Visible Spectrum: Portraits from the World of Autism - Hardcover

by Mary Berridge (Photographer), Mary Berridge (Author), Margaret Sartor (Text by (Art/Photo Books))

Mary Berridge's award-winning series of pho-tographs is paired with narratives written pri-marily by the subjects or their parents. The book Visible Spectrum offers an intimate view of life with autism, as told from within an autism community, which includes Berridge and her son. It encourages an alternate way of see-ing the condition, in which the diverse and unconventional perspectives of the autistic are valued. It also explores the ways the autis-tic and their families navigate a world which is not made for them and in which they are not always welcome. Despite this, the stories may surprise readers with their thought-pro- voking and af rmative viewpoints on autism and being different. The formally composed and quietly luminous portraits allude to the rich inner lives of their subjects.

Author Biography

After earning her MFA from Yale and a BA from the University of Michigan, Mary Berridge went on to teach at Princeton University as well as several other colleges and universities. She has received several awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer's Fellowship, a NY Foundation for the Arts Artist's Fellowship among them. Berridge's photographs have been exhibited in many galleries and museums including the Museum of Modern Art in NY, The M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Her work has also been shown in the less traditional venues of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the United Nations and the Open Society Foundation. She is interested in how people find meaning in challenging circumstances.
As the proud parent of a son with asperger's, she has come to appreciate and value the contributions that people with diverse brain wiring bring to the world. She serves on the board of the NC Autism Society's Orange-Chatham chapter, and is a member of the Special Needs Advisory Council for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School District.