Deafness
Being Deaf is not as silent as we might imagine, there is a noise that cannot quite be explained, for each Deaf person this is different. The world becomes a difficult place although not insurmountable, crossing roads takes extra vision and care, watching the TV becomes a mammoth task as your eyes flick between faces and subtitles, add to this the time delay which makes the story hard to follow. It is headache inducing and frustrating in equal measure, watching lips that move too fast and following hands that become a blur, I find myself wanting to shout stop and return to the silence. The Deaf world is isolating yet you are part of an exclusive club, a community of other Deaf people, they have their own culture which includes a language of their own.
‘I’m Deaf not stupid’
A phrase so often encountered, this comes from an age when the Deaf were considered handicapped or inferior, placed in mental institutes or asylums, the term Deaf and Dumb was still in use until recently, in fact my own mother still uses this term to describe herself. The Deaf community do not consider themselves disabled, they liken it to sight impairments, if you or I wear prescription glasses it does not make us disabled therefore should hearing impairment class them as disabled?
My final images aim to show how it can feel being Deaf, The frustration, the blur, the confusion and the danger. To achieve this I used a mixture of slow shutter speed to capture the movement of sign language, camera motion to show the flicker between screen and subtitles as well as zooming during an image capture to show the focus of the street signs mixed with anxiety and the danger sometimes faced.
Reflection
I think that I finally achieved a set of images which convey how deafness felt to me during my research. I researched the history of the Deaf as well as took inspiration from my own mother who has been deaf since birth. I also spent a number of days and evenings with ear defenders on so that I could experience the feelings and frustrations first hand.
I was surprised during my research that I could not find any Deaf photographers that have tried to show Deafness in an image? I had a blank canvas to work with.
The images I took used a variety of techniques which I am not familiar with, however I tried to explore different ways of expressing the unseen feeling rather than documenting the deaf world which is not strictly unseen. I do also have some ideas for developing this series further using physical manipulation of the images, crops of just hands signing alongside sounds experienced by the deaf.
I did feel as though I had hit a wall with this assignment but I think this was mostly due to the images being in an unfamiliar style. After printing them out and living with them as well peer review I am seeing them in a different light. I did use my mother in some of the images but this proved difficult as she did not fully grasp what I was trying to achieve. She was more worried about what she should say despite a reminder that a still image was not going to capture what she was saying in one frame! I then resorted to putting myself in the frame, something else that I am not used to, this meant I could try to be more experimental in capturing exactly what I wanted.
This is a subject that is personal to me so maybe some of my frustrations were about not being able to include everything that I wanted to express in 7-10 images. After re-looking at them I realised that I did not need to include it all to convey the feelings and in fact but reducing to the 8 images the set appears stronger and more coherent. I may not has said everything about the Deaf world in just 8 images but hopefully it leaves the viewer wanting to find out more.
What would I do differently?
Perhaps I would explore more physical manipulation if I had more time. I would also look at the solitude as well as the community of deaf culture. I had hoped I would be visiting the Hearing Dog School with my mother before this assignment was due in but sadly this has been postponed. This might however offer me some alternative images for a future re-work.
Contact Sheets:
Peer review:
Research:
Wendy Rose Context & Narrative 