Clive

Clive died peacefully in his sleep in the early hours of Tuesday morning, with Wendy holding his hand. Although he died tragically young, Clive has lived an amazingly rich and fulfilled life. Wendy and the family would like to thank everyone for the support and love they have received over the last 9 months.

The Tactile Image exhibition has been a great success. For the first time in the UK, blind and partially-sighted people have been able to visit and enjoy an exhibition of photography alongside people with vision. At the opening party night a couple of weeks ago, seeing a couple of guide dogs sitting patiently while their owners ran their fingers over the tactile representations of the photos and the Braille explanations supplied by the RNIB, the shared feeling among us was that this was ‘so very Clive’.

Ill as he was, it is clear that he was aware of, and touched by, the exhibition, what a success it was and of all the work that had gone into it by family, friends, colleagues along with people he’d never met before. The Tactile Image will undoubtedly go further, being exhibited elsewhere but, more than that, it has, perhaps, changed for the better the way we think of, look at and feel about photography.

Casey Orr has written a beautiful and touching blog about Clive as friend, colleague and photographer. 

If you feel you would like to, Wendy and family are asking that you don’t send flowers but rather make a donation to the Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity in Clive’s and Wendy’s names.

Clive’s funeral will take place at North Chapel Grenoside Crematorium, 5 Skew Hill Lane, Grenoside, Sheffield, S35 8RZ, on Thursday 9th October. The service will begin at 11.45 a.m. Please join us after the funeral at the Florentine Hotel Tapton Park Road, Sheffield, S10 3FG.

Please could you let us know if you are coming to the hotel by Monday because we need to let the hotel know rough numbers. RSVP to info@cliveegginton.com

Clive's brother, Paul, with Alan and his guide dog. photo © Andy Brown

Today's the last day of the exhibition.

Stop reading this blog and get yourself down to Castle House, in the centre of Sheffield for your last opportunity to see this ground-breaking exhibition of photography, one which is accessible to those of you who are blind or partially sighted. 

It's open from 10.30am until 5pm this evening. We've already sold out of tactile images but you can still order one.

Insight Radio report of the Exhibition

Click on the image above to go to the podcast of a report by Allan Russell of the Royal National Institute of Blind People's Insight Radio on our exhibition, The Tactile Image, running until this coming Sunday.

TV report of the exhibition

Ian White, of BBC TV's Look North, reports from our exhibition as it opens.

The exhibition is open daily up till and including next Sunday 28th September.

We're open for business

We have ourselves an exhibition. After an immense amount of work and organisation, The Tactile Image exhibition featuring photos by Clive Egginton and his friends is open to the public and you're invited. Check out the location and opening hours in the banner at the top of the page and come and see for yourself.

Clive's brother Paul and friend and colleague Marcus Sarko (back to us in the photo) were interviewed for a feature on Look North this evening. This link takes you to the BBC iPlayer site where you can watch the programme but hurry, it's only available until 6pm Friday evening. Scoot the slider at the bottom forward until it reads 21:07 to get to the start of the feature.

A film to be shown during the exhibition

Factory Floor: An Archive Sheffield Film (FoTM Trailer) from Nathan Gibson on Vimeo.

Along with the photographic prints and their tactile equivalents on display, there will also be a short documentary film being shown in a dedicated area in the gallery.

In 2013, Clive began his residency at TSL Turtons, factory in Sheffield where they manufacture large metal springs. Over several months, Clive regularly returned to the factory, building up an extensive archive of documentary images and large format portraits. The project arose from his PhD research and as "Archivist in Residence" he worked alongside the men in the factory, documenting their day-to-day lives and working methods.  

In Clive's own words:

My particular concerns for the study are the apprentices: many of the workforce who command some of the key skills are very close to retirement and the company's longevity will rely on these skills being passed on.

As the project progressed it became apparent that the factory would also provide a fascinating subject for a short documentary film and, to this end, Clive invited his friends Nathan Gibson and Marcus Sarko to get involved. Filming throughout the winter of 2013 and into the New Year, the three gradually brought together the 15-minute film, Factory Floor, which will receive its third public outing as part of The Tactile Image exhibition.

A collection of the still images Clive shot during this project.

A kid's interpretation of Dave Howe

This project began by asking Estudios Durero to create their Didú version of a one of Clive's photos of his close friend, Sheffield boxer Dave Howe. The purpose was to let Clive connect again with his passion for photography through touch, having lost his sight due to cancer.

The exhibition, opening in just two days time, will have twenty photos, from Clive and his friends, displayed with tactile images prepared by the RNIB. The artistic term is a diptych (not a dipstick, which is for measuring the oil in your car's engine). The centre piece was planned as the photo of Dave Howe, with the Spanish and RNIB versions of tactile images: a triptych.

But, at the last minute, we have a wonderful addition, another interpretation of rendering Dave Howe in tactile form. Visually impaired children from the Sheffield Royal Society for the Blind (SRSB) working together, have created their own version, so we have ourselves a tetraptych or quadriptych.
 
Clive first became involved with the various children’s groups at SRSB when he was working on interviews and photographs for Sheffield Archive. The groups who worked on the project have a range of sight conditions, from partially sighted to no functional vision. They were actively involved in selecting the different elements to make the picture, having discussions about which media would best represent different parts, such as the boxing gloves and the hair. 

The children worked on this image in two sessions, beginning by building the body and then later adding the papier maché and finally the paint and the ropes of the boxing ring. The people at the SRSB are very proud of the picture and the work of the children, and hope that it makes an interesting addition to the exhibition.

Clive's Space

"What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit." 

John Updike

We have a space, generously donated by Sheffield University allowing Clive’s exhibition to be part of the Festival of the Mind taking place this September. It seems a touch churlish to say but the space was … let’s say not quite ready for the exhibition. With the clock ticking, Mick M calls his friend Dave B, a graphic designer who is also an accomplished and fastidious joiner to board up the space with sheets of OSB (oriented strand board, if you’re interested). It’s so well done, it’s a work of art in itself: a deconstruction of absence. With the bag and bits in the middle of the room, it evokes Carl Andre’s bricks at the Tate.

Never mind the emptiness though, over the next few days, we’ll be installing photos of Clive and his friends’ and the RNIB tactile equivalents along with a projected film and, from 18^th, the gallery will be full of people too … will you be there?

Exhibition flyer

Clive's friends at Dust, a commercial graphic arts & design studio based in Sheffield, have produced a flyer for the exhibition. Click here and the flyer will open or download as a PDF file (dependant on how your computer is configured).

Michelle, Sue and the designers at the Tactile Image and Map department of the Royal National Institute of Blind People have completed their work on the 20 images and are now working on the accompanying Braille and large print booklets that blind and partially-sighted visitors will use to help them better appreciate the images.

"Dog eat dog" is one of the images chosen. Perspective is difficult to convey, so the explanations in the booklets and Braille markers on the tactile image, will explain that the two dogs are similar size but the smaller one is further away.

There's a hole in our budget (dear Liza, a hole!)

Have you ever got two thirds of the way through the month and found your pockets bare? Got to November and found you’ve already spent your annual budget? Gone to pick up your car from the garage and found to be told there were complications and the cost is more than you thought? Gone over-budget on a house extension? Then you know what it feels like to dip your hand in your wallet and find only dust or moths. 

Back in March, when the email arrived from Spain with the quote from Estudios Durero for the relief print of Sheffield boxer, Dave Howe, we felt winded. It was not cheap and much more than we’d thought, if indeed we’d even taken time to think how much such an image might cost. How could we tell Clive that it couldn't be done? Once we’d picked ourselves off the ground and realised that we only had to ask, we raised all the money in just five days, a sign of all the love and goodwill out there for Clive.

And it kept coming. So we asked Clive and Wendy what they’d like us to do with the extra. Clive was very clear: he wanted to share this new concept with a wider public and was taken with the idea of making photography accessible to the blind and partially-sighted. The idea of an exhibition displaying regular prints of Clive’s photos with their tactile equivalent was born.

The exhibition will take place as part of the University of Sheffield’s Festival of the Mind from 18th to 28th September (more details will follow on this blog, our Facebook page and Twitter feed.

We’ve chosen 12 of Clive’s images and 8 images from friends of his to be displayed as pairs of regular gallery photo prints and their tactile equivalents. They will be prepared by the Tactile Image and Map department of the Royal National Institute of Blind People. Sue King and Michelle Lee at the RNIB are pulling all the stops out to produce the images in time and they’ve been kind to us in the quote for their work. But we have a hole in our budget, dear Liza, a hole (do you remember this song?)

Can you help us fix it? Have a look at the revised totaliser to see how much we need to raise. The RNIB tell us that, to their knowledge, there has never such an exhibition with the aim of making photography accessible to the blind and partially-sighted, something Clive feels that is “really important”.

Hands in the bag – Part 3

Wendy (left) and Rosy using goggles to similate types of visual impairment

If their first encounter with the tactile image left several members of the group a tad underwhelmed, it must be remembered that they were encountering the image as sighted people, having certain expectations and also as having no previous experience trying to read an image with their fingers.

Euin Hill got to know of Clive’s tactile image project through Trevor (Clive’s dad) with whom he plays bowls. Euin was fully sighted up to the age of 17. A serious illness caused caused rapid onset of very dense cataracts which he couldn’t see through, so he spent 5 years effectively blind. Operations to remove the cataracts revealed damaged retinas and so now, he says, he can “see a bit, not all that great, I’ve no lateral vision and no central vision, so I look down thick walled tubes and what’s there is dull but it’s enough to get around, I use a white cane.”

The first tactile image he got his hands on was Juan Torre’s photo of singer Aziza Brahim. He deliberately closed his eyes to experience it completely unsighted to begin with. “The eyes stood out nicely, so I found both eyes immediately, and the lips were fine but the nose was quite difficult and I think that could have been done to be more elevated for example so you got more of a feel of the profile of the nose.”

I asked him if he was ‘seeing’ by feeling: “I don’t think it is the same [as forming a visual image in your head from what you are feeling]. What you can get are feelings of shape and proportion.”

According to Euin, only a relatively small number of visually impaired people are blind from birth and a relatively small number, about 5% can see nothing whatsoever. The Sheffield Royal Society for the Blind had supplied a set of goggles (safety glasses that had been doctored) that allow sighted people to experience different sorts of visual impairment. Wendy and Rosy tried them on to get a partially sighted view of the RNIB tactile image of Gabrielle playing her violin and the Estudios Durero image of the boxer Dave Howe. The set Rosy is wearing that actually look quite clear had, in fact, been melted a bit to offer the wearer a full perspective but with reduced quality. In the photo with both of them, Rosy’s goggles just give small areas of sight, obscuring the majority; Wendy’s give the viewer tunnel vision and just have a very small pin hole on each eye. (Thanks to Marcus Sarko for the photos and video).

Dave Howe: the man, the icon … and the beard

Dave, Sheffield boxer and close friend of Clive’s came to visit last week. It occurred to me that in our enthusiasm to turn one of Clive’s own photos into a tactile image, we never actually spoke to Dave. We chose this image for several reasons. From a printing point of view, it is a simple image, with a clear background and Dave is square on to the camera (perspective is difficult to understand for someone who is blind or partially-sighted) so it suited the process. Clive’s photography is documentary and ethnographic: he enjoys opening a window onto ordinary lives. For him, and his colleagues at Archive Sheffield, “Sheffield is not place, it is people.” Dave Howe is a local boxer who Clive has been working with for some time and, typically for Clive, has become a close friend. So, we chose the image of Dave for Estudios Durero in Spain to turn into one of their Didú tactile images.
 

As the project grows from one image into an exhibition of Clive’s photographs accessible to the visually-impaired as well as the sighted, Dave Howe is turning into the pin-up boy or icon of tactile photography. Is he happy with that? The smile seems to suggest “yes” but perhaps he's grown the beard to avoid him being instantly recognised around Sheffield. It’s wonderful to see Dave next to his almost-life-size tactile image but what are we going to do about the missing beard? I asked Clive’s brother, Paul, whether we should ask Cristina Velasco at Estudios Durero to manufacture a tactile beard to attach with double-sided tape. He replied that he was sure they could find something suitable in Wendy’s fabric box.

Hands in the bag - Part 2

More used to assessing photos with their eyes, how did Clive’s friends get on trying to feel the tactile image unsighted?

Rosy explained: “It was an interesting idea to feel the photo in the bag, and I was quite excited to feel what was in there. When I first put my hand in, it was very confusing. There was so much going on, and I couldn't figure out a starting point as such. When Wendy starting reading the description, it just made it even more complicated. The words were far too descriptive, and it was hard to keep up with what she was saying, in relation to trying to find that part of the image.

Towards the end of the description, Wendy started telling us what was where in the image. For example, ‘in the top left hand corner is Gabrielle's hair.’ The description then continued to guide us round the image, and I feel that that would have been much more beneficial and understandable to have that part of the description first.” Mick agreed, “from my own 'unsighted' perspective I didn't have a clue what it was even with Wendy reading out the description.

Clive’s brother Paul said that he “really wanted to be able to get an impression of the image in my mind through the sense of touch only.” This might be the clue to one of the reasons why they found the process so challenging, as Paul wanted to fix a visual image in his mind, an equivalent of the original photo but, as Euin will explain in a future blog post, this isn’t necessarily how a blind or partially sighted person will interact with the tactile image, proportions and textures being more important.

Seeing the incredible speed at which a blind person reads braille, I guess there’s a lot of learning to be done before one’s fingertips can assimilate such an image with ease.  

Paul continues: “The image itself and the original are great to compare.  The technique fascinating and actually really attractive.  We also tried viewing the image through some of the special glasses Wendy has been given (by the Sheffield Royal Society for the Blind) that give the wearer a feeling for the different types of impairment suffered by blind and partially sighted people. Using the glasses to feel the tactile image was really challenging, as each set of glasses gave a different impression.

From what Clive has explained to us, Wendy and I thought that the blurred pinhole glasses gave us the impression of what Clive was seeing. With a tiny spot of not opaque vision but blurred these glasses allowed the wearer to scan the print at the same time as feeling the image.  It helped tremendously to analyse and feel/see the picture. We are going to try and have lots of different types of glasses available for visitors to Clive’s exhibition to help them gain a sense of what visually impaired people live with.”

Wendy: “Euin (who is partially sighted) has told us that very few blind people are totally blind and that they would use what sight they had to see as well as feel. At the meeting none of us could make much sense of the image even with the description. I thought it would have been more helpful to lead the viewer from say the corner with the hand playing the strings along the diagonal of the neck of the violin and ending at Gabrielle's face.

Markus and Andy explained that the image would never be presented to a blind person in that form but it would have an accompanying booklet with enlargements of key features and Braille markers on the image itself. This makes more sense to me.

It was really useful to see an example of what we are commissioning and the discussion after was, I thought, much more focused because of that. Also we had a box of goggles that had been spray painted in various ways so as to mimic the way that partially sighted people see. Putting them on and 'looking' at the image was more useful that the bag exercise."

A different sort of tactile image

An exhibition needs a space to exhibit and, it seems, we have one. It’s needs a time and that’s looking like a week during August. (Details to follow.) And it needs something to exhibit, which will be photos from the huge and varied archive of Clive’s work. Due to Clive suffering a loss of vision, we were inspired to find a way for him to reconnect with his photography and that way was via feel; the exhibition will follow that theme. The immensely impressive (or should that be impressively immense?) image of Sheffield boxer Dave Howe created for Clive by Estudios Durero in Spain will take centre stage. It was too expensive to commission another twenty such images to make a proper exhibition, so we’ve been looking at alternatives.

Sue King and Michelle Lee, tactile image specialists at the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) have helped us create a tactile image of a photo of a friend of Clive’s playing her violin. The image was chosen because of its simple shapes, such as the body of the violin, the bow at right angles, the four strings and that Gabrielle’s face is square to the camera. 

99% of the work to produce the RNIB tactile image is by their designers choosing what details to keep and what to lose, so as to simplify the image and then pick out which lines to raise. The black lines, printed on special paper, swell up when heated to give a low relief that can be felt.

When you look at the tactile image, and the photo from which it was taken, you can see straight away that it lacks the aesthetical beauty of the Spanish Didú image, which manages to combine the tonal range of a photo with 3D volume. In fact, the RNIB image isn’t pretending to be anything other than a guide for a blind or partially sighted person as to what is in the original image. It’s supplied with a verbal description which could be read to the person or supplied via audio or braille.

At the latest meeting of the exhibition-organising-friends at Clive’s and Wendy’s house last week, Wendy presented each member with a their copy in a bin bag and then sat down to read them the description supplied with the image. In the next blog, we’ll see how they got on and whether this sighted group could make any sense of the tactile image with just their fingers and ears.

Wendy has been tweeting for a while and has recently started a Facebook page too. Both can be accessed via buttons on the top right of this blog.

Juan Torre interview on the BBC World Service programme Outlook

Journalist Marco Silva interviews Juan Torre for the BBC World Service’s programme Outlook. Click on the banner below. Once the webpage opens, drag the slider to 27:00 to get the start of the interview. At 34:47, Juan starts talking about Clive and his tactile image.

 

"Spanish photojournalist Juan Torre began to suffer from Behcet's syndrome - a rare disease that left him almost totally blind by the age of 30. Despite being unable to make out more than shapes and colours, Juan didn't give up photography altogether. He talks about how he adapted his techniques and came up with an idea to help blind people explore his photos through touch."

There are more details and photos on the Outlook Facebook page : scroll down to May 14th and 15th. 

One of their listeners, Ojambo Muza, commented, "Thanks Juan, this is one way to show our brothers and sisters with disabilities that the world cares about them and that they are part of us!"

Clive feeling and seeing the tactile image

Without doubt, Clive regaining some of his vision has made his first interaction with the tactile image of his mate, the Sheffield boxer Dave Howe, much easier and more pleasurable. We have perhaps got a bit carried away with the idea of "seeing by feeling" and Euin Hill — a volunteer trustee of the Sheffield Royal Society for the Blind who is himself visually impaired — explained to me that sensing an image by touch takes time to learn. Euin went on to explain that a visually-impaired person will appreciate the tactile image in a different way (from a sighted person) enjoying proportion and texture. Clive's partial vision will have helped him to get a sense of this huge print. It's seems a bit too big for Clive, almost as big as his bed, so the picture had to be rotated through 90º for him to get to feel Dave's head and boxing gloves. He might be able to touch it more easily the next time the physios call help him into his grandfather's chair. 

Enjoy the video of Clive and his tactile photograph, taken by Wendy on her iPhone and edited by their friend Marcus Sarko. 

Clive gets his hands on the Spanish tactile image

Clive and his tactile photo

Wendy writes : "after several weeks of slow improvements Clive was re admitted last week to Weston Park hospital because of a build up of pressure in his brain. The staff at Weston Park were fantastic, as usual, and the following day he was feeling much better. Amazingly Clive has regained a little of his vision! He says it's very blurry but he can make out shapes and colours. 

Even the packing crate is beautiful

I spent a lot of time at the hospital this week and had forgotten that the tactile photo was due to arrive from Spain on Friday so when the bell rang, followed by a loud banging on the door, I thought that it was Clive coming back home. I opened the door to a large delivery lorry and a very cheery driver who said. "I didn't want to get it out until I knew someone was home" he then jumped up onto his lorry and heaved out a huge crate. The crate was beautifully made and had clips and carrying handles. He carried it into the hall but it had to stay there until the ambulance arrived because it was too heavy for me to carry it any further.

The crate stayed on the floor in the living room for the next few hours while Clive recovered from the journey. After lunch I unclipped and then unscrewed the lid of the crate to reveal the photo which was wrapped in yards of bubble wrap. I lifted it out and put it on the bed for Clive to undo. It was very exciting. After all the wrapping had been removed I turned the picture over and Clive said "hello Dave". 

It does seem rather large !

It was fantastic to see and feel the photo. It looks so real especially because it is almost life size. Clive is really pleased that he can see some of the image and also experience it with his hands. Marcus and Nathan came round last night to visit and see the picture Marcus ran his hands over Dave's torso and said "wow his nipples feel like nipples!" It's slightly eerie having it propped up against the fireplace because it looks so real.

Clive shelling broad beans by a window onto the garden

We'd like to thank Juan Torre, Cristina Velasco and everyone at Estudios Durero for doing such a fantastic job for us." 

Our appeal is by no means over. We're planning an exhibition of Clive's and his students photos presented in pairs of photo prints and tactile equivalents, so we're still collecting money and a big 'thank you' to everyone who has contributed so far and made this possible.

Juan Torre talks about Clive's photo.

Juan Torre visited Estudios Durero today to have a look at the completed tactile image of Clive's photo of Dave Howe before it is packed up and despatched to Sheffield. He recorded this message for Clive.

Hello Clive,

I hope you feel better now and more encouraged. I am really happy in front of your marvellous photo, which has been exceptionally well reproduced. It is fantastic, it has really good reliefs, it is the best Didú that Estudios Durero has done up to now, and is for you. It is the latest without doubt. To be able to touch the boxer Howe is incredible, is fantastic. You can follow perfectly well all the lines; you can perfectly understand the face, the eyes, the nose, and the mouth… And well, I hope that his pose as a champion encourages you also. 

I would like to tell you that actually there is another way to show the work of each one, that barriers can be overcome and that the main thing is to continue with our passion and continue doing what we know to do, this technique allows us to continue showing what we feel through the photography.

Best wishes, 
Juan Torre

The Didú tactile print of Dave Howe is nearly ready

Cristina Velasco of Estudios Durero has sent me the latest update from Spain: 

"We are already in production. Volumes and textures have been created and we have the 3D base ready on which we will reproduce the photograph. It is one of the last steps in the process, which is the high quality image printing according to the volumes, with all its tactile and visual nuances.

After that, we only need to apply the varnish which will protect the 'Didú' and then prepare it for delivery so that the "tactile photo for Clive" reaches him as soon as possible."

Details of the RNIB's tactile images.

Image 1

Marcus Sarko and Andy Brown travelled to the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) headquarters in Peterborough last thursday to meet with Sue King and Michelle Lee to discuss their tactile images. Andy reports:

Image 2

It was a fascinating meeting. We managed to talk through a lot of the rationale behind the processes that they have used working with all sorts of exhibitions for the British Museum and others.

The most striking thing for me was understanding  that what they produce is not really a version of an image itself. It’s much more useful to think of what they do as creating a package of information intended to communicate some of the content of an image, to allow blind people to create a mental map. So, they start off with a photograph, and produce a drawing based on what it has been decided are the key elements, and present this along with quite a lot of written (Braille) information.

Image 4

Image 3

This has several implications. Firstly, whilst it will still make a lot of sense to have tactile images produced and presented along with standard images, Michelle and Sue were very persuasive that the way in which blind people will actually be best able to access the information in the exhibition will be in booklet form.

Image 6

Image 5

Secondly, because the process allows the artists / curators to decide what information to communicate, we don’t have to worry about the background / extraneous noise in images as much as Marcus and I were expecting.

How it works

The technology that the RNIB use is similar to that we were shown at our first meeting; different areas on a piece of paper can be heat-treated and caused to raise, allowing bumps to appear that can be felt (image 1):

Whilst this is often used with maps and labelling, the same technology can be used to show simplified versions of images, like this Egyptian mask (image 2)

Image 8

Image 7

The clever bit is that only the key parts of an image can be raised.

Image 3 shows a complete artwork simplified to get rid of background noise so that only certain elements can be felt. Then, different parts of the same image are explored further in the book in increasing detail (images 4,5,6,7), with different bits made ‘visible’ depending on what’s important. This might not necessarily be the most obvious things – in image 5, for example, you’ll notice that the damaged section of the cat has been made visible. Image 8 shows how specific you can be about what gets left out – here, all the leading in a stained glass window is shown except where it would interfere with understanding the image on the window (please note - this is actually a large-print document, hence the English characters rather than Braille).

Image 10

Image 9

This has really interesting applications for photography, because it forces the photographer’s / curator’s hand in deciding what parts of an image to communicate. This makes certain aspects of images stand out in a way you perhaps wouldn’t have noticed if viewing a normal version of the image. For example, see the barbed wire round the church wall in image 9, and the people in the theatre doorway in image 10. (image 11 and 12 are further attempts to show the texture of the process – a tricky thing to do !)

Image 12

Image 11

It can also, in my opinion, heighten the emotional impact of an image – as in images 13 and 14, an early war photograph in which the bones of the dead bodies stand out much more starkly, to me, in the tactile version.

I think the way in which this process affects the reading of an image can be a very significant aspect of this exhibition, as is the whole role of intention in photography and selecting which elements are important and the questions this raises about photography.

Andy and Marcus

Image 14

Image 13