Kevin Connelly and Victoria Wright on staring

Liz Staring it's near universal experience for disabled people. Kevin Connolly has no legs and travels around on a skateboard rather than a wheelchair. The way he deals with it is by taking photos of those who stare at him, and he's exhibiting them at Liverpool's DaDafest from where he joins us now. Hello Kevin.
Kevin Hi, how's it going?
Liz Ah very well, very well. We're going to get back to you in a minute with some questions.
Kiruna We've also got in the studio Victoria Wright, formerly Victoria Lucas because she got married and she's all loved up at the moment, and apparently he's lovely. She campaigns for the acceptance of facial disfigurements and has enjoyed the odd double take herself. Hello.
Victoria Hello.
Liz It's probably worth just going round the table to explain to listeners what our noteworthy body features are I think. So I'm going to start, I'm Liz I'm 4'6" use an electric wheelchair, I'm very thin a lot of people say I look very frail, a cross between somebody who looks quite frail and Michael Jackson on a bad day. That's yes, so that's how I look I think.
Kiruna Right. I'm Kiruna, I'm 3' tall or a metre if you're going to use metric measurements. Shortened limbs, small hands, small feet, that's kind of it, I'm blonde.
Liz Kevin why do people stare at you do you think? I'm just getting an image and trying to get for the listeners an idea of what they're, you know, what people are seeing when they see you basically.
Kevin Yeah well most likely if you see me on the street I'm going to be riding a skateboard.
Liz Okay.
Kevin You know without legs. Big hands usually wrapped in some sort of…
Liz Fantastic.
Kevin … duck taped glove.
Liz So, Victoria, when people see you what do you think they're seeing?
Victoria I think the first thing they probably see is the fact that I've got a very large chin. Then they probably notice the rest of me, but I think the fact that I've got a very big chin and it kind of sticks out a bit is probably kind of the first thing that they see and they notice. I'm definitely noticeable. I'm definitely what you would call funny looking.
Liz Okay. Kevin, tell us a little bit more about your exhibition and how it all started?
Kiruna Yeah well I was travelling alone through Austria feeling quite isolated. And the only real human interactions I was having was, you know, either being stared at or having people coming up to give me money. And after a while because I was a photo student and a film student I perpetually always had a camera in my hands; and one day on kind of a whim, rolling through a back street in Vienna, looked the other way to kind of tacitly give this… give permission to a pedestrian walking from the other direction permission to stare at me, I mean we've all done it and snapped his photo from my hip as he passed. And the photo turned out to be really amazing aesthetically.
So, you know, over the next couple of weeks I toured along the East Coast of the US and in Ireland as well. And just took a bunch of photos in the same vein which formed this kind of skeletal prototype for the Rolling Exhibition.
I went back out again in the summer of 2007 which entailed about three months of travel, I think it was about 17 different countries, took about 33,000 photographs which eventually came to form the bulk of the Rolling Exhibition.
Kiruna Now how do you get your camera ready? Does the stare come first or are you sort of positioned, you know, how do you play it?
Kevin Well, you know, I was always really, really concerned about trying to be as unexploitive as possible. So I literally would go for about eight hours a day, you know, usually ogling across the street or wherever my lens was not pointed, and wait for that certain twinge we all get when we know someone's looking at us.
Kiruna You do know don't you?
Kevin Yeah. And when you focus in on that you can feel it, and when you start to really feel it you can almost co-ordinate that in with shutter clicks.
Liz Vicki, I just want to come in there and ask, do you think there's any such thing as a good stare?
Victoria There is if it's followed by maybe a nod or a smile, then I think that that's okay, because then I think that person's maybe acknowledged that they've been looking at you a little bit too intently, and then they're smiling because it's more of a, you know, "Hi how are you?" kind of thing, which unfortunately I don't have very often. ((Very often do people kind of smile afterwards?)) But I think that's kind of acceptable…
Kiruna Well it's also…
Victoria … and it's much warmer.
Kiruna … acknowledging you as a person isn't it?
Victoria Yes exactly.
Liz And you know the difference it has a very different feel doesn't it?
Victoria Hm.
Kiruna One you're sort of passively stared at by somebody as if you're an object. Whereas the other they're actually engaging with you.
Liz Do you think we were talking about this, you know, earlier me and Kiruna and we were saying we think there's almost a type of person you can almost predict who is going to stare at you, do you think that's right? Can you…
Victoria Oh yeah, yeah. There's one of Kevin's photographs of two road builders, I think, yeah in fluorescent yellow jackets. I think that we've all met those men in those fluorescent yellow jackets. I absolutely every time I know I'm going to be clocked and I usually am. And there's something about fluorescent yellow, I mean, I only have to look at a highlighter pen and I break out in a cold sweat you know? So…
Liz Kevin, do you think there's a type of person, Kevin?
Kevin Absolutely not. You know, part of the thing that I really struggled to capture in this series was that for a split second, you know, a little girl in London is going to look the same as a beggar woman in Ukraine or, you know, a couple of construction workers in Bosnia. And, you know, I think one of the things that I realised when I was doing this series was that I'm as culpable as the next person. And, you know, if I saw a guy without legs on a skateboard I would completely stare.
Liz I think I'm guilty of it, you know, if I see somebody that looks different I'm as bad I'm as, you know, culpable here too.
Kevin You learn to lock it down pretty quickly, but I think that a stare, in and of itself is, while not necessarily benevolent it doesn't really have a bad connotation. I don't feel bad about being stared at anymore because I think that it is, you know, it's just a symptom of being curious - that's what I really wanted to express in this series.
Victoria What I loved about all of Kevin's photographs, because I looked at his website earlier today, is that every single person he's photographed, you know, looks different and unique and covers all the age groups, every single race and colour and gender. And it just kind of made me realise that everybody stares and everybody glances at difference, and here I am as an observer I'm staring back at them. And if I saw them in the street, you know, I'd probably look at them too. And it was interesting that the dynamics kind of changed there, I became the person who was staring at them and they became kind of the passive person being stared at.
Liz You know it still gets to me sometimes, it must do to all of us, how do you cope with it?
Kevin It's become in some ways a little bit more difficult just in that I'm artistically capitalising off of this stare, off of this reaction. So to let it get to me would be kind going back on my word, would be, you know, being a little hypercritical.
Liz You've kind of reclaimed it in the fact that you now are making it into art and reclaiming it in a way…
Kevin Yeah.
Liz … and earning a living from staring, you know, from staring. Victoria how, for you, how do you cope with it.
Victoria Well I must admit a lot of the time I don't notice it, partly because I tend to look at the ground anyway wherever I'm walking, so I don't always notice it. But when I do, if it's a really kind of long cold stare I tend to kind of look back at them and maybe raise an eyebrow to show them that I've acknowledged that they're kind of looking at me for a little bit too long than is perhaps healthy. But I always try and look confident and assertive because I think if you kind of look depressed and looked upset it's kind of, you know, almost saying to them, "Yes you are more powerful than I am. Yes you've hurt my feelings" so I try…
Liz ((It's to give them power?))
Victoria Yes so I try to show that actually, you know, I don't really care that they're looking at me. But I try to have a sense of humour about it, I try to not internalise it, because that's the problem - if somebody stares at you and hurts you and makes you feel like crap it's very easy to kind of internalise it and I like to think well you can stare at me but…
Kiruna It's the repetition of it…
Victoria … it doesn't bother me.
Kiruna … though really isn't it?
Victoria Yeah.
Kiruna It's not just that you've been stared at on occasion it's that quite often on your daily business you're out and about and everybody is surreptitiously saying, "You're different don't forget. You're different don't forget." Because you're getting that, well that reinforcement from complete random strangers...
Victoria Yeah.
Kiruna … that you are different.
Victoria And I think what I find particularly unsettling is when maybe I'm in a café or somewhere, I'm eating or I'm sitting doing something and I suddenly look up and notice that not only am I being stared at by somebody but they're observing me, and I think that's what's unsettling…
Kiruna Yes.
Victoria … when you think...
Kiruna You're aware that everyone's more aware.
Victoria … how long have they been watching me? Have they been watching me for five minutes or just five seconds? Is it just a little look or is it that they've been thinking about me, looking at my hair, the way I dress?
Kevin You know in fact a lot of times people might take a quick glance but, I mean, the thing to remember is that, you know, to every single individual in the world they are the most important person in their lives. So that attention is, you know, I could never imagine is going to last terrifically long because someone's inevitably going to get back to their own issues, their own baggage, their own problems with their lives - be them physical, mental, social or economic.
Liz Interesting, so maybe we're not so much of the centre as we think we are.
Kevin You know to think of ourselves as less significant in the public eye might… maybe be health...
Liz Might be good.
Kevin … after a while.
Liz Wow. Before we leave you both, Kevin, can you tell us where people can see your work on the web?
Kevin Yeah it will be at www.therollingexhibition.com and some of my other work is at www.kevinmichaelconnolly.com.
Liz And, Victoria, you have something you want to plug at the moment?
Victoria I do.
Liz Fantastic.
Victoria Forgive me listeners but I want to plug a charity which I know is, I know and I'm on Ouch as well, but they're a very cool charity, they're really good and they're called Changing Faces and they've got a campaign at the moment for face equality, and they're asking for people to upload pictures of their faces to their website which they can add to a montage. So if you want to share your support for face equality please go to Changingfaces.org.uk.
Liz Thank you Kevin, thank you Victoria. Thank you everyone.