A Stroll in the Gallery: Blind Boy Reading with His Lips

David Seymour. Blind Boy Reading with His Lips. 1948. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

This photograph was part of a David Seymour retrospective exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art In 2006. Seymour was better known as Chim (pronounced “shim” in French), a contraction of his Polish surname, Szyman. He was a pioneering photojournalist in the 1930s who co-founded the legendary photo agency, Magnum Photos, along with Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Brasson.

The photo was taken in Italy in 1948. The boy is reading Braille with his lips because he has no arms. Chim’s humanity and trusting rapport with children is obvious in the way he framed this shot. The image conveys the patient work done by a blind reader to gain access to a text. It expresses one of my deepest convictions about disability: the work of accessibility is creative work.