All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,
and, endowed as they are with reason and conscience,
they should act fraternally towards one another.
UN
The teaching of photography is a key instrument for fostering creativity and the inclusion of people with functional diversity.
To create and communicate means to take an active part in the society to which one belongs.
Every human being has the ability to look, with their eyes and/or with emotion. There are great photographers with functional diversity who have an important artistic body of work: Evgen Bavcar, Pete Eckert, Gerando Nigenda, Carme Ollé, Cristina García Rodero, Judith Scott, Victor Meliveo, Luis Lugán o Dan Miller, are just a few examples.
Photography is valid in all environments; it communicates and makes visible realities that most of us do not see. For this reason, it is a powerful instrument for intervention and social inclusion.
The APAMI Association of Catarroja invited us to conduct a photography workshop. The members of APAMI are people with functional diversity and their families. They belong to a small leisure and free-time association, and among their objectives is achieving greater visibility and recognition.
The workshop took place outdoors on a summer afternoon. We began by having a snack, chatting, and laughing. We proposed exercises that turned into photographic accompaniments; we demonstrated how to hold the camera—sometimes a challenging task—how to focus, and how to shoot. We didn’t need to teach them how to look; they already knew.
We were all photographers and models. Entire families posing, a contagious excitement for the newly discovered tool. Happy photographers and families amazed by the results, although, between the excitement and the camera buttons, many photographs were accidentally deleted.
Photography is an act of seeing; it situates us in reality, allowing diverse individuals to capture fragments of their lives, their present, and providing them with an accessible tool to express, communicate, reveal themselves, and share their human, sensitive, and aesthetic concerns with complete autonomy. To focus on others as they are, to blur out what we do not like.
We have witnessed a unique and moving process, where excitement, smiles, and discovery were the protagonists of the afternoon. Photography was the excuse to create a few hours of inclusive society, integration through overcoming challenges and embracing normality.
The resulting images will be part of a project for the association. They reflect a normalizing and inclusive perspective, a deeper understanding of reality from the viewpoint of its own protagonists and their families.
We are convinced that artistic education enables personal and social transformations. In this sense, photographic practice can strongly promote social change.
Our goal has been to offer images that encourage reflection and empathy and, above all, to embrace the concept: We are equal, we are diverse, we all have the ability to look.
More photographs on our facebook.
