Blind With Camera

Blind With Camera, founded by Partho Bhowmick in 2006, is a movement that challenges the very definition of visual art, proving that photography is for everyone – including people without sight.
This film takes you into the minds of blind photographers, unveiling how they frame the world through touch, sound, memory and intuition.
We celebrate the achievements, discover how visually impaired people experience the images they create, and hear about the exhibitions that have brought their work to the world.
*
How did ‘Blind With Camera’ begin?
I’m into photography though I work with a corporate.
So in 2004, I happened to get hold of a magazine from the Flora Fountain area of Bombay
which carried an article about a French blind photographer.
His name is Evgen Bavcar.
So, in the process I got in touch with him and inspired by him.
He connected me to a mailing consortium which is called Art Beyond Sight which is handled out of Norway.
So, from 2004 till 2006, early 2006, I did a independent research on blindness and art, visual art forms.
And based on that research I started this Blind with Camera in 2006, February 2006,
precise month and year, I started this Blind With Camera project to teach photography to the blind.
It all started with just one student and now I have taught more than 1,800 students in India and abroad.
*
How do people who are blind practice photography?
See the blind live a life, right?
So, they use other nonvisual senses to create a mental image
and based on that mental image he lives a normal life.
Let’s keep apart the photography part of it.
So, when he makes a mental image that is a mental construct of a visual reality
because he also lives in a visual world.
He can’t see, that doesn’t mean that he is not able to create an mental image.
He creates a mental image and then, so he has through photography,
he has an option to communicate that mental image into a physical picture.
As a print form or on a digital platform, alright.
So, first thing is, he can, that’s the first thing.
And next, photography is a product of a process and not of a tool.
So, camera doesn’t know who is holding the camera, whether it’s a blind person or a sighted person.
You press the shutter button it will take a picture.
The third one is, by doing so, he communicates his mental image into a picture
and which picture becomes a very strong medium of communication
to start a dialogue with the society or the public at large because we put up the exhibitions.
So, these are the basic things.
The whole idea of why camera was invented is to capture moments
and then go back in time to see how that moments were.
Similarly, the principle of camera or the why camera and why photography is been done today
and why mobile cameras are so popular because you can see instantly see it, right?
So, the principle never changes whether it’s a blind person taking a picture
or a sighted person taking a picture.
*
How does a blind person experience the photograph they’ve taken?
So, the most pertinent question that comes up is uh
let’s say a blind person had taken a pictures but how does he access it?
Let’s say I’m talking about somebody who is complete blind.
So here it’s uh something that is to be known to the public that there are broad categories of blindness.
Somebody who is born blind, who has never seen this world,
or has gone blind before he could recognize things, alright.
Somebody, the second category is somebody who’s late blind.
So, he has lived a sighted life and subsequently he has lost sight, so he has memories of that sight.
And the third category is a partial sighted, alright.
So, let’s take to something who is completely blind which is an extreme case
and uh he has taken a photograph, now he wants to access that photograph.
There are multiple ways of doing it.
First is, somebody describing it, what he has taken, that’s a very easiest way to do it, alright.
And the second way is converting those pictures into tactile pictures, that is touch and feel pictures.
Now touch and feel itself doesn’t reveal everything.
It has to be supplemented with a audio description.
Because when you uh when you touch a picture it’s a line diagram basically,
but beyond that line diagram there are a lot of colors,
emotions which anchors the picture, so those has to be described.
So, even when we put up exhibitions of these photographs taken by
the blind students of mine, we always make it in a three format.
So, we do it uh something as a print format;
then we have an accessible format;
Then we have an audio description which describes the picture and then guides the
audience whether it’s a blind or uh audience or a sighted audience, how to touch the picture.
So, the audio description tells what is under your finger and guides.
Usually, it has to be started from the left bottom and then
you move your finger upward on the on on that on the print.
And uh the fourth part is uh it’s that experience of that photographer,
basically, the caption and the experience of the photographer is documented
and put it in a large print as well as on a braille.
So large print everybody could, large print mean 18 point and above, alright, which everybody could access it.
Somebody who is low vision can come close and see it.
Somebody who can’t see can use the Braille part of it, alright.
So, these are this is the standard way of making any visual art form accessible to the blind.
And that’s in that is an SOP that is a Standing Operating Practice which is followed across the globe, right.
Even the museums in the west and many museums are getting converted now into accessible format in India also.
Now, you can use a QR code.
So, the audience walks in with his own mobile, smartphone, phone.
He scans the QR code and the audio description comes back to him as an audio input.
*
What was your experience like when you first started teaching photography to people who are blind?
Our, mostly our relation with a blind person is helping a blind to cross a road.
The same was my experience, I’ve never worked with a blind before that.
So, when I started working with the blind,
I, first thing I went to the National Association for the Blind which is in Worli, Mumbai.
There was a retired uh Wing Commander, I think, he was the CIO at that time.
So, he told me that Partho there has to be some people who are passionate to join you, right.
You cannot, like it doesn’t work in that way that Partho is forcing the blind to take pictures, right.
So, he organized something that is a, they have a monthly gathering of blind people.
So, I was there as one of the speaker.
So, there was a huge debate within this blind community at that forum
was uh why photography, why not a radio jockey
which doesn’t need a visual sense to do a become a radio jockey.
Finally, I was looking for some participants.
And the participants, the condition was it will be a weekend workshop because since I’m working.
And uh there is no cost attached to it, one has to invest on the time only, nothing else, alright.
Even the camera I would provide and all that.
It didn’t work out in NAB.
And then I was moving around to number of blind schools in Bombay.
And finally, it was the Victoria Memorial School for the Blind which is in Tardeo, Bombay Central.
A student from there, and it started from there itself with just 1 student.
*
How do you teach photography to people who are blind?
I tell you how it works.
So, let’s say I go to a blind school for the first time.
The students have never met me but they are hyper excited to learn photography.
So, we give them cameras, okay.
I’m not talking about mobile cameras but the standard point and shoot cameras.
Of the same make of the same model because it’s very easy to control them, then who is taking what, with the same setting, okay.
And uh first thing is learning is how to hold camera and what are the basic function.
How to on off a camera, how where is the shutter button.
Uh they should point the camera towards the subject they want to take a photograph and all that.
All all that, these are very basic thing.
After that is done, now the lesson starts that you have to use your non-visual sensors.
So, what are the non-visual sensors? First is a predominantly touch.
Then is sound—source of sound, source of smell, the warmth of light.
Warmth of light which you feel on the your skin, alright.
And all that sensors plus their intuitive and their cognitive senses which is an add-on to this whole thing.
So, when, what we do is let’s say 20 guys 20, 20 uh students.
What we do, we divide them into 3 buckets, basically, enter into smaller groups.
And the ratio is, there has to be a sighted photographer accompanying them.
The ratio, ideal ratio is 2 blind people, 1 sighted photographer, right.
It maximum can go to 4 blind student and 1 sighted photographer, not beyond that
because it disturbs the whole uh uh whole uh whole level of assistance and all that.
And uh the grouping that is done by uh for the visually impaired group of 20,
we never mix the complete blind with the partially blind or the late blind.
So, we ask them that you go and shoot.
What you have to shoot is, you have to shoot 3 different surfaces.
Source of sound, alright. If somebody’s speaking, maybe a tap is open,
maybe the fan, the traffic on the street, or anybody shouting,
or the teacher in the classroom, all that.
Sense of smell, it can be a a food that is served in the, on your table.
It can be a unin- unclean toilet, it can be anything, alright.
Then the warmth of light, now warmth of light is very tricky, alright.
Because this doe- you don’t, you take it for granted as a warmth,
you feel hot in the summer and cold in the winter.
But here the warmth of light because you have to take a picture which had a portion of a shadow and a light.
*
Can you name some blind photographers who have made a significant impact in photography?
So one is Bhavesh Patel, right, who has become a role model
because he did a shoot for uh Katrina Kaif.
He is probably the world’s first blind photographer
who was commissioned to shoot by Unilever, for a Lux campaign, okay.
And he was paid as per the industry standard.
The second guy is uh Pranav Lal, now he is complete blind, alright.
And he uses a technology called ‘Seeing with Sound.’
*
Okay, so how this works is I have a pair of video glasses.
Um and this you know devices keep changing but basically it’s an Android device.
What it does is, it runs the software called ‘The Voice’ from seeingwithsound.com.
Uh the software captures the images on through the camera of the device.
The software then converts the device into a soundscape.
There are just three rules to follow.
Uh panning of the sound leads uh tells me where an object is in the horizontal plane;
the pitch of the sound maps to brightness, so, not brightness sorry but height.
So, higher the pitch the high the object in the frame.
And the volume of the sound maps to brightness,
*
so, the louder the sound the brighter the object.
And these three rules are what I use to decode the sounds that I can hear.
Now for the device I am using video glasses but because it’s Android,
I can use any Android device like an Android phone.
Uh it runs uh on anything else also.
It runs on Windows, and it can run on an iPhone or Linux or anything else.
*
Pranav Lal has to decode that robotic audio into a visual sense.
So, I was working with Pranav Lal on a, on a pinhole camera workshop,
where he used to see using that technology Seeing with Sound and use the pinhole camera to shoot a picture.
But in that workshop which I never anticipated,
it was a combination of athe first kind of camera with the latest technology.
So, it was a union of uh the remote or the the primitive camera and the most advanced technology.
It was the amalgamation of that too.
*
What are some key achievements, notable exhibitions and future plans of ‘Blind With Camera’?
Yeah, so uh there are few things. The key ones are,
you can say the count of visually impaired training photography is something around 1800 plus.
And uh it has now footprints in UK, Singapore, Malaysia and the last one was in Athens that is Greece.
The second part was uh we are trying to create uh an e-School or a depository of the whole knowledge, okay.
Which can, a sighted person like me any any part of the world can use that resource to replicate Blind With Camera in his country or a town right.
And that is we are doing it through IIT Bombay and Chennai.
Where they are creating do a tutorial kind of a thing, training the trainer
where I am the lead trainer so I’m this recording has been done which which we publish later on.
Apart from that the work which the blind students have done, all over, they have been exhibited, again in that format.
Now the exhibition is usually done in a format as if it’s done in a mainstream galleries.
It’s never been pitched as a charitable show or a fundraiser.
So, we have done more than about uh 50 uh exhibitions around the in India and abroad and all that.
The best part is since the exhibitions are made uh accessible, lot of blind people have come in.
So, the footfall was more than 60000 global, worldwide.
And 5000 would be visually impaired people uh visiting those galleries and all.
Now uh the interesting part is, so, as I told you when I go to a school the interest level of the students are very high.
So, interest levels are high they have learned photography now, right.
Now they have exhibited, they have been covered by the media and all that.
They are something uh which they never thought and after that it becomes a plateau, the interest graph basically, alright.
To give a boost to that graph, they have to be engaged in a constant way
and that’s how we started with these Blindfold photo workshops with the sighted people, okay.
Where some of my smart students are trainers.
So, basically, it’s a reversal of role.
Where a blindfold sighted person learns photography from a blind person, right.
And we do it in a, that is a purely a sustainable model, to keep Blind With Camera sustainable.
So, “Seeing with Photography” is an extension of Blind With Camera where we do workshop with the sighted people.
We blindfold them and give the same challenges of using touch, sound, smell and warmth of light to take pictures.