“This is a majestic volume. Visually striking, intellectually challenging, and experientially transformative, this book promises to change how everyone encounters pain.”

Rob Boddice, Freie Universität Berlin.

“Deborah Padfield's book Perceptions of Pain introduced a ground-breaking strategy through which photography became an effective tool to interpret pain—an aspect of human experience that can, so often, appear inexplicable. The powerful images in this book are further evidence of the collaborative strength of photography and its special ability to give voice to those who are excluded.”

Dewi Lewis, Publisher

“A work that brings photographic, figurative, and poetic images of chronic pain to the clinic and demonstrates how visual, communicative frameworks can re-voice experiences and diagnoses of pain. This major, deeply reflective collection of papers represents a turning-point in defining the multifaceted importance of painscapes in clinical, therapeutic, and humanistic advocacy work. It firmly situates the arts and humanities, alongside the sciences, in responding to the pressing need for new strategies to alleviate chronic pain.”

Brian Hurwitz, King's College London

“Pain and its ever-increasing numbers of sufferers inhabit a kind of night world isolated from the ‘normal’ day world. 'A bandage hides the place where each is living,' W.H. Auden once wrote, while we, the healthy, 'stand elsewhere.’ Encountering Pain is an attempt to narrow this rift by making sure sufferers are heard, seen, and able to speak again—so that they might be better understood. Padfield and Zakrzewska have assembled an impressive team of patients, healthcare providers, artists, and academicians, all determined to make pain more visible and communicable. The authors compellingly demonstrate that language—whether in the form of words, gestures, or images—is a necessary first step towards alleviating pain. That it can often be as powerful as medicine.”

Dr. David Biro, SUNY Health Science Center in Brooklyn and author of The Language of Pain: Finding Words, Compassion, and Relief.