“Life Unseen. Near the blind” – portraits without background

Stasys Babonas. Writer. Weak-sitghted

My newest project “Life unseen. Near the blind” is about a community of blind and weak-sighted people, whose activities and living place is near a huge building, formerly known as blind’s factory, now hosting social, creative activities, concerts.

This is a place where the community meets. The part of the town since decades is called “near the blind”, not only because of the former factory, which now is the social centre, but because the whole part of town around it has a high number of blind or weak sighted people living here since decades.

There is no more industry in this huge building that employs the blind. Nonetheless, next to the social centre it hosts a number of small entreprises, studios of visual artists, musical bands, and my studio among them…

Besides taking documentary images of the life of blind and weak-sighted people, I do simple portraits.

When I meet these people in concerts, parties, social activities, I invite them to my studio.

We speak a little, we create a portrait, a very simple one, without a background. Most often I take one of two shots.

Some people ask me why should these pictures be taken, but most admit that on very rare occasions they are pictured.

Some, including those who do not see ask me to sent the portrait by email, so that they can have it for the memory.

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The first public screening of these pictures was held on Jan 17, 2013 in the concert hall of the Centre for blind and weak-sighted, where most of the pictures are taken.