SHAPE 2017 TateExchange Book FINAL Draft - Flipbook - Page 9
“Framed as if peeping through a letter box, this colour photo shows a
woman’s brown eyes gazing to the left. Her dark brows are neat, just
below the brim of her slate grey felt hat – presumably the fedora of
the title. Its expansive brim fills the upper left quarter of the photo,
obscuring a blurred background beyond. From just her eyes it is hard
to gauge this white woman’s age but she’s probably in her 30’s. There
are fine lines between her brows and on the thin skin below each eye.
Our eyes are drawn to hers, as pinpricks of light fleck the black pupils.
Fine red blood vessels creep across the whites.”
This piece was commissioned as part of an international photography
festival called Diffusion Festival, which took place across Cardiff throughout
October 2015. My project was entitled, ‘Turning It On Its Head’, which took
the form of text and audio files embedded in the images.
I think that blind and partially sighted artists can provide a slightly different
perspective on the visual and dispel myths about ‘seeing’. Recently, in a
museum in Kawasaki City, Japan, I explained that blind people are fascinated
by the visual world – after all, it is around us in our language and everyday
interactions and difficult to ignore. The project looked to foreground the
perspectives of disabled people in the context of the festival theme, and
looked at audio description as an integral part of the work rather than
something that was bolted on to aid access.
That is what I, as a disabled person, am constantly campaigning to make –
interpretation that is fundamentally creative and can be integrated from
the outset rather than becoming an afterthought, and which aids sighted
as well as blind and partially sighted audiences. Research has shown that
descriptions trigger a memory in the brain that enables you to remember
an experience for longer, which must be beneficial. In my experience of
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