Private Story
Challenging your Challenges
The key concept of the series 'Challenging Your Challenges'’ is to reshape the misconceptions and representation of disability in photography. The people depicted here are ordinary people in their places of work who impaired but have outgrown their physical limitations, mastered their situation, overcome self-pity and sympathy, forged their ways ahead of life and want to tell their stories. These people have decided to bring about change in their lives by embarking on different economic ventures of their choice to reduce their dependency.
Knowing that they have to compete with the able-bodied men and women for the few available vacancies in the public and private sectors of the economy, in a country where there are no strong action laws to ensure that certain percent of available vacancies are set aside for persons living with disabilities as obtainable in other countries. And it is not that there is a scarcity of persons living with disabilities that are academically and professionally qualified for jobs in public and private sectors of the nation’s economy.
In this series, environmental portrait photography used to give the viewer clues of the person’s personality as the shot was taken in a location that says something about that person. Through these photographs, we are compelled to see the strength and ambitiousness in people we may otherwise have ignored. The images will educate viewers about the reality of the life of people with disabilities, as well as inspire those living with their challenges and as well challenge other people who are not impaired never to lose hope in pursuing their dream and say no to defeat in their life. All the people featured in this series want to be known and are pleased with the notion that in telling their stories they are helping others to achieve their dreams.
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