05/10/15
Understanding
Stanley – Looking through Autism
By Rosie Barnes
Softback, 112pp
ISBN 978-0-9929521-0-5
Published by Lampshade Books
Retail Price: £15
‘If someone asks you
if you know what the time is, do you answer simply “yes”?’
‘Is it important and
easy for you to remember the registration numbers of all the taxis you’ve
caught in the past year?’
‘Can you imagine your
life being like this?’
These questions are just some of those raised in Rosie
Barnes’ book, Understanding Stanley –
Looking through Autism, a heart-warming – and, at times, -wrenching –
insight into life with – and as – her son, Stanley, who was diagnosed with
autism aged three and a half. As a photographer, Barnes realised that, to
understand things that are not immediately within your grasp, sometimes words
are not where you need to begin. Her motivation for producing this book was to
‘create a new kind of visual language that can really get under the skin of
what it might feel like to be autistic with not much effort needed on behalf of
the reader’. She is clear that ‘this is not a “what to do” book. It’s a “what
it might feel like” book’. How is it possible to make people aware – and
accepting – of something so complex and difficult to explain, let alone see?
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