A little while ago, I started a personal project photographing people working in Health and Social Care sector, in particular, those who work as a carer. Having worked as a carer myself, I am interested by the similarities, but also the differences of people working this kind of job.
The care workers project is on-going, but it has also spawned another project, working and photographing children with disability and additional needs.
I was introduced to Ruben and Julie through Diane Cardwell, who works for Sense, the deafblind charity. Diane has been an amazing resource in connecting me with familes to photograph, and also she is just an amazing person to be around, I feel inspired every time I see her. You will see her in some of these photos playing the piano for Julie and Ruben.
Ruben was registed blind at a very early age. There is already an amazing online resource called 'Rubens World', which was set up by his lovely mom, Trudie. If you would like to have an understanding of his diagnosis take a look here: www.rubensworld.co.uk.
Julie (Diane's niece) and Ruben have began building a lovely relationship. Julie is so gentle and considerate and Ruben clearly enjoys having an accomplice to have fun with! We took these photo's at Diane's moms house in Birmingham.
New and old camera's were put to the test and it was wonderful to witness Ruben and Julie working together and taking their own photos. They also carved pumpkins (minus the knife bit!), played piano and used saucepans to demonstrate 'echolocation' (Ruben will explain).
Here are a select few photos from my visit. The photographs at the end of this post were produced by Ruben and Julie themselves and I think they have huge merit!
If you are interested in joining my Facebook group, 'Exceptional Beauty', whereby we share photos like the ones below, please drop me an e-mail.
Now, the photo's below here I cannot take any credit for! Ruben and Julie were very keen to experiment with the camera's, so these are a few of the photo's they took. They have huge merit and infact I am very jealous of a few of them. Both Julie's eye for taking a great composition and Ruben's instinct to when to press the shutter really interested me.
As photographers, we are allways learning and research around photography. What actually becomes interesteing is giving your camera to someone that doenst have any of that in their head but still manages to produce beautiful images. Or maybe its because they they don't have that in their head. Total freedom. Anyway, the images below are Ruben and Julie's contribution and I think they are amazing.
Photograph by Ruben
Photograph by Ruben
Photograph by Julie
Photograph by Ruben
Photograph by Julie
Photograph by Julie
Photograph by Julie
Photograph by Ruben