SEEING BEYOND SIGHT: PHOTOGRAPHS BY BLIND TEENAGERS by Tony Deifell is a collection of real-life stories and photographs made by blind teenagers. It has a great foreword by Pulitzer-Prize winning child psychiatrist, Robert Coles. stories and photographs are the product of Sound Shadows, a literacy-through-photography class taught by Tony Deifell, Shirley Hand, Dan Partridge and Jessica Toal from 1992 to 1997 at the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, NC.
As a photographer, I feared losing my eyesight and began to wonder "If I were blind, could I still make photographs?" A rabbi once told me that in the Talmud, blind people are referred to as "sagi nahor," an Aramaic expression that means "great eyesight." As the rabbi explained, perhaps people who are blind see more than those who are sighted; perhaps there is seeing beyond sight. As the son of a preacher, I have been predisposed to mystical interpretations most of my life, so this paradox affirmed an intuition I had about these unlikely photographers.
The cameras were point-'n'-shoot, so the challenge was mostly where to point them. The students would ask questions about their surroundings, feel their subjects, and listen carefully to the hush and noise around them. It was as if they were listening for "sound shadows."
The cameras were point-'n'-shoot, so the challenge was mostly where to point them. The students would ask questions about their surroundings, feel their subjects, and listen carefully to the hush and noise around them. It was as if they were listening for "sound shadows."
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