Ometepe’s silent shutterbugs: Photography project gathers scenes by sister island’s deaf children

Published 11:49 am Saturday, July 4, 2015

Jonathan Diaz has no idea what waves sound like, or a horse, for that matter, but the surrealistic beauty of his image “Horse in Lake” is undeniable, and shows a definite awareness of and connection to the elegance of the world around him.

Despite being deaf, the young photographer clearly doesn’t miss much.

Diaz is just one of a group of deaf children living on Bainbridge’s sister island Ometepe in Nicaragua whose work will be featured in the special upcoming exhibition “Our Silent World,” opening Saturday, July 4 at the senior center in downtown Winslow.

In January of this year, a delegation of 11 people from the Bainbridge Ometepe Sister Islands Association visited to initiate a photography project jointly sponsored by the Bainbridge Island Photo Club in which the children were instructed in the basic use of a camera and then asked to “tell us about your life, show us your family and friends, your animals, plants and flowers and the beauty of your island,” explained BOSIA’s chair of special needs committee Dale Spoor.

In Nicaragua, Spoor explained, the government provides no special teachers or school programs for deaf children. For that reason, very few of them attend school. In addition, aside from the workshops that the sister island program has provided for a number of years, many of the children on Ometepe have limited access to even basic Nicaraguan Sign Language instructional material.

This project, he said, was designed to provide these children the opportunity to express themselves creatively to the hearing and deaf communities on both islands.

Members of the delegation brought 15 new digital cameras donated by members of the photo club and loaned them to the children, Spoor said.

They met with the children and a family member on a Saturday morning at a local school. The excitement in the room was evident, he added, as each child received a colorful bag sewn by members of the Bainbridge Artists’ Resource Network. Inside each bag was a camera, batteries and charger and an instruction booklet prepared by the photo club.

At the workshop, with the assistance of a local Nicaraguan Sign Language interpreter, the delegates explained the project and taught the children how to use the cameras.

Then, it was game on.

The children returned to their local communities to take photos for a week, Spoor said. Delegates visited some of them during the week to share photos and to help them learn a little more about some basic principles of photography.

At then end of the week, the photos were downloaded and the delegation returned to Bainbridge. Before departing, the delegation delivered prints of the five photos by each child that they had selected as their favorites.

Now, members of the photo club here have prepared a set of 30 of the best photos (two from each child: one of the child’s five favorites and the other selected by members of the photo club), which will be exhibited both on Bainbridge and in Nicaragua.

The first showing of the exhibition will be at the senior center on Saturday, July 4.

When the exhibitions are over, the prints will be returned to the children to keep, Spoor said.