Q. If you were blind and someone gave you a camera, what would you take a picture of?

A.  If you were like Tony Deifell’s visually impaired students, you might take pictures of the feeling of warm light and cool shadows, all kinds of surfaces, the voices of your friends and family, barking dogs, the ground you walk on, your toys and maybe even your money. The incredibly beautiful and profound treatment of these subjects by Deifell’s students is captured in the book Seeing Beyond Sight.

The picture above was taken by Katy, a thirteen year old girl with low vision in Kennesaw, NC. Proof positive that it is as important to “feel” a picture as it is to “see” it when pressing the shutter release.

http://www.seeingbeyondsight.org/

If you are interested, here is an exercise from a wonderful book Drawing Projects: An Exploration of the Language of Drawing by Mick Maslen and Jack Southern (2011, Black Dog Publishing).  The exercise is to draw a tactile self-portrait by closing your eyes and feeling your face with one hand while drawing it with the other. The idea is to improve your ability to “see” by helping your appreciate the interplay between sight and your other critical senses. The exercise translates to paper what is felt instead of what is seen.