Photos for touching

Visually handicapped people in Kyiv recently had a unique opportunity to touch art at a photography exhibit called “To Touch and to See,” which was specially organized for them at the Ukrainian House. The show features 30 tactile photographs created by Yurii Bilyk, a French artist of Ukrainian parentage. Besides feeling the photos by touching them, visually handicapped visitors can listen to an audio recording describing each photo. A group of famous Ukrainians recorded the soundtrack: First Lady Kateryna Yushchenko, Olha Sumska, Bohdan Beniuk, Oleh Skrypka, Olha Herasymiuk, and others.

“We spent several years preparing the exhibit. It took us three years to collect just the photographs,” said Bilyk, who organized this unique show. “To adapt them for the blind I used the technology of tactile photography, which is already being used at the Louvre, Musee du quai Branly, and other museums in France. I must admit that creating these photos for the blind was no simple task. I had to translate the semantics of an ordinary photo into the language of the blind. I consulted with experts from French museums because I had a problem choosing a language that would help the blind abstract themselves from light, shadows, color, and especially from distant or near images. Thus, not only can the blind see the photos, they can also feel the emotions in them and share these emotions with their friends. I call this exhibit a window into the world for the blind and a real discovery of sight for those who can see.”

Volodymyr Poteliakhin, who is a Braille proofreader at the Republican Sound Recording and Printing House at the Ukrainian Association for the Blind, verified the extent to which Bilyk was able to successfully realize his ambitious project. Poteliakhin was the first to hear and feel his pictures, most of which depict Ukrainian themes: the holidays of Epiphany and Old Calendar New Year’s Day, a family saying grace before supper, and a grandmother making Hutsul shoes called postoly.

According to Poteliakhin, it is more convenient to perceive tactile photos than to read illustrations in Braille. Since visually handicapped people do not discuss the color spectrum of photographs or the play of light and shadows, it is the emotional content of an image that is important to them, and this is what tactile photos provide.

After the show ends on May 24, it will travel to other regions of Ukraine. According to the head of the Open Ukraine Foundation Orysia Lutsevych, the residents of Lviv, Chernihiv, and Donetsk will be the first to see the exhibit. The show may travel to some European cities because no photographer has ever organized this kind of exhibit in Europe. The photographs are also unique in that they reproduce the original image on transparent relief files made of polymer.