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| Brian Charles Steel is a fine art photographer and disability activist. He is best known for his black and white portrait series Impaired Perceptions. The series empowers people with physical impairments by encouraging individualization. His photography and writing have been featured on CNN and Disability Horizons. He travels the country exhibiting his work, and speaking about ableism. He has lectured on his work to various organizations including: NASA Ames Research Center and Abilities First. Steel graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design with a master of fine arts in photography. He uses his passion for photography, love of people, and unique sense of humor to create portraits that are naturally beautiful and human. While attending SCAD, he worked as the photo editor for The Connector SCAD-Atlanta’s student newspaper. As photo editor, he won numerous awards including: 1st Place Best Photograph: Editorial Feature Award from the Georgia College Press Association Better Newspaper, 3rd place Front Page Layout Award from the Society for Collegiate Journalists, and 2nd place General Photography Award from the Georgia College Press Association in 2007 and 2008. Steel worked as the official photographer for the Who’s Who in Asian American Communities Leaders and Legends Awards from 2009 to 2012. He presented as a guest lecturer on food photography at The Showcase School of Photography. Steel has been written about on Wikipedia. His portraits have been exhibited in galleries across the country. He curated a portrait series titled Inside the Outsider for Mason Murer Fine Art as a part of Atlanta Celebrates Photography. He also had a solo showing of his portrait series Impaired Perceptions in the same opening. His Impaired Perceptions work has also been featured on CNN.com and Disability Horizons. "I was born with short fiber syndrome, which means that I have small and weak skeletal muscles however, my biggest handicap is how others react to it. I knew my body from birth, but I was taught that I was handicapped. The physicality of my body’s form is scientific fact however, the implications of how that form is contextualized and perceived is socially constructed. You cannot declare someone to be less capable with out an ascribed normality of ability. This is a series of black and white photographic portraits of myself and other physically impaired people dealing with the concept of perception and socially constructed identity. Some of my subjects have physical impairments that are not visible, which further challenges the notion that seeing is believing. You cannot know a person simply by looking at them; you have to individualize. Tenebrism and direct eye contact are used to aid the viewer in seeing each subject as an individual by making their eyes the point of focus. I also used chiaroscuro to highlight the natural beauty and form of each individual. "My work strives to confront socially constructed perceptual fallacies that misrepresent people who are considered physically “different”. It challenges the viewer to examine their own perceptions and make any necessary corrections; it demands the right to be seen as an individual." |
