Storytelling and the Healing Power of Photography: Rita Leistner’s My Space Project

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyze the artistic, social project titled My Space. Stories from Inside the Downtown Eastside Vancouver, created by Canadian photographer Rita Leistner. Through her photographs and interviews, the artist presents the everyday life of a group of drug and alcohol addicted residents of Astoria and Balmoral hotels. The article is based on photographs taken by Leistner and the statements of project participants – both acquired from the artist’s Webpage. Bearing in mind Leistner’s intentions, we tend to present her story in the storytelling narrative. We treat that approach as a useful tool for qualitative data analysis as well as insightful framework to represent a story. This approach has worked well so far in the study of culture and art. Thus, we focus on the content and a form of a story while uncovering its threads looking at it from different dimensions interpreted through the prism of individuals to whom the story relates. We look at the way in which the space occupied by the heroes of the story is being photographed by Leistner, who creates a medium allowing the narrative to connect the present with the past and the future. That medium plays an important role in building a community.