Seeing Beyond Sight: Photographs by Blind Teenagers
Bonino Education Center, SF Cameraworks
San Francisco, CA
1 March – 12 May 2007

by Tonya Warner

The question of “what are you thinking, teaching photography to blind people?” raises a rather interesting debate; there are arguments in the vein of art therapy, expounding the benefits of self-expression, balanced against the opinion that we should be teaching other art disciplines that draw from blind students’ strengths rather than emphasizing their weaknesses. Although I admit I too was curious about how photographs by blind teens would look, I was originally in the later camp – I believed, and still do, that it might be more interesting if the kids had been taught to use audio equipment and created soundscapes – aural equivalents of photographs. This exhibition to me seemed not only telling of the automatic, mechanical nature of photography and the beauty of chance, but rather selfish on the part of the sighted, since the photographers could not take part in the enjoyment of their finished products.

“Seeing Beyond Sight” is presented in conjunction with the release of a book of the same name, compiled by Tony Deifell, who taught a photography class at the Governor Morehead School for the Blind from 1992-97. Upon reading profiles of some of the former students who contributed to this show, I discovered that not all are completely blind – a fact that throws previous discussions into question. Being partially sighted means that factors such as composition and lighting can still be consciously manipulated by the photographer. Upon consideration of this, one starts to realize just how personally specific these photographs are – these teenagers are not showing the world how blind people “see”, but how they individually perceive their surroundings, which is particular not only to their personality and past history, but to the amount of sight they possess. Some of the students are completely blind, while some can only see shadows and others have only peripheral vision – each variation would factor significantly into their image making.

Many of the images in the exhibition have a short dialogue or narration to accompany what we are seeing, while all are labeled with the photographer’s age at the time, In such an exhibition, narratives seem so necessary – because of the issue of personal expression as well as the broad idea binding them together. It would have been interesting to have more of a story behind some of the images, perhaps with a recording of the photographer talking about the making of the picture, recounting certain smells or sounds that surrounded the subject. In a way, saying that these photos alone show how these children see the world seems a bit short sighted (pardon the pun). What these teenagers got out of this photography class can be equated to any high school art class – the opportunity to express themselves and to exhibit themselves and what they find important; only, with this group, they must first get over the hurdle of being labeled blind. The visual impairments of these artists should supplement the images rather than distract from the sometimes startling beauty of the photographs. The lack of information that leaves the visitor approaching these images only as “taken by blind people” seems to severely limit the potential of such an exhibition and does not give enough credit to the photographers themselves.

http://www.sfcamerawork.org/exhibitions.html#sight
http://www.seeingbeyondsight.org/

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