Allie Crewe

The Healer

I was sent to photograph *** by a domestic violence charity in Bolton. She had survived a murder attempt by her ex partner and had a very wise soul. At the end of our shoot she had a message for me, about healing. It was uncanny as I had uttered her words 24 hours before admitting that I needed help to heal, to photograph healing and transformations. I knew the darkness but sought the light. In her job as a healer she knew how to open a door for me. I love to research and had ploughed through psychiatry books and lectures on trauma but I love experiential learning. If I could feel healing, would I be able to see it in others when holding my camera? I lept on her table. We cannot do it all alone and she was offering to teach me. I think she is wonderful and gifted!


In my portrait series on domestic abuse I seek the transformation -  the people who risk all to begin again. They may lose a home, family, a social standing, a job. They walk out on their beliefs and values. There is often a breakdown. They rise. The unlucky fall back into old patterns and the comfort of old habits. Some though attain a growth after trauma. Many speak of the work they put into transition, I am drawn to these people, the alchemists who speak of a journey but see no ending just a work in progress. A few feel trapped and unable to move on though they long to. We chose different destinations. When a person knows desolation and suffering they have an opportunity to learn compassion. 

My images are a showcase of moments, life and emotion distilled into one frame. Each image expresses many things, each has a surface story yet is also open and ambiguous, to be read differently by each viewer. To depict a person’s breakages and make something wonderful from fracture. Honouring transitions and allowing change and growth to exist in the frame. Breakage and repair as part of the history of a person, rather than something to disguise. The repair is literally illuminated.  A visual record of mends and seams, a photograph celebrating repair or rebirth.

Photo of my friend Isabel as the series is hidden until it exhibits in spring 2022 with SICK! Festival and SafeLives.

Using Format