Promoting Inclusion: Photo-Exhibition

Recently Toaldi-Capri palace in Schio had a photo-exhibition of two photographers, Tommaso and Filippo, organised by a local association working for persons with disabilities, called "Against Exclusion - Association ODV".

I visited this exhibition and had a brief talk with one of the photographers, Tommaso Frinzi. I want to share a few impressions from this experience. The images used in this post are all from the exhibition.

Against Exclusion - Association ODV

Let me start with a brief presentation of the organisation behind this initiative. It is based in Schio (VI) in the Veneto region in the north-east of Italy. It started in 1984, by individuals and families wishing to support social inclusion of persons with disabilities. Thus, this year they have completed 40 years.

 It is active in areas such as sports, leisure activities, independent living, leisure, and community-building.

Talking to Tommaso Frinzi

Thirty-three year old Tommaso lives in Magre area of Schio. He discovered his passion for photography about one year ago. Last Christmas, he received a Canon camera and since then, has been doing self-learning about photography through YouTube videos.

He met Filippo, his friend photographer at an event organised by the association and discovered that they both shared the same passion. 

Tommaso loves taking pictures of the nature, animals and birds. When asked to choose one favourite picture among his works, he chose the image of a seagull against the sky with clouds tinged orange by the setting sun. He explained this choice by saying that the flying seagull represents freedom and he likes the orange glow of the image.

He downloads his images on his computer and knows simple post-production, especially the software included in his camera.

Photographs in the Exhibition

I feel that often photographers feel intimidated to take pictures of persons with disabilities, because they are afraid of promoting stereotypes and of being accused of voyeurism.

However, Tommaso and Filippo, have a lot of pictures of other persons with disabilities while they are playing or talking to friends or enjoying themselves. You can feel that for them, these are pictures of their friends, living their lives like everyone else.

They are more unselfconscious in the way they depict disabilities and they are not aiming to give any specific social message or to create awareness about something. I think that this is the strength of their specific point-of-view in their images - letting us enter and see their world, the way they themselves see it. 

They have decided not to label the names of the two photographers on their images, so I am not sure who took which pictures. I can understand the reasons behind this choice, and yet I feel that this denies them the full satisfaction of being artists.

They are both artists, each with his own way of capturing the world through the camera, and saying this explicitly allows each of them to claim a specific space.

Conclusions

Finally, I like the idea of using arts and photography to create awareness about disability issues and persons with disabilities. I like it even more, when the artists and photographers themselves are persons with disabilities and their art expresses their own visions of the world.

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