“I’ve seen the world from a difference perspective than most.”
Welcome to Mamamia’s art endeavour, the Voulez-Vous Project. Every week we celebrate emerging artists, designers, illustrators, creators and women who knit using their vaginas. (Kidding. Maybe.) Our aim: to help the internet become a slightly more beautiful, captivating, or thought-provoking place by making art accessible.
To find out more about the Voulez-Vous project, click here. Click here to see all the previous Voulez-Vous posts.
When Sophie Kafter set out to photograph strangers with disabilities, she was combining her personal experience with her love of documenting moments.
Sophie, a New York-based photographer, was born with a neuromuscular disorder called Charcot Marie Tooth disease.
She inherited the disease, which attacks the nerves in the limbs, from her father.
“Because of this, I’ve seen the world from a difference perspective than most,” she said.
“Since childhood, I have had to be sharply aware of my surroundings. Details such as little grooves in the pavement or uneven bricks on the sidewalk could make the difference between a pleasant outing and a catastrophic fall.”
Sophie’s experience spurred a desire to photograph the human body, and she began creating a series that focused on people like herself who have an “imperfect” body.
“The more interaction I had with the people I photographed, the more my attraction to their differences began to feel clinical and insincere. My original approach felt as though I was viewing them in the way most other people saw them, judging them solely by their appearance. I wanted to break through this boundary and recognize a richer sense of who they were.”
Sophie’s aim was to showcase the stories of others with disabilities, while also showing that they could function capably in their day-to-day life.
“My hope was to truly capture their spirit and what it was like for them to go through life in an atypical body. I wanted others to experience their corpoReality.”
Click through the gallery below for the full corpoReality series. For more on the project, visit Sophie’s website by clicking here.
Want more from Voulez-Vous?
Cats dressed exactly like their owners must be part of your life immediately.
The harrowing emotional and physical scars of people who are affected by gun violence.
Jack Daly takes one thing about people and focuses his photographs on that alone.
Do you know an artist (or are YOU an artist) who creates beautiful or thought-provoking work and whom you think should be featured on Mamamia’s Voulez-Vous Project? Send an email to caitlin.stower@mamamia.com.au.