Creating a Tactile Image: Photography and Blindness

I had been wanting to make a story about blindness for a long time, but I couldn’t find the right angle. Then an old friend, Giorgio Guardi, told me about the work he does with his association, Radici, which organizes inclusive tours in Rome, including tours for blind people. I didn’t know much about Radici, so I participated in one of their tours - where blind, deaf and other disabled people visited Rome on a cold November day. It was particularly fascinating to see how blind people touch things, how they move their fingers and how a tour guide leads their hand over the artworks encountered along the tour.

The blind people we interviewed explained to us that it’s not just touch, but many elements such as the voice of the guide, scents and the feeling of a more intimate connection with the artwork that help create the so-called tactile image.

While I was thinking about how to create a photo that would convey the idea of the tactile image, I remembered a famous series of photos by Gjon Mili, who in the late 40s created a series of portraits of Picasso while he traced some sketches in the air in the form of light trails. The photos were published on LIFE in 1949.

I believe that for a sighted person, it is very difficult to imagine how a blind person “sees,” and I thought that with this technique, I could create an image that would give an idea of how hands explore a work of art and how this can be imagined by someone who cannot see. I asked for an opinion on this idea from the head of communications at the Museo Tattile Omero, who put me in touch with Stefania Terre, a blind woman I spoke to about my idea. I told her about Picasso, the genius photographer Mili, and how her connection with art could be transformed into another artistic creation. We met at the Museo Omero, followed Stefania on this tour and then we experimented with “the technique.”

We had to wait until the museum closed, and the museum staff turned off all the lights. In a few seconds, we found ourselves immersed in a dense darkness. I had given Stefania a small LED light and had created a little ring with an elastic band for her to wear it on her finger. Stefania began to explore the face, to the natural size of Michelangelo’s David, and I – I had previously set up the camera on a tripod - took a 24-second exposure photo. When I saw the result, I was almost moved; the face of David emerges from the darkness, with Stefania’s face faintly appearing in the background, while at times, a glimpse of her hand can be seen.

I took this photo with a long exposure, the camera was set to 50 ISO and was steady on a tripod. The aperture was set to f/16 and the exposure lasted 24 seconds. During the 24 seconds, the shot captured Stefania’s hand as she explored the face of David, with an LED light placed on one of her fingers, which also illuminated the statue. The little light that filtered from outside slightly illuminated her face.

I believe this is an intriguing image that can help people see things in a different way. One of the slogans of the Museo Tattile Omero was “Forbidden not to touch,” and how not just sight, but touch, can help us understand and connect with the beauty of art.

It’s an unpredictable photo; you can’t really know what will come out, and even though I had done some tests beforehand, the real-life situation is always unpredictable.