Imagery and Disability
Imagery, Individual Identity And Independent Living
Addressing Oppression through Positive Imagery
by Traci Walters and Liz Griffis
Disability imagery, whether photographs, posters, verbal or written discourse, is composed of multiple viewpoints or gazes, ranging from the 'impaired' physical body to the disabling social environment. In some instances, photographic image and accompanying text combine to reinforce the notion that persons with disabilities are helpless and needy people. These conceptualizations not only emphasize obvious prejudices and limited thinking about persons with disabilities, but also illustrate the consequences: persons with disabilities assimilate the oppressive images constructed by society.
In order to create positive images of persons with disabilities, we need to develop a disability consciousness that allows us to re-imagine disability in ways that value individual identity. In doing so, we raise critical questions about self and other.
Cassandra Phillips is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English at the University of Saskatchewan, and a woman with a disability. Her paper, "Re-Imagining the (Dis)Abled Body,' will be published in the scholarly Journal of Medical Humanities, Pennsylvania UP, Fall 2001. We invite you to read it on the CAILC website (www.cailc.ca) and to compare several of her illustrations with recently found ones that suggest that major changes are occurring in the way that persons with disabilities are being portrayed in the media.
Cassandra is profoundly rooted in IL (Independent Living) philosophy, so her interpretations of five advertisements speak meaningfully of concerns persons with disabilities have about their own portrayal in the media. Not only does she bring to the subject the sensibilities of a compassionate woman with a disability, but she is also imbued with an aesthetic sense and a writing ability that is very moving.
Images in our society are all-important, and this is perhaps even more true for the disability community. Traditionally in society it has been the artist who has had the vision and the imagination to bring about changes in attitudes. Cassandra argues in her paper that there is a need to develop a disability consciousness that allows us to re-imagine (dis)ability in ways that value the individuals identity. In other words, we must hand back to the individual his/her unique person-ness.
Such conceptualizations not only emphasize obvious prejudices and limited thinking, but also illustrate the consequences. Charities are often unforgivable for the way they portray individuals with disabilities in the name of raising funds. Often the disability community has assimilated the oppressive images constructed by society, and in doing so has denied its own personal and multiple identities.
It follows then, that images produced by persons with disabilities have the potential to challenge and subvert the ways that persons with disabilities are constructed and represented.
Charity advertising is the problem behind, not the solution to, isolation and impairment of persons with disabilities. Neither pity nor spectacle is a necessary component to charity advertising, yet it is still done with great consistency.
If we are to take charge of our bodies and lives, then we need to take charge of the way we look at charity advertising. Governments, businesses, and especially charities must move away from the medical and charity model of disability. As long as we are construed as helpless and excluded from our own image making, we will continue to struggle with issues surrounding individual identity and self worth!
The Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres (CAILC) is the national umbrella organization of Independent Living Resource Centres (ILRCs) from across Canada. CAILC and ILRCs promote full integration and participation in Canadian society.
The Independent Living (IL) movement contributes to changes in the way people with disabilities view themselves and the way in which service delivery systems in the community respond to meeting their needs. The Independent Living approach empowers people with disabilities to examine choices, make their own decisions and take risks as a means of directing and managing their own lives.
In this ad, the child stands in the shadows, with his back to the camera. Supported on elbow crutches, his small frame faces an open doorway; his exit is barred by a gate that serves to protect the child from injury. The image introduces the observer to the physical limitations of a disability that prevents this child from going outside to play. In isolation, he can only stand and wait. The bottom text (which we omitted) is minimalistic and impairment specific -- it simply identifies the charitable organization. The trapping of the passive image and its reflection between the active text and the organization infers that the solution is outside of the childs control. At the same time, the child is nameless and has no voice. In many ways, the child is dependent on the roll of the dice. This advertisement unites the charity and the givers gaze; the consumer of the service is not only silenced, but also dependent on others for assistance.
Collinda Joseph is a young mother of two children. Currently she works for Human Resources Development Canada. The motherly tenderness and the great beauty in her face as she cradles her three-day-old infant are palpable. She defies the stereotypical thinking that people with disabilities are not deserving of children, that they don't have a sexual dimension and that they can't live a full and examined life. This is a "Madonna with Child' for the millennium, the face of a mother who projects the wisdom of someone wiser than her years. The body language suggests strength and empowerment of a mythic quality. This photo was featured in a full-page spread in The Globe and Mail four years ago.
There is a great regard in Europe for the nude body, whether in painting or in photography. Rasso Bruckerts photography shocks the eye because his subjects with disabilities are so physically powerful from the wheelchairs in which they happen to sit. The play of light on muscle reminds one of the work of Rodin. This photo appeared in ABILITIES magazine, Issue 35 (Summer 1998). The nude male body forms a very powerful rectangle composed of two triangles -- one defined by the beautiful body and centred on the floor, with the other originating from the wheelchair and caressing the arc of the nudes folded legs. This is a proud body, ready to declare its beauty. It sings of strength and vitality.
Melina Fatsiou-Cowans watercolour "Feeling Good' subsumes the qualities you would wish a person with a disability to have. In this drawing, the female subjects lambent form is folded over the chair in a most extraordinarily beautiful fashion. The lines of the leafless trees resonate with the body while the rhythm of the warm-coloured clouds speak to the safety and the warmth and the support of her surroundings. This graphic illustration in the expressive tradition addresses all of Cassandras concerns about love of self, centredness of self and simply comfort and happiness with ones otherness. Melinas stunning website is: www.disabilityculture.org/melina
In a second watercolour by Melina entitled "Wheels and Wings,' there is a fantastic play of motion, form and colour. In contrast to the young boy in the advertisement who is framed and defined by hardware, this illustration suggests earth, fire and water, a blurring of sensibilities or persona, of physical body or of whatever supports the incandescent figure. This is a soaring figure that rises in triumph and is an extraordinary portrayal of a spirit in a wheelchair.
