Marie Liesse's 10-year journey of documenting the children at the National Institute for Blind Youth (INJA) in France began when she found a portrait of a young blind boy, Jean-Lin. Jean-Lin was a close friend to her husband, Arnaud de La Bouillerie, and left an immense impression on Arnaud during their shared boyhood, remaining a lingering inspiration long after his passing. To trace the memories of this extraordinary character, Marie Liesse visited the Institute that Jean-Lin attended 30 years ago. Over time, she witnessed the forming of the bonds among the students and documented the stories of their joy and anxieties, at the edges of their childhood, as they prepared to enter the world of the sighted.

Her photographs capture the moments that led the children to color their world with new discoveries and imaginations while in the classrooms or after school, sometimes quietly on their own, and other times in the presence of their friends. Looking at the children through her lens, Marie Liesse confirms for us all that the desire to be seen and to commemorate life is universal.

For the occasion of KYOTOGRAPHIE, we wished to follow in the footsteps of Jean-Lin, Arnaud de La Bouillerie and Marie Liesse to write our story of a bridge between the two worlds – that of the visually impaired and the sighted. To transcend Marie Liesse's photographic images beyond their traditional means, we created prints that are to be "seen" by touching. In France, Marie Liesse collaborated with an engraver, Florence Bernard, to create embossed prints. In Japan, I solicited advice from the artist Takayuki Mitsushima and Kojiro Hirose, associate professor at the National Museum of Ethnology, who are both blind, to create tactile prints using the UV printing technique developed by Horiuchi Color. These tactile prints were realized through continual dialogue between the communities of the sighted and the visually impaired, each sharing their interpretation of the original work.

In collaboration with Museum Access View, an organization in Kyoto that increases access to art for the visually impaired community, we also developed a unique way for our visitors to experience the exhibition. We invite both visually impaired and sighted visitors to engage with the works through each other's perspective. For visitors with visual impairments, the works are observed through the words of the sighted, while the sighted observe the works in response to questions from the visually impaired visitors — which may lead them to discover aspects of the works they might not otherwise have noticed.

The year 2020 has been an unprecedented time for all of us because of the COVID-19 crisis. Many have been experiencing prolonged physical isolation for the first time. While telecommunication is available to us, not being able to see our friends, family and colleagues face to face can have a large impact on our mood and lead us to think negatively in such uncertain times. Physical and emotional isolation is something many members of the blind community face on a daily basis, because of the design of a society that caters mainly to the sighted. They always have to take deliberate steps to change the way they are feeling and actively engage with others.

The photographs by Marie Liesse reveal the moments in which the visually impaired children transcend their feelings of isolation. Might we likewise transcend our feelings of isolation as these children did, confront our fears, renew our faith in ourselves at each moment, and take a step forward? It is through engagement with other perspectives, and through the collaborative experience of such transcendence, that we might begin to witness more profound transformations inside ourselves.

— Catalogue text: Marina Amada