigation is necessary from multidisciplinary perspectives but that images and image-making processes should be considered valuable tools for enhancing and democratizing medical pain encounters.
Mirrors in the Darkness: Pain and Photography, natural partners
Do photographic images of pain improve communication in the pain consultation?
Background: Visual images may facilitate communication of pain in consultations. Objectives: In order to test whether photographic images of pain enrich the content and/or process of pain consultation, we compared patients’ and clinicians’ ratings of the consultation experience. Methods Photographic images of pain previously co-created by patients with a photographer were provided to new patients attending pain clinic consultations. Seventeen patients selected and used images that best expressed their pain and were compared with 21 not offered images. Ten clinicians conducted assessments in each condition. After consultation patients and clinicians completed ratings of aspects of communication and, where images were used, how they influenced the consultation. Results: The majority of both patients and clinicians reported that images enhanced the consultation. Ratings of communication were generally high, with no differences between those with and without images (except for confidence in treatment plan which was rated more highly in the image group). However, only in consultations with images, patients’ and clinicians’ ratings of communication were inversely related. Methodological shortcomings may underlie our findings of no difference. It is also possible that using images raised patients’ and clinicians’ expectations and encouraged emotional disclosure in response to which clinicians were dissatisfied with their performance. Conclusions: Using images in clinical encounters does not have negative impacts on the consultation but did not improve communication or satisfaction. Findings will inform analysis of behaviour in the video-recorded consultations.
The Patient's Journey Through Trigeminal Neuralgia
Pain is unwanted, is unfortunately common, and remains essential for survival (i.e., evading danger) and facilitating medical diagnoses. This complex amalgamation of sensation, emotions, and thoughts manifests itself as pain behavior. Pain is a moti-vating factor for physician consultations 1 and for emergency department visits and is T he IASP definition of tri-geminal neuralgia (TN) is "sudden, usually unilateral, severe, brief, stabbing, recur-rent episodes of pain in the distribution of one or more branches of the trigemi-nal nerve." 1 Here's now one sufferer describes the pain: "Supper with friends. Candles and wonderful food. Suddenly my face is split apart—the bones feel as though they are shattering and the flesh raked aside by red-hot claws. I lean forward, the food falls from my mouth. The guests stare, concerned and appalled. I cannot speak to explain why the tears stream down my face. I cannot even swallow, my own saliva dribbling onto my plate. All I can do is try not to scream. If I look into a mirror I cannot believe that there is no sign of injury, no blood pouring out of my eye. " Both descriptions highlight the key features of trigeminal neuralgia, but the second is far more graphic than the first. Only the patient's ar-resting report gives us insight into the personal experience of TN pain, illustrating the suffering and fear accompanying the first attack, which many patients remember because of its dramatic onset. TN has an enormous psychological impact, but few scholarly papers high-light the ways it can affect the quality of life. 2 TN is a neuropathic condition with a unique clinical manifestation; it is also one of the few chronic pain conditions in which sufferers can be rendered 100% pain-free either with medications or surgery. 3 For this reason, correct diagnosis is crucial so that patients can then follow a general-ly acknowledged care pathway as soon as possible. 4,5 Patients' verbal and visual descriptions provide a vividness and a level of detail missing from the generic medical criteria for classification. Pay-ing attention to these accounts can help improve the speed and accuracy of diagnosis and appropriate referral. This edition of Pain: Clinical Up-dates explores TN through the eyes, ears, and voices of patients alongside our clinical evidence-based guidelines. We collected these stories, descriptions, and images by means of focus groups, targeted emails, patient support-group meetings, and a photographic project. To gather material for her book, Insights—Facts and Stories Behind Trigeminal Neuralgia, 6 orofacial pain specialist Joanna Zakrzewska invited patients with TN to attend focus groups in the United Kingdom and United States. Sessions were recorded and transcribed. Patients in the U.S. support group also emailed their stories to relate their route of diagnosis, their symp-toms, and the impact of the condition on their lives and those of the people closest to them. Another important source of information was the collaborative art and medicine project face2face, based in London. Photographer Deborah Padfield worked individually with a group of facial pain patients, including three with TN, to create images and audio recordings of their pain and its impact at three points of treatment: before, during, and after pain management. This arc of time al-lowed the images to represent changes the patients had experienced in their perception of pain. The images also elicited significant narrative and emo
Mask: Mirror: Membrane. The photograph as a mediating space in clinical and creative pain encounters
Pain is difficult to communicate and constrict into the verbal or numerical scales commonly used. This thesis explores how photographic images can expand pain dialogue in the consulting room to include aspects of experience frequently omitted using traditional measures. It draws on material generated by the face2 face project, a collaboration with facial pain specialist Professor Joanna Zakrzewska and clinicians and patients from University College London Hospitals. The project has many strands: art workshops for clinicians and patients to attend together; the co-creation of photographs with facial pain patients reflecting their experience at different points in their treatment journey; the creation of an image resource developed as an innovative communication tool for clinical use; and an artist’s film focusing on doctor-patient dialogue and the role of narrative. The thesis argues that photographs of pain placed between patient and clinician can trigger more negotiated dialogue in the consulting room. It presents the co- creation of ‘pain portraits’ with pain sufferers as part of a Fine Art practice, extending the boundaries of what is considered Fine Art by shifting the power- dynamics inherent within the act of portraiture. Through shared control of the lens and a negotiated aesthetic, pain sufferers retain control of how their pain is visualised, instead of being on the passive receiving end of a medical/photographic gaze. The thesis explores and questions the specificities of photography as a particularly apposite medium for this work. It validates and makes visib le the invisible subjective experience of pain, addressing its incommunicable nature. Semiotic and metaphoric analyses of the material reveal the possibility of a developing inter-subjective and trans -cultural iconography for pain. The thesis aims to demonstrate that not only is medicine capable of providing new material for the gallery space, but art is capable of bringing new knowledge into the consulting space.
Mask:Mirror:Membrane
Journal of the British Pain Society. Publisher's url: https://www.britishpainsociety.org/static/uploads/resources/files/Pain_News_June2012.pdf
'Representing' the pain of others
A slippery surface ... can photographic images of pain improve communication in pain consultations?
Perceptions of pain. Deborah Padfield. (128 pages, 14.99.) Dewi Lewis, 2003. ISBN 1-904587-02-X
The Body in Conflict
Catalogue (CD-ROM) to accompany the Exhibition, Pain, passion, compassion, sensibility : a Wellcome Trust exhibition at the Science Museum : 12 February-20 June 2004. Editor Moscoso, Javier. Date 2004 I don't have the exact date and so have guessed. The Wellcome Trust website gives the following information: Publication/Creation London : Wellcome Trust : Science Museum, 2004. Physical description 17 unnumbered pages : illustrations (chiefly colour) ; 15 cm + 1 CD-ROM.
As if ⃛ visualizing pain
As if … visualising pain
Perceptions of Pain
Texts by Brian Hurwitz and Charles Pither. Perceptions of Pain is a moving and startling collection of images that explores the interface between doctor and patient, photographer and subject, maker and viewer, science and art.
Believing is seeing
Encountering Pain
UCL PRESS Open Access book which will be made fully available when completed and will be deposited accordingly
Face2face: sharing the photograph within medical pain encounters; a means of democratization
Pain is common and difficult to communicate or reduce into the verbal or numerical scales commonly used in clinical practice. Some academics have argued that pain resists description in language while others have argued conversely that it generates language. This chapter identifies the limitations of verbal language and current standardized scores for assessing pain, highlighting the social and economic (as well as individual) costs of pain’s incommunicability, so often resulting in inadequate treatment and increased suffering. It explores the specificities of the photographic medium demonstrating that visual images (in particular photographs) can be alternative vehicles for eliciting language and narrative capable of expanding and improving communication and clinician-patient interaction within medical pain consultations. Against the backdrop of other work exploring the value of arts and humanities to pain medicine, it focuses on a fine art/medical collaborative project, face2face, at a leading London teaching Hospital, which co-created images of pain with pain sufferers and piloted a selection of these in the clinics of ten experts. Giving examples of images from the project as patients progressed through their management, it also reports early research findings suggesting that the verbal language is enriched and the non-verbal interaction impacted on. It concludes that further investigation is necessary from multidisciplinary perspectives but that images and image-making processes should be considered valuable tools for enhancing and democratizing medical pain encounters.