Art, sometimes, is not accessible to everyone. For a visually impaired person walking into an art gallery, a canvas can remain just that — a blank surface, and a photograph, a rectangle filled with information that has to be described by someone else. However, this World Photography Day, that narrative took a turn. At The Art of Seeing Differently, a blind photography exhibition, at Alliance Française of Madras, art, accessibility and perception joined together, turning heads. Inaugurated on August 19, the exhibition brings together photographs captured by visually impaired photographers — and ensures that the photographs themselves can be experienced beyond sight.
Inside the bright gallery, large photographs of sun filtering through dense canopies, a green leaf amid withered ones, forest floors, flowers, shaded roads and even a spotted deer standing on tall white display panels. Beneath them are Braille descriptions and tactile QR codes, alongside information about the photographers. Visitors pause before the works; sometimes their fingers move slowly across raised dots.
The tactile QR codes are part of Spacefelt, a smartphone application developed by Grailmaker Innovations. “When the visually impaired scan it, they get an audio description of the photograph. They are customised and can be listened to in Tamil or English,” says Aishwarya TV Pillai, co-founder of Grailmaker Innovations. The information also introduces the artist. The feature extends beyond visually impaired visitors, with sign-language videos for persons ith hearing impairment as well. “We made it inclusive, not specially for the visually impaired, but anybody who wants to know about the photograph,” she says. She adds that this initiative was born from lived experiences of herself and many others. So she and her team are working towards making accessibility priority rather than a second thought.
The photographs emerged from a three-day workshop held at IIT Madras from July 3 to 5. Professor Hemachandran Karah of IIT Madras, the key person of the exhibition, says the idea emerged from the work of the Accessibility Research Centre (ARC), which focuses on making disciplines accessible to everyone.
The workshop was conducted after ARC contacted Partho Bhowmick, whose lectures on making photography accessible to visually impaired people had previously been recorded under ARC’s ‘Disability and Disciplines’ initiative. A call for registration was made across India for 30 participants, and the seats were filled within two days. Participants arrived from Mumbai, Gujarat, Delhi, Chennai, and other parts of Tamil Nadu.
The workshop combined theory and practice. Participants learned what a camera does, how to take long shots and selfies, before heading out across the campus in small groups. Each participant was paired with a co-creator — students from SRMIST, Ramapuram’s Media Studies department, who collaborated with ARC for this initiative.
For Nagarajan, a professor at Presidency College and one of the photographers, the experience was entirely new. “I had no clue about capturing things — movable, immovable, nature — when I started out,” he says. Practical sessions with co-creators helped participants understand “how far away the subject is from your body and how to capture it” from a technical perspective.
Sound, touch and spatial awareness became integral to the process. Speaking about his photograph of a green leaf against a background of withered leaves, Nagarajan says, “I was able to feel the leaf, understand the distance and capture it.” The techniques eventually gave him confidence. “Only after learning these techniques, I gained the confidence that we can also take good photos.”
The exhibition is as much about the act of seeing as it is about questioning who gets to see, create and experience art. “Everyone must understand that photography is for all, and not restricted to one group of people. They should know that art can be felt by everyone,” says Nagarajan.
And perhaps, amid photographs of leaves, light, roads and forests — accompanied by Braille, sound and touch — the exhibition asks its visitors to indulge in what Hemachandran states as “mindful photography”.
The Art of Seeing Differently, a blind photography exhibition, is open to visitors at the Alliance Française of Madras until August 26.