[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] Article: Hear and you will see

[Shelley L. Rhodes]

New Straits Times (Malaysia)
Thursday, June 23, 2005

Hear and you will see

By LOKE POH LIN

S.Y. Leong instinctively clicks away with his camera, capturing insightful 
and almost surreal pictures. Leong is blind but he hears, feels and 'sees' 
with his mind. LOKE POH LIN is enraptured by his works.

NO, I'm not writing a piece about the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. I'm 
going to write about a man - husband, father, office worker, mentor, 
masseuse and now photographer - who is about to stage his first exhibition. 
Nothing that remarkable, you may say, except that the man in question is 
blind. Sightless. There is no difference in his world between day and night. 
Black or white. Red or blue. Smile or scowl.

S.Y. Leong, 48, is a father of two young adults, who now mentors younger 
sightless individuals as they grope their way through life with a handicap 
as big as Mount Everest (if you allow it to be!). Leong himself walks tall. 
He is a confident, articulate individual who is knowledgeable and aware of 
the world around him, whether it is on a social or political basis. 
Unsurprisingly, the plight and welfare of the blind are big issues with him.

When Leong started losing his sight at 29, he was a retrenched office worker 
doing his best to look after his family. Facing the prospects of a sightless 
future, he fought his blindness valiantly but after two years and seven 
operations, the professor who was in charge of his case told him that it was 
irreversible.

The cause of his blindness was LC disease. The biological damage was the 
result of vitreous haemorrhaging which in turn caused the capillaries to 
clot up. Consequently, the retina blurred up. At first, the doctors could 
not detect the cause of his blindness and so they could not treat him.

LEONG'S PICTURE: Rain-streaked windscreen of a bus, the driver and a woman 
paying. Leong can be seen on the left

His blindness is total. By 31, when most men are in their prime, Leong lost 
the sight of both his eyes and entered a new and frightening world of 
complete and utter darkness.

"I was angry and frustrated. And I felt totally useless. I remember one 
occasion where I broke a glass in the kitchen. I couldn't move or anything. 
I had to ask the children to go to their rooms and not to come out till 
their mother got home. I dared not take a step because there was broken 
glass everywhere. Imagine how frustrated I felt," recalled Leong with a 
shudder.

"I was so down that at one stage I thought of jumping off the balcony. That 
was when I still had some sight left. I made my way over to the railing and 
stood on the ledge and looked down. Then I thought, 'yucks!' and gave up on 
the idea," he said, laughing.

Gradually he came to terms with his condition and used his wits to learn how 
to be more mobile and independent. He learned new skills to help him earn a 
living and became a masseuse. He says: "Mobility is very important to a 
blind person. Once you achieve that mobility, it will inspire such 
confidence."

And Leong is the very picture of that confidence. "Unless I need a pair of 
eyes to do something, I will not rely on a sighted person to do it." He is 
human though and there are times when his heart feels heavy. "Every time I 
wake up, I get a constant reminder: 'You are blind.' It wears me down 
sometimes. So I look for new things to do. I like to get involved in doing 
new things. I can then say to myself, 'I'm doing something that is 
meaningful'."

It is this desire which has led him to photography. Belinda and Gillian Tan, 
of Picture This & That, have been his clients for years. Gradually the idea 
for this project came up and finally Leong started to agree to experiment 
shooting images with a camera that the girls provided.

"I was a bit shy at first. Imagine a blind fellow taking out his camera and 
shooting pictures. Some people will think that I'm trying to be funny or 
something," he grins. "Whatever the outcome of this project, photography has 
filled me with a sense of usefulness. I've worked on it for nearly a year 
now. It started out slowly but I've progressed.

"In my mind, being involved, being a part of something was the important 
bit. Like in a race, it was not the winning that mattered, it was having 
participated and finishing the competition."

So how does a blind person work at photography? When does he know when to 
shoot? How does he know whether the composition is right? How is he going to 
judge if the light was enough or not? Well, for starters, he will not be 
shooting the way you or I do.

He uses his other senses acutely: his sense of hearing especially, composing 
a picture in his mind and aims his camera there and clicks away. Most of all 
he uses his intuition and his instincts.

Sure there have been hits and misses and not every shot is perfectly framed, 
but the results will astound you. Some compositions will be like nothing a 
sighted lensman will ever capture because we are too busy interpreting what 
our eyes tells us to see the perfection of the picture.

One of Leong's images captured in a bus is a great example of this. This was 
taken inside a busy bus on a rainy day. Rain is very disorienting for a 
blind person because the sound of rain can mask everyday, familiar sounds 
which are important signals for him to make his way through the day.

It is an amazing picture, almost surreal -- with two mirrors taking prime 
position. There is the rain-streaked glass of the front windscreen of the 
bus. Reflected in the larger, horizontal mirror is Leong himself, a woman 
passenger, outstretched palm with a coin in it and the bus driver. Talk 
about perfect timing. It's brilliant.

"Photographers are inspired to catch images which capture their imagination. 
One morning, at around 6, I was having one of those heavy, oppressed days. 
The blind feel like this sometimes. Then I heard a road sweeper and he was 
whistling. I started wondering what age he was. Forties? That's old and life 
is passing him by. Is he young? That's even worse. Then I started thinking, 
'I'm in my forties, blind, have children and have a job. Life's not so bad 
what.' He inspired me. I took out my camera and aimed it at the sweeper. 
Belinda told me I caught him just in time." I can't wait to see the photo 
she's talking about.

His efforts were so successful and prolific that there are enough images to 
stage an exhibition of his work. Titled "Insight", it will be on from July 
11 till 30 at The Photographers' Gallery. It challenges the very idea that 
not only can photography depict what the eye can see but in fact it can also 
capture what the eye cannot see, that which is sensed from within, the 
intuitive.

If there's one message that Leong can share with the rest of us who are 
sighted, it's that the blind are just as human as everyone else. "We were 
born human. We just happen to be blind. We are not useless, we are just 
handicapped."

While preparing for the exhibition, Belinda and Gillian taped their 
conversations with Leong. Transcripts from the recordings will show the 
pithy, poetic side of the photographer.

Stupidity is different from ignorance
Some think we're stupid or spastic
Because we can't see.
Just who is the stupid one?

Inconsideration
Flailing my arm for a taxi, I am tired now
Every car sounds like a taxi.
Finally one stops...
Some idiot cuts in on me and gets the taxi.
It's worse when it's raining.

The Daily Grind is Hard
Feeling redundant is common.
Every day I consciously fight this.
I want to do more than just exist
Hope Joy Peace Love
I want to be alive.

The Day that Life Stopped
When I became blind, it seemed like life stopped.
There was DENIAL
Then ANGER
And FRUSTRATION
Now ACCEPTANCE because life began again.

It's true that in Leong's case, life has started again with the realisation 
that there is a future with hope and joy. He finds joy in helping others who 
are like him. He likes to take them under his wing and counsel them to 
better themselves and push themselves to be useful human beings. He confirms 
that "at first I was angry that I became blind. Now I see it as a kind of 
blessing, because I have learnt so much from it and have been blessed by 
it."

The Right Choices
I choose to believe I'm special
Capable of compassion, empathy, understanding.
To cope with his blindness,
Leong has even developed a system
for reading the world around him.
I was blind but now I see...
Since becoming handicapped
My other senses have sharpened.
By standing still,
I can "read" situations
I can "feel" a person's voice for moods
I can "place" people and objects within a space
I call it SOUND REFLECTION.

When I said: "You sound like a dolphin." He retorted with a chuckle: "I've 
been called many things before, but never a dolphin!"

Leong's sense of perception will put even the sighted ones among us to 
shame. Share in his inner vision by visiting his exhibition from July 11 to 
30 at the Photographers' Gallery in Jalan Ampang, Kuala Lumpur. It is bound 
to inspire you to see things which you'd never thought of seeing because you 
have this amazing faculty called sight.

It will be great if more people could be exposed to this exhibition, which 
is an eye-opener for us sighted folks, for want of a better word. After 
exhibiting at The Photographers' Gallery, it is hoped that sponsors will 
offer their support to take it to more places and people, bringing more 
light to the cause of the visually handicapped.

You can visit its website at www.thephotographersgallery.com.my


http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Friday/Features/20050623165404/Article/indexb_html


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