Picture Perfect World

For personal reasons, I’ve decided to take a break from...

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 19:16:06 -0500

For personal reasons, I’ve decided to take a break from tumblr for a while. I’ll still be back occasionally, but for now I need to step back for a bit. =)

wood-yeah: Shady Dell project preserves majestic: redwood...

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 18:41:05 -0500

wood-yeah:

Shady Dell project preserves majestic: redwood forest

rod42: learning to run on long legs by ingrid vekemans

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 18:11:05 -0500

rod42:

learning to run on long legs by ingrid vekemans

rod42: Yosemite Falls

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 17:36:05 -0500

rod42:

Yosemite Falls

s-u-n-d-a-n-c-e: thats awesome

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 17:01:06 -0500

s-u-n-d-a-n-c-e:

thats awesome

the-absolute-best-photography: You have to follow this blog,...

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 16:36:06 -0500

the-absolute-best-photography:

You have to follow this blog, it’s really awesome!

Photo

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 15:56:05 -0500

Photo

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 15:26:05 -0500

malaspulgas: jacindamagnolia: Echolilia All parents love their...

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 14:46:05 -0500

malaspulgas:

jacindamagnolia:

Echolilia

All parents love their children. But what do you do when you can’t connect with them? In my case, I started making photographs of, and with, my son Elijah, who has autism spectrum disorder. This series—the title is from “echolalia,” a clinical term for the mimicking aspect of his condition—shows the bridges we’ve built on our shared journey of wonder, discovery, and understanding.

We began this project when Eli was five. He was doing well at school but fixating on odd things, lashing out, speaking repetitively. My wife and I couldn’t figure him out. Then I started taking pictures of him around the house. It was an instinctive act for a photographer: Point your camera at something in order to make sense of it. But a curious thing happened. As I documented what Eli was doing and creating, he became interested in the images I was making. I was learning how he thinks; he was learning what I like and value.

We soon had a system. Eli would do something unusual, one of us would notice, and we’d make a photo of it together. The pictures we took over three years were more raw and feral than anything I’d done as an editorial or advertising photographer. And more personal. This is, after all, the story of a father and his son.

Timothy Archibald’s book, Echolilia: Sometimes I Wonder, was published last year by Echo Press. See more of his work at timothyarchibald.com.

This is beautiful