06-03-2023

'Silent Communication'

Silent communication is a series of images I’ve created around deafness and hard of hearing individuals. The concept of my work is to bring a positive light to deaf/hard of hearing individuals, so many hearing people see hearing impairments in a negative light and as a disadvantage. I wanted to show how even though deaf/hard of hearing people may not communicate as a lot of people do, their aids

to communicate are equally as normal as speaking in languages, how they communicate is just like another language such as Spanish or French. I wanted to bring in the personality of the models into the series to show that they are just as equal as anyone else, I did this by

asking the models to wear things that expressed their individual personality and style, that being jewellery and/or clothing. I interviewed my models to help me understand their impairment and life from their

point of view, they discussed how people treat them as if they are stupid and see them just as their hearing impairment and that people are not as well educated on communication with deaf/hard of hearing individuals which can make it hard. Through this small series I wanted to show off these devices that has transformed the way they communicate, such as live transcript apps and hearing aids and show them in a precious/positive way, making the images bright and showing the devices to be a beautiful and amazing thing. I wanted to do this as one of my models told me

that for many years, she didn’t like wearing her hearing aids due to societies view on them and her, so I wanted to portray them in a way that jewellery would be captured. Sight Silent communication aims to convey the transformation for an inclusive society.

30-11-2022

Eleanor Worthington Prize

With my project I decided to enter the Eleanor Worthington Prize competition. The theme for this competition was Disability and transformation for an inclusive society. I didn’t submit all of the images from the series of work that I had done in the series as I didn’t want to uncover the models faces for privacy reasons. Below are the images I submitted for the competition. My project has been exhibited on the Eleanor Worthington Prize website. It has a description of my work below which says ‘Silent Communication focuses on the positives of those who are deaf/hard of hearing. To portray my models’ personalities, I encouraged them to wear jewellery

and clothing that expressed them. This aided me in showing how they are equal in society and how technology has created a more inclusive society and transformed how deaf people communicate e.g. hearing aids and live transcript apps.’ The webpage also has an audio description which goes into more depth of what my work is about, having an audio description allows for my work to be shared inclusively to more people. The webpage descriptions can also be read and listened to the audio in Italian, which allows for more people to have equal access to my work and what its about. I entered the Eleanor Worthington Prize competition which I fortunately won the Mark Bailey first prize. This has allowed me to then have my work mounted and displayed in an exhibition in the creative centre of my university.