It’s amazing sometimes, the amount of skill and versatility displayed by the visually challenged. Especially when they’re able to do certain things better than those with perfect vision. Photography, for instance.

If you’re wondering how it could ever be possible that a blind man take photographs, Evgen Bavcar has gone and done just that. In fact, he is a noted photographer, with his works being published and exhibited around the world. Bavcar, who was born in a small Slovenian town near Venice in 1946, met with two consecutive accidents that completely robbed him of his sight. This, before he even reached the age of twelve. Around four years after this incident, he happened to have access to a camera for the very first time. The first snap he ever took, was of a girl he loved. It was then that Bavcar realized that “I secretly discovered I could possess something that I could not see…”

When asked how he manages the amazing feat, he said, “I photograph what I imagine. The originals are inside my head. It is a matter of creating a mental image, the physical record which best represents the work of what is imagined,” he adds. Bavcar does admit that there are things that escape him, but says that this is true of photographers who can see as well. “My images are fragile; I’ve never seen them, but I know they exist, and some of them have touched me deeply.”

His photographs are developed on contact sheet with the help of those who “serve as mediators between the contacts and my own inner reality.”  The manner in which Bavcar describes his work itself is artistically beautiful. He is said to have put visual beauty into the context of blindness.

Photos © Evgen Bavcar