Beyond Sight
The Photographers
Please find below short statements from two of the eight participants in the London Sight of Emotion workshops.
Mickel Smithen
I am a Community dance practitioner who has, in previous years, worked with disabled people through a number of different dance companies, including Amici Dance Theatre Co, Candoco Dance Company, and most recently the Salamanda-Tandem Dance Company.
The Salamanda-Tandem dance company is very visual and photography plays a big part, aiming to capture the way people move and to reveal it through the photographs. During the past few months we have been looking closely at this side of the company, facing up to a number of issues around visually portraying the dances. These photographic workshops came at a perfect time to help me develop my artistic skills and to understand why the dance company works with such an emphasis on the visual.
I hope to carry on photography after the workshops, and to develop my skills as a photographer so as to be able to bring it into the other activities and arts that I pursue, to bring a new quality to the experience. The photos I have taken reflect the techniques I have been introduced to in these workshops, and I think they demonstrate strongly that anything is possible, and that the senses other than sight can lead to great photos. The process of taking photographs is very different for visually impaired people, who experience moments differently from a sighted person.
As I have to align my body in dance I have to align my body, mind and camera in photography to capture exactly what I want.
Jane Sellers
My project is about all the things I enjoy in life, and about my family life. I live on my own in Surrey.
Sometimes my nephew Joseph comes to stay over. He is my sister’s son. He’ll be 14 in September and he is my height already. My sister is called Anne. She is younger than me and she lives close by. She’d had a bad morning before I took the photograph of her. She had spilt cherryade all over her trousers and wasn’t sure if it would come out or not. I’ve also taken some photographs inside my home.
I play guitar as well. I’m learning ‘Yesterday’ by The Beatles at the moment. Paul McCartney is an inspiration to me, but I’m finding the song really hard.
The last time I took a photograph before the Sight of Emotion course was 20yrs ago in 1987. I’ve remembered what I could see then, and tried to incorporate these memories into the photographs I’ve taken this time around. I’m going to keep on taking photographs.