In 2002 and again in 2006 I photographed 20 therapists in the Los Angeles area, 16 of which you see here. I knew some of them as friends or acquaintances from an old job coordinating a psychology masters' program, and made contact with more through those connections.

This show at HAUS is the first leg of the project, my initial effort into translating therapy into photographs through an experiential process. I photograph each therapist in his or her office for about the length of a session, sit where the client sits, and talk. The therapists in this group differ widely in their approaches to therapy.

Whether it's possible to capture the "look" of therapy and therapists is the question I asked when I first began photographing them. It's a simple documentary portraiture premise. In this case, whether that essence could be conjured up with me as a stand-in therapy subject, all the while subjecting the therapist to my camera, complicates the premise.

It speaks to a question that persists throughout my work: whether photography can depict the "truth" of a subject. In this case, the subject is a catalyst for a process or a dynamic or a relationship, since therapy seems to be about much more than the therapist's ability to assess and treat pathologies.

When doing this work, I think about the work of German photographer August Sander. His systematic portraits of people in Weimar germany are powerful as depictions of the tension between personality and typology. Are therapists of a certain breed, class and type? Are they innate healers, or as one of my subjects put it, typically "the children of narcissistic parents?"

I have my own long and spotty history with therapy, which could be summarized as a desire for what Carl Rogers called "unconditional positive regard." If the latter could be bottled like perfume, then this is my attempt.

A very special thanks to the therapists who agreed to participate in this project.

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