[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] articles photography

[Lisa Yayla]

Beyond Sight: Photographs by the visually impaired
http://niseng.blogspot.com/2007/06/beyond-sight-photographs-by-visually.html
excerpt
“Beyond Sight” displays photographs by participants of Blind with Camera 
(BwC), an ongoing workshop run by Bhowmick and Victoria Memorial School 
for the Blind in Mumbai. BwC trains the visually impaired in the art of 
photography using a complex mix of mental imagery and sensory perception.

At the workshop, participants conceive an image mentally and translate 
it into a photograph with the help of a sighted companion. “They are 
trained to spend time feeling a space, sensing the layout of objects, 
touching them or using their judgment,” Bhowmick explains. “They listen 
to detailed descriptions, feel the warmth of the light, search for 
visual memories of sight (if not born blind) and connect all this with 
the external visual condition.”


excerpt
http://www.axistive.com/phantoms-virtual-rehabilitation.html
PHANToMs Virtual Rehabilitation

The applications for the blind and visually impaired were readily 
apparent, and soon we saw haptics technology in medical and surgical 
training programs, flight school, teleoperations and scientific 
visualization,” McLaughlin says.


Art show
http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/livingtoday/070622/festival.shtml

Hours for the Helen Keller Festival of the Arts in Spring Park will be 9 
a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. This juried show 
will include items such as pottery, glass, jewelry, paintings, 
photography and mixed media. The Gees Bend Quilt Collective will be 
there, too.
Inside the Tennessee Valley Art Center, 511 N. Water St., the annual 
Helen Keller art show will feature work by Alabama children who are 
visually impaired, blind and/or deaf.
“You’ve Got That Magic Dust,” a juried exhibit by the Alabama Pastel 
Society also is hanging inside.
article
http://www.visionsvcb.org/shooting_blind.html
The Seeing with Photography Collective and
VISIONS/Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired proudly present 
Shooting Blind Photographs by the Visually Impaired
This remarkable book presents a wonderful selection of prints by members 
of the Seeing with Photography Collective at Visions at Selis Manor. The 
members are dedicated photographers with varied degrees of vision loss, 
from total blindness to partial sight. The photographers collaborated 
with sighted volunteers who are photographers, filmmakers and students. 
Members work as individuals or as a team to create stunning photographs. 
The photography classes offered by VISIONS teach developing and printing 
as well as composition and lighting techniques.

The volume also includes interviews with the photographers, giving the 
reader insight into the artistic expression sought by each visually 
impaired artist. It was published by the Aperture Foundation.


excerpt blog about A Dog's Eye View blog
http://joystory.blogspot.com/2007/07/thinking-blogger.html

blog
http://careysaysums.squarespace.com/journal/2007/7/5/colors-magazine-photos-submission.html
Colors Magazine Photos Submission
In response to the popularity of Tony Deiffel's Seeing Beyond Sight 
(Chronicle Books), Colors Magazine wants a snapshot for its back cover. 
The only requirement is that the photo must be taken by a visually 
impaired photographer from the book. The color picture can be artsy 
since the magazine's editor may want to focus on the abstract for this 
issue.

Below are four shots selected from a handful that I'm sending over to 
the Italian magazine in the hopes of appealing to their backside. The 
grainy shot emphasizes the red filter that Lise is holding. The second 
is neon on steel from Tinseltown. Next is a wrist-flicked attempt of 
self-expression. The last shot is just plain sexy: Lise's profile on 
pebbles.


http://www.edutopia.org/lighting-way

excerpt

Lighting the Way
Photography is a revelation, and a learning tool, for visually impaired 
students.
by Alexei Bien
published 6/14/2007

Dark Visions:
A student named Katy catches some rays.

Credit: Chronicle Books
What would children who are blind show us about the world if they 
learned to take pictures? The question first occurred to photographer 
Tony Deifell in 1991, soon after graduating from the University of North 
Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied anthropology. A year later, he 
sought an answer by setting up an experimental photography program, 
called Sound Shadows, at Governor Morehead School for the Blind, in 
Raleigh, North Carolina.

The state-funded Governor Morehead is North Carolina's only school for 
the visually impaired; established in 1845, it is one of the oldest in 
the United States. Sound Shadows was based there for five years, from 
1992 to 1997, during which Deifell cotaught thirty-six students ages 
12-19 with visual impairments. The kids not only learned how to point 
and shoot, they also were taught how to use a camera to re-create dreams 
and express personal vision.

In April 2007, Chronicle Books published Seeing Beyond Sight, Deifell's 
richly illustrated record of his experience at the school. The book 
features about 150 images from the Sound Shadows program, accompanied by 
the words of their creators as well as updates on many of the student 
photographers.


Dark Visions:
A self-portrait by Travis.

Credit: Chronicle Books
In the book's introduction, Deifell concedes that in 1992, taking Sound 
Shadows from concept to curriculum was no easy task. He had the examples 
of many visually impaired artists to inspire him, but it was still 
unheard of to actually teach photography, the least tactile of the arts, 
to blind students. The proposal was so unusual that when Deifell 
approached the school, the outreach director thought it was a joke.

But not long after Sound Shadows got under way, Sheila Breitweiser, the 
school's superintendent at the time, received a package from a student 
in the program that demonstrated the project's benefits. With her first 
roll of film, Leuwynda Forbes, then eighteen, had aimed her mechanical 
eye at cracks in the school's sidewalks. Deifell was dismayed at first, 
thinking that precious film had been wasted on accidental exposures. 
Then he saw the note Forbes had attached to one of the photographs, a 
message for Breitweiser that read, "Since you are sighted, you may not 
notice these cracks. They are a big problem, since my white cane gets 
stuck in them." The cracks were promptly fixed.


Sidewalk Hazard:
Leuwynda Forbes's white cane kept getting stuck in these cracks -- until 
she sent this image with a note to the school superintendent.

Credit: Chronicle Books
"What surprised me was the confidence and assertiveness of one of our 
kids, and the wherewithal to provide evidence," the superintendent 
recalls. Also important to Breitweiser was that Forbes's work, like all 
of the students' photos, was an opportunity for discussion, essential in 
Sound Shadows to help the students "see" their photographs after they 
had taken them.

With autofocus cameras, the students used sound as an informant, and 
touch as a way to compose their images. But to envision the photographs 
-- to assess them and learn from them -- required the teachers and 
students to discuss the prints. The teachers would faithfully report 
what they saw in each picture, and the students merged those 
descriptions with what they had perceived or imagined while in the field.

One student, John Vieregge, then nineteen, took what he believed was a 
photograph of a shrimp boat (he had heard it), but the vessel was so far 
in the distance that his teachers thought it was a serendipitous image 
of seagulls caught in flight. The teacher praised the image, as 
recounted in Seeing Beyond Sight, saying, "Oh, I love this picture of 
these birds."

"What do you see in the background?" Vieregge responded. When the 
teacher mentioned only the surf, Vieregge pointed out, "I believe there 
was a shrimp boat out there."

Recalling the exchange, Deifell wrote, "If it weren't for the teachers, 
John would not have 'seen' the seagulls, and if it weren't for John 
pointing out the shrimp boat, we, as teachers, would not have 'seen' the 
shrimp boat."

Critiquing of photographs was of course collaborative, but finding a 
shot and setting it up was often an independent project. "A lot of the 
students had been insulated -- in classrooms, in dorms," explains Dan 
Partridge, a Governor Morehead teacher during Sound Shadows and now a 
research associate for Duke University's Jazz Loft Project. "They 
weren't really called on to interact with the outside world or the 
visual world, and that's such an important part of communication. 
Photography was a vehicle for the students. We weren't looking for the 
best photographs; we were allowing them to do everything on their own. 
The goal was to feel like they could communicate with anybody on any 
level."

For Merlett Lowery, a student frightened by the noises the school's 
maintenance crew made when they worked, this goal meant confronting the 
source of her unease. Lowery, thirteen at the time, made a phone call, 
set up an appointment to meet the groundskeepers, and made a plan to 
record them on film. She executed the assignment so well that she 
decided to make her own book of the images. In capturing the leaf 
blowers and lawn mowers on the page, Lowery quieted her fears.


With autofocus cameras, the students used sounds as an informant, and 
touch as a way to compose their images.

Credit: Chronicle Books
"It was great when they were able to understand their life and express 
it," Partridge says. "People can walk into photography and take a great 
picture, but it takes a long time to learn how to interact with one's 
world and form existential questions."

Parker J. Palmer, teacher, activist, and author of The Courage to Teach, 
concurs: "Education bears a terrific responsibility for cultivating wide 
seeing or narrow seeing. It's not an unfair generalization that our 
colleges and universities turn out way too many people who have power in 
the world, but no insight or vision, no cultivated way of seeing its 
possibilities, or what it is that's driving them."

Sound Shadows prepared the students at Governor Morehead for just this 
kind of inquiry by helping them explore their own identities. One 
photograph in Deifell's Seeing Beyond Sight shows Merlett, who is black, 
holding hands with her best friend Reba, who is white. Merlett had 
previously claimed to dislike white people, so, in discussing the 
photograph, Deifell broached the subject. "Tell me about Reba," he said. 
"Reba is white, isn't she?" Merlett said she didn't know. All she knew 
was that Reba had long hair. "She doesn't act white?" ventured Deifell. 
"How does she act?" "Like us," answered Merlett.