Impacts
Impacts on visually impaired photographers
- Trigger an insightful journey in visually impaired to bring out their potential strengths. Stimulate and develop their emotional, intellectual and creative expressions, and inspire what still can be achieved
- Uninhibited process of creation - translating mental images into physical photographs demands focus of mind, senses, insightful, judgmental, and intuitive. Combination of these factors helps in developing key skills in visually impaired required in workspace such as problem solving, perseverance, flexibility, team / collaborative work and time-management, and social competence.
- Visually impaired photographers have a feeling of belonging in their accomplishment of seemingly impossible task. This elevates their self-esteem, develops personality and increase confidence to take challenges and makes them more employable, and financial independence. It helps to transform them from passive welfare recipients to active shapers of their own lives.
- Proceeds from sales of photographs and / or royalty from use of photographs will go to the visually impaired photographers. As the project is open to visually impaired people with various economical backgrounds, additional income gives them more financial independence and inspires to earn more.
- Empowerment of visually impaired through photography helps them to be part, and contribute in several mainstream activities, facilitate their social inclusion.
Impacts on blind community
- Inspire peer to take new challenges and “over protected” visually impaired to comer out of their home and explore the world.
- Provide opportunities for visually impaired to earn living by pursuing a career in creative profession.
- Visually impaired will have more access to art in galleries and museums.
Impacts on Society
Work “by” the blind has to be “for” the blind. Beyond Sight is an inclusive exhibition that provides a combination of touchable raised images, Braille footnotes, visual aids and descriptive tour for the visually impaired visitors to access the photographs. It redefines the notion “to see is to photograph and to photograph is to see.” Inclusiveness encourages visually impaired to visit the exhibition (most are first time visitor to an art gallery). The exhibition provides a platform for interaction between sighted and visually impaired people. Demystify the polarity between blindness and visual expression, helps to sensitize people, correct public perception of visual impairment and disability in general. Bridge the gap between “Us” and “Them” and increase tolerance in society.
Impacts on approach to Photography
The experience of being a blind photographer is a small slice of the bigger experience of being blind human being. Their work is the reunion of both these experiences and that makes it thoughtfully different and makes us recall what photography is all about – creating a picture. Blind photographers gift us with a new visual language, free from the influence of visual history and modern visual culture, free from the conscious struggle for control, free from formalistic rules of perfection and away from intellect of visual literacy. Demands active mental participation of the sighted viewers to understand the experience of expressing a world that is not seen or partially seen. Demonstration of new understanding makes the work of blind photographer much truer to photography, and much closer to life.