Misty Sahlbom, 16, traced her fingers across a statue of a running girl at the Washington State School for the Blind.
There’s plenty to feel in the twisting, sculpted metal pieces that form the statue’s body — which means, for Misty, there’s plenty for others to see, even if she can’t.
This is the school’s photography program, giving visually impaired and blind students a shot at an art form dominated by sighted people. Students feel, smell and listen their way through their surroundings, working with an adult volunteer to compose a photo that matches what’s in their mind’s eye.
“It allows visually impaired and blind students the opportunity to explore the world and see what’s out there,” said Nolan Schaffer, a 17-year-old junior at the school.
The program is the brainchild of Gary Scott, a Vancouver photographer and retired photojournalist who has been volunteering at the school for nearly a decade. The students’ photos are currently on display at Vancouver City Hall.
Scott has amblyopia, more commonly known as “lazy eye,” a common condition in which the brain fails to fully communicate with one or both eyes. It means he knows a bit about what his students are experiencing and how he can help them experience the world in other ways.
“When you lose one sense, the other ones work overtime,” he said. “I decided, ‘why don’t I try to fill in the gaps?’ ”
Over the course of the school year, students visited spots on the central Vancouver campus, the new Waterfront Park and downtown Camas.
“They’re able to go out into the community and explore,” said Adrienne Fernandez, volunteer coordinator at the Vancouver campus. “All of us want to be explorers in our life.”
Because these students’ abilities vary widely, so, too, does the way they explore and the way they photograph an object. Most students are followed closely by adult volunteers, who encourage their students to smell flowers, run their fingers through water, or climb on top of benches or statues. Once a student has decided on what they’d like to take a photo of and how to compose it, the adult holds the camera while the student hits the shutter.
“They will rent my eyes,” Scott said.
Some students, like 15-year-old Fenix Roark, are fine without an adult volunteer. Fenix, who has some vision, wasted no time tearing off to play in the fountains that dot the Vancouver campus during an outing last week. He has a particular affinity for water-dwelling creatures, like his favorite photo of a group of duck statues with coins in their mouths.
“The coins look funny,” he said. “They look like they’re eating something.”
He spent a long time during last week’s outing with his nose only a few inches away from a small frog figurine.
“It looks like me when I’m happy,” Fenix said, a broad grin on his face — yep, a bit like a frog.
Some, like Misty, need a little more help. Misty, too, was drawn to the same fountain, whose gurgling she’s familiar with. But before this week, she thought it was one large fountain, rather than a cluster of three pillars.
“That fountain down there, it’s more than one fountain,” said Misty, wonder in her voice. “I didn’t know that before.”
It seems a small thing, but for Misty, her world just became a little bigger.
