Visual Voice of Autism

Harrison Halker Heinks

I examine reflective surfaces in my photography. I am a visual artist who happens to have autism. I have multiple MN State Fair Blue Ribbons, am a two-time National Scholastic Gold Medal Winner, and a VSA Emerging Young Artists grant recipient from the Jean Kennedy Smith Arts and Disability Program and the Jerome Foundation. I have been shown nationally as well as internationally. My images build an experience where viewers can simultaneously look through, at, and in front of the subject by capturing multiple planes with one image. Uniting a single photo from several layers evokes emotion and intends to express how it feels to live with autism. In my artwork, the things behind the reflection represent the ordinary world; I live in the glass, being caught in another plane that runs parallel to the world in which everyone else lives.

By including myself in the work, it motivated me to show how I sometimes see myself as in between reality and being overlooked by society. Through my work, my voice emerges: There is more to people with disabilities than what is on the surface. Ultimately, The Visual Voice of Autism connects to neurotypical viewers by creating an understanding of what it feels like to be living with autism.

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