Robin Hammond worked with the National Autistic Society on As I See It, an exhibition exploring how people with autism view the world. Robin took portraits of ten people with autism, and his subjects took photographs themselves to illustrate places, objects and people that are important in their lives. Robin explains how the project came about:
'The way the world occurs to me changed dramatically when I took up photography. I started seeing in shapes, patterns, colours, and...
more »Robin Hammond worked with the National Autistic Society on As I See It, an exhibition exploring how people with autism view the world. Robin took portraits of ten people with autism, and his subjects took photographs themselves to illustrate places, objects and people that are important in their lives. Robin explains how the project came about:
'The way the world occurs to me changed dramatically when I took up photography. I started seeing in shapes, patterns, colours, and degrees of light. Ten years since beginning my career, I find it difficult to see in any other way than photographically. It is me that has changed, but it feels like the world has been transformed.
I had photographed people with autism whilst on assignment for newspapers and magazines, but I had done so with little understanding of what the condition was. I had lumped them in with all the other people I had photographed with disabilities, not marking them out as especially different.
After reading more and meeting more people with autism, I began to understand that one of its defining features is how the world occurs to people with autism.
I wondered if it was possible to capture this. I now understand that people with autism are as different from each other as people without autism are from each other, and therefore it would be impossible to create a truly accurate definition of how people with autism see the world. The real gulf though is in understanding between people with autism and the rest of the world. Giving people on the autistic spectrum an opportunity to express how they see the world in photographs seemed one way to narrow the gap in understanding.'
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