Shattering stereotypes around disability frame by frame

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The tragic story of a helpless person or an inspiring saga of an extraordinary achiever who fought the odds — the representation of people with disabilities on visual media has often been limited to these stereotypical narratives.

With the aim of the changing this, the Association of People with Disabilities (APD) has launched AS i AM, a photography and videography competition to show the real, complex and everyday lives of people with disabilities.

The competition is a result of the observation that people with disabilities were not getting fair representation and were being denied the chance to be part of the mainstream.

Jacob Kurian, board member of APD, feels people often fail to see the person beyond the disability, and in India, the conversation on disability has a lot of ground to cover. “Many other minority disadvantaged groups have progressed to occupy a greater sense of agency. However, people often define a person with disability by their infirmity. They may have a condition, but it is not the whole sum of who they are. We fail to see they lead lives quite like ours, but only more challenging in some ways,” he says.

The brief to participants is to tell authentic stories by moving beyond extreme characterisations.

“Stay away from pity, stay away from stories of people with disabilities climbing Mount Everest. Instead of such extremes, find a middle ground and start seeing these people as your neighbours, friends and family members. They still have a lot to share,” Jacob notes.

“There are millions for whom commuting by bus or navigating through spaces without signage for the individually impaired is akin to scaling Everest.”

The competition also aims to go beyond conventional depictions and capture a larger spectrum through stories of intellectual and cognitive disabilities, difficulties of the elderly, temporary disabilities and more.

“Today’s generation is rather visual and stories are more memorable than hard data. So, we thought the best way to create awareness was through visual storytelling.”

The jury of AS i AM includes R Balki, Santosh Sivan, Manasi Joshi, Luis Miranda, Josy Paul, Sneha Iype, Ishaan Nair and Mohit Ahuja.

The nationwide visual storytelling competition is open to anyone who is above 18-years-old and offers a ₹10 lakh-plus prize pool, with entries open till October 31.

Winners of the competition will be announced in December and the selected photo and video stories will be added to a stock library. According to the team, the larger idea is to build a lasting repository of more representative disability stories through exhibitions, visual archives, and other platforms. The organisation also plans to do an exhibition in major cities early next year.

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