By Elizabeth Maphike-Kok
The ‘Never Seen’ Photography Project, funded by British Council Sub-Saharan Africa Arts as an encouraging future endeavour for aspiring blind and partially sighted photographers, recently drew its final curtain. The journey has been thought-provoking and inspired many to realize their abilities using other senses. Visualizing and navigating surroundings can become very problematic for those who depend on their long white canes or guide dogs. These skills are acquired through training, but unfortunately, there are plenty of obstacles to navigate around and these give rise to many difficulties.
‘Never Seen’ was the idea of Karren Visser, a UK-based partially blind photographer and the lead artist for the project who secured the project funding. Relationships have been built that make way for the possibility to explore new creative and income-generating avenues. The most important highlight of this project is the significance of the power of visualization. A world of imperfect perfection. By the end of the project, we saw photography as what it is really meant to be, a tool to explore the imagination. This led to magnificently enriched ways in which to capture nature.
A key aspect of the project was for young blind and partially blind South Africans to learn new skills that give them the confidence to feel part of the visual world. The participants were Nurjawaan Rawoot, Grant Baiman and Charlie Dyasi with his guide dog Billy. All three engaged in the blind world of photography not knowing what to expect and curiosity got the best of them when they finally realised what it was about. Managing the project from afar, Karren Visser and her technical expert Wojciech Wolocznik timelessly set out and accomplished phenomenal interest from the group as it was originally rolled out as a pilot research project.
Lois Strachan, Cape Town-based writer, podcaster and disability advocate with guide dog Fiji coordinated the project on the ground. Lois assisted each participant in crafting a storyline that accompanied their photographs. Karren and Wojciech helped in the making of the digital stories, a series of photographs with audio recordings that are available online. Elizabeth Maphike-Kok transcribed the transcripts from the recordings for the digital stories for the closed captions to accommodate the deaf and deaf-blind audience. The project team had an event at Athlone School for the Blind in Glenhaven Bellville where Grant, Lois and Elizabeth were on site to facilitate a group of Grade 11 and 12 learners. Karren, Nurjawaan and Wojciech were with us via Zoom. We encouraged the learners to explore photography and showed them the three digital stories. Charlie joined us via a pre-recorded interview. We had planned everything to take into account unexpected travel delays and the pitfalls of load shedding!
The question and answer session raised eyebrows at first as learners were initially shy to show interest and enquire about every aspect of the photography project. Educators, intrigued by the potential of this resource, joined in with the discussion as they too saw the endless possibilities of using mobile phones to make photography accessible to a diverse audience.
The concept had its final debut Saturday 25 February with approximately 70 blind and visually impaired people showing interest in digital storytelling and about 30 attendees to the virtual event. The three participants re-lived their experiences explaining their approach to the project. The event program director, Durban-based Shakila Maharaj made reference to the profound learning opportunity while commending the group for a job expertly done. This event, part of the British Council Sub-Saharan Africa Arts Culture Connects initiative, included a diverse audience who are blind, partially blind, deaf, deafblind and full-sighted. The British Council Sub-Saharan Africa Arts, South African National Council for the Blind (SANCB) and their youth wing South African Blind Youth Organization (SABYO) raised the banner in establishing new prospects for future endeavours to invest in creative projects that encourage learning, work opportunities and a sense of fulfilment for blind people.
Nurjawaan Rawoot, leader of South African Blind Organisation Western Cape said:
“With taking photos as a person who’s blind, it’s given me ideas to go after passions of my own but through photography. Like, taking photos of cars and scenic areas of Cape Town … I tried so many video diaries before on my phone, this is way before the project. To help me remember things better … taking videos of specific things during the day, that’s a life skill take-away from this project. To remember what I was feeling in that moment with a video is fantastic because now instead of just taking photos, whether it’s of people, of family gatherings, I remember to take video clips. So that I can go back and remember the good time and emotion that I had at that moment. So, over-all I think that, getting to put that in to practice also helped me do it for myself now without needing any sort of app and it’s been an awesome, awesome journey.”
