Partho Bhowmick, a Mumbai based photographer, who started Blind With Camera to teach photography to the visually impaired and build capacity, has trained hundreds of blind people, one of whom was chosen recently to shoot one of the biggest ad campaigns of the country for Lux soap starring Katrina Kaif. Read about his amazing initiative.
Photography workshop for the visually impaired – sounds like an intriguing paradox. How can a person who cannot see pursue an art that is essentially a stimulating interplay of vision and view?
Partho Bhowmick, a Mumbai based photographer, who started the Blind With Camera project in 2006, to promote the art of photography in people with visual impairment and build capacity, has a compelling answer: “Photography is not just about the eyes and eyesight. It is a rich and fascinating interplay of imagination and ingenuity, feelings and impressions. It is what the mind sees and perceives, not the eyes.”
Blind With Camera provides a platform for the visually impaired to share their “Inner Gallery” of images, their imagination and point-of-view of the visual world, giving them new voice about their unique experience, feelings, challenges and hopes. It promotes ‘non-retinal’ art culture in India, explains Bhowmick.
Bhowmick, who is educated in business management and information technology, works full time with a corporate house, but photography remains his passion. Blind With Camera happened almost accidentally. While roaming about the streets of Bombay, way back in 2004, he picked up a dog-earred photography magazine from a pavement vendor. In it he came across an article on Evgen Bavcar, one of the world’s most accomplished blind photographers, based in Paris. “It was the epiphany in which the visual world of the blind opened up to me,” he says. “I contacted Evgen Bavcar and his work and philosophy had a profound influence on me. He put me on to the global mailing list of ‘Art Beyond Sight’. That opened the floodgates for me. I came in touch with nearly hundred blind artists and photographers around the world, as well as people providing new insights to the blind and their artistic expression.”
By the end of 2005, he decided to start photography workshops for the blind, but it was not easy to get around endless queries, doubts, even disbelief. Finally, after months of trying to enrol blind participants, the Victoria Memorial School for the Blind, Mumbai, offered its support in getting the workshop started.
The workshops were free of cost, with cameras provided, yet only one blind student attended my first photography workshop. Later, more and more blind joined in.
The visually impaired uses a combination of touch, audio clues, warmth of light, and recall of memory (if not born blind) and their cognitive skills to understand their surroundings. This triggers visual thinking and generates ideas in their mind.
“Learning photography and understanding touch and feel raised images brings about a positive psychological shift and behavioural changes in the blind. They learn about themselves, discover their hidden potential, stimulate their emotions and intellect, develop their personality and elevate their self-esteem and self-confidence. We have been successful in using photography by the blind as a tool for advocating equal rights for the visually impaired,” he says.
Bhowmick also conducts blindfold ‘sensory’ photography workshops for sighted people, with visually impaired photographers as trainers, to advocate social equality and provide income for the visually impaired trainers. He has designed and been a curator of several inclusive photography exhibition in India and abroad. He has two books to his credit, In Touch with Pictures, and Facing the Mirror.
Today, hundreds of blind people, ranging from 15 -50 years are trained in photography across India, and many of those trained have taken to photography as a hobby and taken pictures independently.
Recently, one of the boys, Bhavesh Patel, who was born blind and had trained under Bhowmick, shot one of the biggest ad campaigns of the country for Lux soap starring Katrina Kaif. He couldn’t see her but he knew her exact movements by her perfume, by the sound of the fabric she wore, and other studio noise. He shot the entire ad using all his other senses. And the results were absolutely amazing. The agency paid him the same amount as a sighted professional photographer. He was from the local slums and was over the moon when he got his payment.
“I have I have been asked repeatedly - ‘Why would anyone who could not see wish to take photographs?’ I think this can be best answered by my idol Evgen Bavcar and I quote him: “What I mean by the desire for images is that when we imagine things, we exist. I can’t belong to this world if I can’t imagine it in my own way. When I blind person says ‘I imagine’, it means he, too, has an inner representation of external realities.’
“I am mere catalyst,” concludes Bhowmick humbly.
A Sampling of Photographic Works
- “I followed the sound of the moving bicycle, but it blended with the sound of the ocean, wind and waves. I was daring enough to persist in sorting through the confusion and the clues, and feel lucky to have gotten this picture.” – Ravi Thakur (born blind).
- “I am familiar with this staircase of my college by touch. The challenge was to photograph it as I went up. This series of pictures looked unfamiliar to my sighted college friends, but in my touch memory, it is just the same space.” – Bhavesh Patel (born blind).
- “I came very close to the tree trunk to feel the texture. On looking up, I saw the tree like blurry pyramid with branch on top.” – Satvir Jogi (partially sighted).
To read more about the Partho's work check out https://blindwithcamera.com/
