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The Vision Thing

Here’s a cool new book that has nothing to do with business, but a lot to do with vision. "Seeing Beyond Sight: Photographs by Blind Teenagers," is out this month from Chronicle Books. It was created by Tony Deifell, a visual artist and social entrepreneur whom I’ve met through his work as chief strategist for Kaboom!, a past winner of our Social Capitalist Awards.

Tony taught photography for five years at Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, North Carolina. "Seeing Beyond Sight" is the result—or really, one result: 140 photographs taken by kids whose sight ranged from bad to non-existent. Most are annotated with the words of the students themselves—their stories, and the stories of their pictures.

Some of the photos are remarkable only because they were taken by blinds kids—which is enough in this context. But many are powerful on their own terms, without context—savvy, passionate, witty, and yes, beautiful. They tell us a bit about this little world at a school in North Carolina, and lot about some caring, thinking girls and boys behind the cameras.