The Frame as Witness: Visual Storytelling as a Catalyst for Empathy, Karen Bekker, PhD & Matthew Septimus (1 hr)
Description
A single photograph can change the way we see the world and the people in it.
Photography is one of humanity's most powerful tools for social advocacy and cultural witness. It preserves emotion, captures lived experience, and gives voice to communities whose stories are too often overlooked. For mental health and medical professionals, visual storytelling offers a compelling pathway to expanding cultural competence, deepening empathic attunement, and developing a more nuanced understanding of the social determinants that shape the lives of those we serve.
In this clinically relevant session, Dr. Karen Bekker and photographer Matthew Septimus bring together the worlds of art, social justice, and mental health. Through Septimus's documentary portraits of Occupy Wall Street participants, they examine how photography amplifies marginalized voices, challenges systemic assumptions, and bears witness to collective trauma, resilience, and the human capacity for recovery.
This session offers a framework for integrating visual narrative into clinical awareness, supporting cultural sensitivity, trauma-informed perspective-taking, and reflective practice, with particular attention to how systemic inequity and social displacement affect psychological well-being.
Learning Objectives: At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:
Discuss how documentary photography can reveal vulnerability and resilience in both individual and communities.
Explain the role of visual storytelling as a catalyst for empathy.
Identify ways in which photography and the arts can be used to support mental health education and awareness around social justice and collective trauma
Dr. Karen Bekker is a licensed psychologist with over four decades of clinical practice in New York and New Jersey. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from Connecticut College, her M.A. in Psychology from New York University, and her Ph.D. in Psychology from the Graduate Faculty for the Social Sciences at the New School for Social Research. She also completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Epidemiology at the Columbia University School of Public Health. Her current private practice focuses on anxiety, stress, trauma, chronic pain, depression, PTSD, and developmental disabilities.
Dr. Bekker's career spans research, clinical practice, administration, and teaching. She conducted early research at NYU Medical Center, Rockefeller University, and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, with clinical work in neonatal units at Harlem Hospital and the Rose Kennedy Center. She was founder and Clinical Director of A Starting Place, Inc., an innovative therapeutic preschool serving approximately 250 children with disabilities and their families. She has published in peer-reviewed journals on early intervention and advocacy for children with disabilities, and taught psychology at Bergen Community College, Dominican College, Montclair State University, and Adelphi University. A longstanding interest in emotion and the visual process in art has led Dr. Bekker to published scholarship on the lives and works of Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, and Mark Rothko, with presentations at professional conferences across the United States and internationally.
Matthew Septimus is a New York-based photographer educated at New York University and Parsons School of Design, with over thirty years of professional experience. His work spans portraits, performance, documentary, and culinary photography, reflecting a lifelong commitment to capturing the emotional lives of people and places. His clients have included the New York Times, MoMA PS1, Rockefeller University, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Columbia University, and Mount Sinai Hospital. For the PBS television series "Chef's Story," Septimus followed 27 master chefs from the studio set to their kitchens across the country, and his culinary photography for the French Culinary Institute has earned James Beard Award recognition.
Equally dedicated to photography as a tool for social connection and advocacy, he has taught the craft to at-risk youth in the South Bronx, developmentally disabled adults in Brooklyn, Central American immigrants on Long Island, and elderly residents of Manhattan's Lower East Side, with teaching affiliations at the International Center of Photography and The New School. His documentary work, including his portraits of Occupy Wall Street participants, reflects a deep commitment to amplifying marginalized voices and bearing witness to pivotal moments in history.