Making Visible

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June 2020

Galen Robinson-Exo Interviewed by Aaniya Asrani

Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your project? 

I’m a photographer and Community Connector with posAbilities. I’m originally from Portland, Oregon but I’ve been in Vancouver for about 13 years now. I have been lucky to have had the chance to get to know lots of amazing people with disabilities, and I’ve always been interested in documenting their lives and personalities. I think the broader community is missing out on opportunities to get to know people who have cognitive differences, and I think creating and sharing intimate portraits of people could be a step towards building bridges between the disability community and the rest of the world through increased visibility. 

What made you want to do the AiR program? How has it evolved?

I am always open to new ways of bringing my artistic practice into my work with the disability community, and the AiR program is one way to help facilitate that.

I have photographed about 25 people so far, and the work is always getting more collaborative. I am having some really wonderful conversations with people that I photograph, and they are teaching me a lot about how to be a better portrait photographer. I’ve learned something new from each person I’ve photographed so far. 

(B&W man in hat): "Edward, at the baseball diamond"

What is your role at posAbilities and how does that relate to art making?

I’m a Community Connector, which involves a lot of getting to know new people and build trust in all sorts of novel situations. In my photographic practice, I use a lot of these same skills to help the people I photograph feel safe enough to be vulnerable in front of the lens. Through my work, I’ve seen how much the people I support have to offer, and in a lot of cases, how few opportunities they have had to share their unique talents and perspectives. My hope is that through these images, I can help make some small progress in helping members of the disability community step out of the bubble that they tend to exist within, in order to be more fully seen in all their complexity. 

What are some challenges that the pandemic has presented you with and how have you worked around them? 

I actually started this project in the first months of the pandemic, so I was already working under conditions of increased anxiety around seeing people in person and restrictions on in-person engagement, so I started by photographing people through their windows, or sitting just outside their homes, from a distance. As time went on, we learned more about the virus, restrictions became more clear, and I was able to start working in people’s neighbourhoods and asking them to show me places that had significance to them. I’m grateful for the constraint of working within walking distance of peoples’ homes because it’s given the project a sense of place and situated the images in public spaces to which subjects have a real connection. 

(Woman with dog): "Angelica with her service dog, Chispita"

How has the pandemic effected the work? 

It’s meant that I have been working exclusively outdoors in natural light, so I don’t have much control over the lighting situation. Often, the people I’m creating portraits with will choose the shoot location as well, so I’ve had to relinquish some control, making me work more flexibly as well as finding interesting ways to create some consistency throughout the body of work. It has also meant that I have started to think more creatively about how these works might be displayed, since an in-person exhibition may not be possible in the near future, so I’m considering options for digital exhibitions or public installations. 

What has been your greatest learning so far? 

I think one of the most important things I’ve been reminded of in the process of making this work is the diversity of experience within the disability label, and I’m trying to keep that in mind when I’m looking for people to collaborate with for the project. The label of intellectual disability affects an enormously wide variety of people, and I’d like for this project to be representative of a wide swath of this community; I think there’s a lot of power in that. 

(B&W woman in glasses): "Larissa, outside her home in Burnaby"

Have you collected any interesting stories in this process? 

I’ve gotten to learn about a lot of the subjects’ passions through discussing how they want to be represented in these images, as well as a little bit about some of their concerns or fears around how their photo will be taken and where it will be displayed. I’ve gotten insights into family dynamics, they ways in which people feel supported or unsupported, and what brings people a sense of pride. 

What do you want an audience to know about you or the work?

I guess I’d like people to know that the work isn’t really about me! I’m hoping to be an effective tool through which peoples’ character or essence can be communicated with an audience outside the community living sector. I want these images to confront viewers with a sense of shared humanity that will invite them to connect with the subjects, and potentially, with this new visual information, to rethink their ideas about this community.

What are you excited about in the future? 

I’m really excited for the people who were kind enough to allow me to photograph them for this project to see themselves represented in a way that I hope does justice to their complexity and humanity. I’m also hopeful that this project might give more people in the neurotypical community a space to engage with people labeled with cognitive disabilities, an opportunity that too many of us miss out on. 

(Woman with mask): "Gael, outside her home in Richmond"