COLE THOMPSON DESIGN & PHOTOGRAPHY
Metanoia
noun
Change in one's way of life resulting from penitence or spiritual conversion.
Metanoia is me coming to terms with my failure as a Parent...But please bare with me because this isn't an opportunity to make this about me, this is about whatever used to connect me and my son and what connects us now and I wear my mistakes with pride because it is only ever truly a failure if you don't learn from them and we are stuck in a culture of always being right and admitting mistakes is a seen as a mark of shame.
I love my children and try to be the farther that I never had, always present for my children whenever they needed me but have always felt distanced from my son because he was mostly non-verbal aside from the ability to communicate basic needs, his Autistic traits became the person I saw and it took me a national lockdown and a year in research to finally realise how badly I had let him down.
The whole point of this photo study of my son was to observe how he interacts with the world around him and my attempts to show that he was no different from any "neurotypical" child his own age but I was wrong, I realised that after all this
time I wasn't seeing my son, I was seeing the autistic traits and much as I wanted to remove the stigma around Autism I ended up furthering my own bias.
I was angry with myself that I had to be doing a photo study to finally notice the real person he is. I had a good relationship with my son before but I never noticed the details of his personality, I never noticed how much he smiles at people when he thinks they aren't looking because he doesn't like to make eye contact, or the way he tries so hard to navigate social situations against every fibre in his being screaming at him not to in a bid to be accepted. The Autistic traits he displays are both what makes him who he is while at the same time they do not define him on their own. Autistic traits have played an important role throughout history and evolution according to some experts. Noah does not possess savant traits nor is he "mentally handicapped" which would appear to be the only two settings TV and Film have for people higher on the autistic spectrum than others, it would be like portraying the "neurotypical" as either incredibly one thing or the complete opposite. We all possess Autistic traits to some degree whether it is not being able to bare things out of a certain order or feeling uncomfortable in social situations just to mention a few. We cannot ignore these traits in people high on the autistic spectrum but they are a part of the character they have grown to become, and despite the infinite feelings of wanting to remove those amplified traits so he could be seen as Neurotypical and be accepted to do so would erase the son I love so much.
Thank you for taking the time to view my work and please check out the new method we discovered which we used to better understand each other.
My son Noah
My son Noah
The Dark look of the photos was a conscious attempt by me to lead the viewer down the path of seeing the images as gloomy, sad, depressing and ultimately something to pity. This was to highlight the viewers own bias and associations with the colour. Personally, I really love black and dark aesthetics but in this case, the subtext of the original project was to accept Noah as a regular child and to see past his autistic traits until I realised that those Autistic traits were as much of who he was as the rest of his personality.
despite my own revelations the objective of de-stigmatising Autism still remained so I decided to continue the theme and after informing the viewer that Noah is Autistic the negative connection between Autism and the dark theme is made and they both act as a force multiplier for each other. These photos of Noah during the national lockdowns are some of the happiest times he has had with me.
Appearances can be deceiving and despite this being a relatively simple rouse to play on the viewer it lays bare a lot of bias. It isn't a photo of an Autistic boy or a Neurotypical boy, it is just a boy and despite things that may look different to what we would expect it is never as simple as we would like to think.
Creative Reality Subtitle Cards
It started with an interest in the Rorschach test purely from an artistic perspective and a desire to narrate Noah's creative side.
He would always be deeply engaged in creative adventures using a mixture of whatever toys he found around his bedroom, acting out scenes he had seen in his favourite movie or TV show. Noah used to originally use this as a form of communication where he would act out the response he thought would most fit the situation, for example during an episode of a British children's TV show called "Mike the Knight" he would act out a scene where Mike is displeased with his sister and use that to communicate his own disappointment. This is called "scripting" by some experts but as Noah grew older and more able to communicate his basic needs without the need to use scripting his play would become more abstract and the noises or speech he would use become more distorted but I am always fascinated to see the toys and situations his adventures include, although he would never allow me to join in with him which is understandable seen as how I don't know the rules to the world he would be currently inhabiting, so I thought how can I get Noah to narrate his creativity without interference from his logical side?
If the Rorschach test revealed elements about a persons subconscious then how would Noah react to totally abstract images that did not entirely resemble anything he might have ever seen?
Not to discover elements of his subconscious but if he is engaged in a totally creative form of play where logic and reason play no part then asking him to label abstract images might allow him to describe in a manner what he is engaged in as it borrows some of that creative thought currently mid-play
and the first words he says in all likelihood will be heavily associated with the current story he is acting out. So I developed about 10 variations of a colourless abstract particle system, some more heavily resembling everyday things he knew and others being totally abstract.
During his play I would ask him at different intervals to label abstract images and this to my surprise yielded surprising results.
The Dark aesthetic of the abstract images was chosen not to stimulate too much change in Noah's creative thinking but merely allow them to be easily assimilated into Noahs form of creative play.
So for example I can show him five or six cards at random intervals whilst he is playing and spaced apart enough not to attract his focus too much.
He gave answers like "Party", "Triangle", "Cake", "Present" over the space of 15 to 20 minutes.
It isn't a floorless technique and while this might work for Noah it might not work for everyone else. The cards can be reused but should be rotated out of a larger set of 50 so the viewer doesn't unintentionally recognise any one card and forge a strong connection with an answer.
