Resolution

Unseen Portraits
Rebecca Dearden has produced a series of life-size portraits of partially-sighted and blind people and has done extensive research into more intimate tactile versions of these images.

With the T3 ‘talking tactile tablet’ team, based at the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford, Rebecca has created tactile images that, when touched, trigger spoken comments from the portrait subjects themselves.

Rebecca also worked with the University of the West of England to research the possibilities of innovative tactile ceramic tiles, with Viewplus Technologies in the States on embossed paper prints and with Anglia Polytechnic University on raised inkjet prints.

Research has shown that people with a visual impairment can not only appreciate pictures by touch, but that the ability to understand how a flat image represents the three-dimensional world can be very important to the development of other skills.

The work also raises some fascinating questions about the relationship between the photographer and the subject, between the subject and the viewer and about the status of a ‘distanced’ vision as opposed to the intimacy of touch.

Research is continuing and it is hoped that more organisations and venues will get involved to widen access to the results of the project.

Mother Teresa Society, Kosovo

Christopher Davis took a PG Dip Photojournalism course at the London College of Printing. He has worked with the Mother Teresa Society and in particular, its maternity clinic in Pristina, Kosovo. Christopher’s photos will be used for the Society’s publicity campaign.

The Serb repression of Kosovo’s Albanian majority led to Albanians being dismissed from their jobs and evicted from their homes; their institutions were closed down to expunge them from the province’s social and political life. The Albanians set up their own institutions in response to this repression thereby creating a ‘parallel society’. The Mother Teresa charitable society was founded in 1990 but does not discriminate between race or religion.

By 1998, the Mother Teresa society had over 7,000 volunteers and 1,700 doctors, with 92 clinics around the province.

In 1999, everything changed with NATO’s bombing campaign. In the wake of NATO action, international relief agencies flooded into Kosovo, bringing with them uncounted numbers of aid workers and massive amounts of funding. The Kosovans welcomed these organisations as their rescuers and will always be grateful to them, and to their countries.

Now that the emergency phase is over, the international humanitarian organisations have withdrawn from Kosovo, leaving the Mother Teresa society without means to continue. Today in Kosovo levels of employment are high, up to 80%, and it suffers one of the highest child mortality rates in Europe. The need for the society’s healthcare initiatives to continue is as acute today as it was in the early 1990s.

Christopher worked with Mrs Sadije Llaloshi, Manager of the Mother Teresa maternity clinic in Pristina to create a photographic essay that documents their pre-and post-natal care programmes. These include educational programmes such as birth control, breastfeeding and women’s and infant health and are the only ones of its kind in the entire country.

Christopher Davis may be contacted as follows:

Mobile: 07974 194929
E-mail: Chris@chrishddavis.co.uk
Web: www.ChrisHDDavis.co.uk