This week we share with our readers more about Stephen, the individual behind creative photography exhibition, Deaf Mosaic. In Stephen’s portraits, he shares a vital message: “With the right support, deaf people can do anything”. To find out more about Stephen, and where his passion for photography originated from, keep reading for more:
- Hi Stephen, first, can you tell our readers a bit more about yourself.
Hi, I am Stephen, and I was born deaf. I am a photographer with a passion for portraits. My Deaf Mosaic project has 75 intimate portraits that celebrate the deaf community. It challenges the general public to understand it’s not deafness that disables people, but that the barriers in the hearing society that often frustrate our dreams.
Deaf Mosaic includes people from all walks of life, from NHS nurse to fashion model, musician to rugby player, TV chef to actress. The message is: with the right support, deaf people can do anything.
Deaf Mosaic exhibits at high-profile arts venues- such as London’s South Bank OXO Gallery- but also at pop-up events in schools and community centres. In a world-first ever exhibition of deaf role models to be held at an audiology clinic, Deaf Mosaic is on display at University College London Hospitals for three months from January to April 2024.
The Deaf Mosaic online gallery has a global audience. It has been enjoyed by 23,400 visitors from 134 different countries. I often get messages from people all over the world- from Barbados to Nepal to Uzbekistan- who find it inspiring to see what deaf people can achieve.
I also give talks and workshops- from the House of Commons to BT, from schools to deaf clubs and community centres.
- Where did your love for photography to originate from?
That’s a good question. I ask myself that sometimes!
I think it goes back to my mainstream school days. I was the only deaf kid in school. I spent days, weeks, months, years exposed to inaccessible whole-class teaching. As I couldn’t follow the teachers, I would look around me- at other pupils, the blackboard, exercise books- desperately seeking clues as to what people were talking about. Ultimately, I became visually hypervigilant.
I also became visually distractible too. I would get concentration fatigue from seeking verbal clues all day long, so I would just look at the classroom walls or out of the windows. I would see the abstract patterns made by the cracks in the wall and watch how beautifully strange the cloud formations drift past the window.
When my mum gave me a Kodak Brownie camera for my 11th birthday, I found it a natural extension of my visual outlook. If I couldn’t easily access the hearing world, I could make images and record it as photographs. I would make pictures of people, of walls and of clouds. That instinct has never left me.
From there, I went to Leicester’s De Montfort University where I graduated with a photography degree.
- Why did you start Deaf Mosaic and where did the idea come from?
The idea came in the middle of the 2020 Covid lockdown. I had been stuck at home for months. I would spend all day over my laptop editing half-baked photography projects with no consistent theme emerging from it.
I began to ask myself, why did I have trouble finishing things off? I noticed that some successful photographers built their whole careers focussing on a single theme they had an intimate relationship. A place, a community, a people, an issue. I love to hyper-focus and suddenly, I realised here was a theme that I could really get stuck into… myself, my people, the deaf community. It was a ‘eureka’ moment for me, and Deaf Mosaic was born right there.
- What do you hope to portray with Deaf Mosaic, is there a specific message behind this idea?
Deaf Mosaic tells stories through portraits. A good portrait distils a person through their posture, eye contact, facial expression, their clothes, and the environment that they are in. It is all about the relationship between the sitter and the photographer. Hearing photographers can’t easily do this with deaf people. As I am deaf myself, I can sign and thus establish a quick rapport. I can easily relax my sitter, and then they are able to open up and be themselves. That makes for great photos.
Of all the feedback I have had from exhibition visitors, one I’m especially proud of is when people say that the portraits make them feel that they actually know the person in the picture. That is what I aim for.
So, I aimed to portray deaf people, not as a pair of broken ears, but as people. They may be extrovert, shy, serious, playful, modest, or ambitious. For example, when you see my portrait of Jodie Ounsley, the professional rugby player you see a face that is determined, one that doesn’t take “no” for an answer. She has to be assertive to be a professional in an often brutal contact sport. If you look at my portrait of Abdi Gas, you see a face that resonates pain, strength, and resilience too. All these qualities drove him to get an MSc and start a charity to encourage other deaf people to go to university. Each portrait has a story to tell.
- How did the public react to these portraits?
At first, I didn’t expect that much of a reaction. I kind of thought ‘this will be a nice short-term project, then I will move onto something else’. But it quickly snow-balled and gathered momentum.
When the covid pandemic receded, I held my first solo-exhibition at City Lit Gallery. The positive reaction caught me off balance, in part because people were just coming out of lockdown and feeling brave enough to go to public events. I was also surprised by the way the visitors’ responses to the relative ‘novelty’ of seeing large, printed photographs mounted on a wall- as opposed to scrolling tiny photographs on a mobile app. Large prints carry so much detail. For example, you can see detail in the eyes, the muscles in people’s facial expressions. Overall, a deeper and richer story is told.
And of course, there is always this hunger for deaf role models and stories too.
- You recently staged your first ever outdoor exhibition at Kings Cross, how was this experience?
It was an overwhelming experience. Every month, one million people pass through that area just behind the Kings Cross station- residents, workers, commuters, tourists. It felt surreal to have deaf people ‘take over’ that space with giant-sized portraits and telling their stories to the general public.
For a whole month, deaf people came from all over the UK to visit it. They also brought their friends and family along as well. At that moment, it hit many of us how ‘invisible’ we deaf people had been in these public spaces. It just fuelled my determination to get out there and do some more exhibitions.
- In your career so far, what has been your proudest achievement?
I would say that it would probably be getting my portrait of the six-year old refugee boy Lawand Hamadamin into the National Portrait Gallery. I mean, this world-famous institution has been going 185 years and it had never featured a photographic portrait taken by a deaf photographer and of a deaf person. You begin to realise how unrepresentative so many great art institutions, museums and galleries are. They are now finally belatedly making up for their systemic historic exclusion of women and people of colour. Unfortunately, deaf people are still a long way behind, so there is still so much to do.
- Finally, what do you hope for the future of Deaf Mosaic and deaf creatives in general?
I really want to see more deaf creatives in high-profile mainstream spaces- not tucked away out of sight. While it’s been fantastic to see Rose-Ayling Ellis on primetime TV- and I just loved her dance routines, her ability to project to the general public, her unashamed pride in her deafness, what a star she is! – But Rose is the tip of iceberg of deaf talent out there.
We are now overflowing with deaf creative talent. I will list just a few here:
- Deaf Rave’s Troi Lee and MC Geezer for their DJ and rapping events.
- VJ Outlaw’s stunning video creations.
- Martin Glover’s vibrant street art.
- Ruth Montgomery’s blend of music and sign language.
- Raymond Antrobus’ sublimely crafted poems.
- Rubenna Aurangzeb-Tariq’s richly coloured abstract paintings.
- Omeima Mudawi-Rowlings’ exquisite textiles.
- Cathy Mager’s digital projections onto public buildings.
- Gavin Lilley’s side-splitting comedy routines.
- Vilma Jackson’s dynamic media productions.
- Kevin ‘SignKid’ Walker sign songs and films.
The list goes on and on. All are pushing the boundaries, exploring the deaf identity in new ways, and projecting it into the public consciousness.
The challenge isn’t finding deaf talent. It’s already there. It’s getting it a platform in a fiercely competitive arts sector. Arts directors, curators and editors need to wake up to this. It’s not enough to provide a sign interpreter or a captioned showing. That’s welcome, but it’s also tokenism. We need deaf people on the stage, on the screen, on the gallery walls too.
Here are some of Stephen’s portraits:
Here at Signature, we would like to thank Stephen for taking time out of his photography to share more about his passion for creativity. We look forward to seeing many more exhibitions that share the stories of those within the Deaf community.
Images: Courtesy of Stephen Iliffe