Seeing Beyond Sight

Posted by Jason Schupp on 25 April 2007.

During the 90s, a handful of teachers taught photography to students at the Governor Morehead School for the Blind. To tell the truth, upon learning this, I had a similar reaction as one of the first students: "What are you thinking, teaching photography to blind people?" However, seeing the sample images from Seeing Beyond Sight by Tony Deifell convinced me that it's not all that crazy. From the book's website:

Unusual as the idea may seem at first, putting cameras in the hands of visually impaired children proved to be extremely fruitful — both for the photographers, who found an astonishing new means of self-expression, and for the viewers of their images, for whom this is an entirely new kind of dreamlike and intuitive creation. Even before you know that these pictures were taken by blind teenagers, they are striking in their use of light and composition, and haunting in their chiaroscuro intensity.

Events are coming up in several US cities (including JPG's homebase of San Francisco, come May), plus there's also the Seeing Beyond Sight Challenge pool on Flickr and task on SFZero, both of which invite you to take photographs while blindfolded, and then share your experience as well as your photos.