I had real difficulty with the last project because in documenting the body the representation was less about my experienced lived and more about documenting me. It was only as the project progressed that I came to find some approaches to representing me and my experience that I was happy with as that expressed something of my outlook.
One of the types of photo I take is this – of my feet. I like this type of image because it documents my experience rather than documenting me. The leg bag just showing at the bottom of the trouser works to trigger questions in the viewers’ minds just as the way my feet sit do.
I have taken many of this type of photo over time but have never curated them and this is what I plan to do with this project. My inspiration came from this book – No Diving.
Here the author, David Graham, created a typology of different wheelchair users feet in situ resting on the different wheelchairs as a way of visually explaining that spinal cord injury and paralysis can and does happen to all sorts of people. He also used the same images individually to punctuate the different stories he told through the book and to relate them to the individuals he is talking about. I want to do something different: I want the images to evoke a sense of my limited relationship with activities and the landscapes I exist in.
No Diving by David Graham, published by Hotshoe Books Ltd. 2008
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