ITSUMEN?

Published by Deia, June 2, 2011



A crosswalk, stoplight for pedestrians and a blind person with a guide dog arrives at my side. Green! We rapidly cross over; the blind person keeps reading each pull and each turn of the strap of the dog. I suppose that at this point his arm has become another sense more that completes and balance the visual scarcity.

Disabled, handicapped... are words whose use I disagree upon, most of all, for what it is associates to. Is one disabled because he that cannot run the 100 meters in 11 seconds? Or is it the one that does not know about music? Or are we handicapped the ones who cannot see through our hands? Strange definitions

Touching Images is an exposition of photographs in relief of known celebrities, divided in two halls; The Ondare Hall, at María Díaz of Haro St. and the BBK Hall, at the Gran Vía, both in Bilbao, and will be exposed till the 30th of June. The artificer of all this is the photographer Juan Torre, that thought that it would be interesting to be able to bring closer a photographic exposition to the blind people by means of reliefs That will allow them to discover all the details of the image but without using the sense of sight, just the touch. No sooner said than done, Juan began to call on his models, which I am included among them, taking my snapshots. He contacted the company Estudios Durero who worked on creating the necessary relief to each photograph in order to achieve the depths, textures and shapes.

What an incredible experience, closing one's eyes and facing the image only with your fingers! It’s so strange to see with your hands, to examine by touch each wrinkle or each relief of the photo.

I imagine that using the sense of touch, learning from zero will be something like when one discovers the different concepts that encloses the music and begins to listen instead of hearing, one step that requires effort and, most of all, unlearning what was learned until then.

Exciting how our brain, sometimes, we have to format part of the information to install new concepts. Forgetting what has been learned is necessary, sometimes, to learn the unknown.


www.kepajunkera.com