DeafROC

I don’t plan to use this blog to talk about my own stuff. Really. But how often does someone get to have an exhibit at NTID? I was honored to be asked to share my exhibit, The Wondering Years, in the Dyer Arts Center and pleased to be told by gallery director Bob Baker that the exhibit has been extended through Saturday. (It was scheduled to close last week.)

The Wondering Years is a collection of photographs mostly dating from the late 1960s to late 1980s showing my slow progression from a hearing 8-year-old to a deaf 22-year-old. In recent years I had a chance to look through my old photographs and I realized that the pictures I took, and the pictures people took of me, offered visual indications of what it was like to slowly lose my hearing.

I was prompted to assemble this exhibit last Fall when Miami Dade College asked me to have a one-man show. I was fortunate to have the help of Diane Plassey Gutierrez, who owns a business making high-quality digital prints for artists.

It is rare to see deafness in photographs, aside from stereotypical blurry sign language movements. But I also tried to place my gradual hearing loss in a historical context by including photos of the things around me, such as when I photographed Presidents Carter and Reagan when they visited Rochester. It was not my intent but the photos were historically accurate when they showed Carter as a little man lost in the crowd and Reagan as strong and bold in the spotlight.

I hope you get a chance to see the show before it closes Saturday, and there are three other exhibits you can also see:

Sign Truth to Power, photojournalism exhibit by Stacy Marie Lawrence, through October 27.

A Retrospective of the work of Lee Ivey, through October 27

Ozark Flux: A Fusion of Labor From a Midwestern Wood Kiln, through October 8. Closing Reception on Monday, October 8.

To learn more about the Joseph C. and Helen F. Dyer Arts Center at NTID, visit http://www.ntid.rit.edu/dyerarts/

– By Tom Willard