Painting With Shadows

The blog of photographer Kim Ayres

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14 comments

Anna van Schurman said...

People have a tendency, I think, to not realize that one's life just is. You get up every day and do the things it takes to get through the day. My cousin gets a lot of people asking what my niece's diagnosis is. Everyone wants to know. What difference does knowing make to how the live their lives? Either way, they get up every day and just do it. Good for you for resisting some of those questions.

10:23 pm, February 27, 2008
MsAmpuTeeHee said...

Great interview and enjoyed all of it, but particularly your closing remarks (ie "everyone has special needs"). I might need to slap that on a t-shirt.

12:51 am, February 28, 2008
Apex Zombie said...

Nicely done, Kim :)

7:21 am, February 28, 2008
Unknown said...
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2:43 pm, February 28, 2008
Unknown said...

Let's try this again without so many errors.

I thought you did a great job with this piece Kim. Like the amput, I loved the line, "everyone has special needs."

You should be a talk show host. You have a knack of cutting through the bs to say the truth of a thing.

2:47 pm, February 28, 2008
Kim Ayres said...

Anna - I sometimes think that to many people have bought into the marketing world's assertions and believe they are entitled to a perfect life, and if anything falls slightly below that perceived ideal then they have the right to take it back and demand compensation.

TheAmpuT - the minute we see people as individuals rather than some homogenised generalisation, it becomes obvious

FLG - thanks :)

Carole - TV shows don't like men with beards as hosts (although they probably like women with beards even less).

5:34 pm, February 28, 2008
Z said...

One of the best things our village school did, some 8 years ago, was to accept part-time (because she also needed to go to a special school) a little girl with profound disabilities from foetal alcohol syndrome. It was an object lesson in the kindness of children and their matter-of-fact acceptance of someone who couldn't do what they did, but who was actually tougher and braver than any of them.

6:09 pm, February 28, 2008
Jeff said...

Kim

Well done on the interview!

Hope you are doing well and sorry I don't get over here as much of late.

Peace

9:34 pm, February 28, 2008
Dr Maroon said...

You should have told her about the time you tried to ween the Whole of Western Youth off our capitalist consumer culture by rejecting Malibu Stacey and all her works.

Still hits the spot for me.

Your best comment by far regarding children who may have special needs (though don't we all?) was that it wasn't nearly as scary as one might think.

I had always hoped that as the population increased, as it has doubled and more in our lifetime, we would correspondingly become more sophisticated, urbane, whatever the word is, and much more comfortable with the infinite range of people that we would come into contact with. The reverse seems to be true. Our "ideal" is getting narrower and narrower.

Who knows.

12:26 pm, February 29, 2008
Kim Ayres said...

Z - kids are far more accepting if allowed or encouraged to be, unless they have spent too much time picking up the prejudices of their parents or society

Jeff - thanks :)

Dr Maroon - do we celebrate diversity, or fear it? Being able to think beyond instinct and first impressions is one of the crowning glories of being human. Unfortunately the media, the government and anyone with an interest in controlling thoughts uses every means necessary to try and drum this out of us.

Still, come the revolution...

12:52 pm, February 29, 2008
Annie's Porch said...

I like Monster's Inc. too. I cry every time I watch it! Thanks for adding me to your "favorites". Congrats on losing the weight! Fantastic!!! It's something I struggle with myself.

1:08 pm, February 29, 2008
Kim Ayres said...

Hi Annie - welcome to my ramblings and thanks for taking the time to comment :)

3:47 pm, February 29, 2008
Dr Maroon said...

There’s far more chance your child will turn out gay.

I really don't know how you manage it. You don't write for Ricky Gervase do you? Especially liked the worried afterthought, "And if that doesn’t matter, why should DS?"

Saw Meg's birthday card btw, well done.

11:48 am, March 01, 2008
Kim Ayres said...

I do wonder if whether there was a pre-natal test for homosexuality, whether it too would end up with a 80-90% abortion rate.

Only a couple of generations to go and the human race will be entirely populated by Ken and Barbie lookalikes.

6:55 pm, March 03, 2008

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