Living with deafblindness: ‘My life fell apart when I began losing my sight, but now I’m a photographer’
. I thought that was the only condition I’d have to contend with in life and then I discovered around the age of 14 that I wasn’t really seeing as much as my friends who I used to hang around with on the streets. How come they could see where they were going and I couldn’t? My friend could see the stars and all I saw was blackness. Or wandering around at nighttime and it was pitch black for me but my friends could see where they were going. It baffled me.
I liked the primary school though. I was just treated the same as the other kids. You have to remember this was the 80s, but I blended in quite well. I was pretty quiet. I had a lady, a special teacher assistant who would come in once a week just to see how I was getting on. I got through school ok. I think I’d have found school quite difficult anyway, but I had a lot of friends at school, got up to the same things primary school kids get up to.
This is why I do photography now. It’s the one thing that has been a bridge for me to connect society. It was only around 2016/17 that I “came out” as a blind person. I just didn’t have the courage or confidence beforehand. Photography is the only constant I have in life, one that I enjoy. I’ve always been a creative person. I direct all my focus to one thing. It’s comfortable and relaxing. I’ve not being diagnosed with autism but with more people talking about mental health these days you start to recognise patterns and it just seems all too familiar.
I had already started doing photography around that time, so felt that could really bend some minds in public perception – photography and blindness don’t really go together do they? And I was good at taking photos. I seem to have an eye for it and it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done.Being 95 per cent blind, imagine you’re looking at a computer screen and everything is black but right in the middle there’s a pinhole you can see.
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