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Welcome to the ‘LOOKING BOTH WAYS: Down’s syndrome through a two-way lens’ website
November 2009. London. The sky is ashen grey. I am on the phone with my school friend – she is in the hospital in Moscow few days after giving birth to a baby-boy. Tears are running down my cheeks – I can barely see the sky-blue skype phone pad on my computer screen.
Down’s syndrome – what why when what next…
Next is a 4-years old girl in my neighbourhood I promised to look after that evening. We read stories, play games, watch cartoons. Eventually we both fall asleep. Shortly after I wake up. In her sleep Otti is cuddling me. A child sharing her love with me brings me back to earth, to here and now.
January 2010. Snow-white Moscow. I meet Zhorik for the second time. Few months ago I photographed his mother’s belly in the autumn light in the corner of their kitchen. Now is winter. Breastfeeding. Same corner.
March 2010. My quest for visual and psychological knowledge about Down’s syndrome brings me to a British group of photographers called Shifting Perspectives. “All of the participating photographers have a personal connection with Down’s syndrome – they investigate their worlds as questioning artists, aware of issues of representation and photographic genre. Their work examines the lives of people of all ages with Down’s syndrome, their connection to the photographers and the changes throughout the course of their lives” (Susan Andrews, Senior Lecturer in Photography, London Metropolitan University).
November 2010. Zhorik has just celebrated his first birthday. Throughout this year I got to know people with Down’s syndrome expressing themselves in photography and film, painting and sculpture, theatre and music. I found myself looking through a two-way lens of self-expression. This is how ‘Looking both ways’ was born.
Asya Gefter
November 2010
Looking both ways 