“I can feel the machine parts and understand engine problems just by listening to the sounds they make. That’s what helps me do a good job.” It’s 2016 in Trinidad, Cuba. A mechanic smiles beneath the raised hood of a car parked along a tree-lined street. Besides his work uniform, the man wears dark sunglasses—not only to shield him from the sun. His right arm rests on a white mobility cane.
Kampong Cham, Cambodia, 2016. A mother and her son sit on the floor, likely in their home. The woman holds her child with a disability close to her, never looking away from the lens—her gaze filled with dignity and awareness. “My son will grow up at home, in his own community,” she says.
“Every day I go out to sea.” A man in Manzanillo, Cuba (again in 2016), sits in a boat, preparing to fish. He appears deep in thought, perhaps pondering the day’s catch, or the village’s youth, or how tradition slowly crumbles under the weight of modernity. Wearing a white T-shirt and striped shorts, the man has only one arm. He brings to mind the fisherman from Hemingway’s *The Old Man and the Sea*.
These are just three of the stories captured in the ninety black-and-white photographs (each with its own caption) taken by Christian Tasso and collected in his book Nessuno escluso (*No One Excluded*, Rome, Contrasto, 2021). The book—born from an artistic project that began in 2009—shines a light on disability without stereotypes, without pity, “without embellishment or pretenses.”
The award-winning photographer has traveled the world—Italy, Ecuador, Romania, Nepal, Germany, Albania, Cuba, Mongolia, India, Iceland, Switzerland, Kenya, Cambodia—meeting men, women, children, and elderly people living with various disabilities. These, he emphasizes, are just one element of a person’s identity—not a defining or all-consuming one. Tasso explains it clearly through his powerful images, where each subject is portrayed in the midst of daily life, pursuing goals, and, above all, participating in their communities. As he writes: “With this project, I wanted to challenge the default way we perceive things. When we talk about disability, we tend to focus on what makes someone ‘different’. But I did the opposite—without forcing anything, without denial—centering on truth: on the person, first and foremost. Each with their own qualities, and each offering us a glimpse of themselves free from the filters of stereotype, which so often distort our view.”
Flipping through the beautiful volume, we encounter a child in a wheelchair in Kenya, laughing as he’s surrounded by classmates. A couple in Nepal—she expecting their first child in 2015, he using a mobility cane—appears quietly hopeful despite the earthquake that destroyed their home. In Albania, a blind man stands behind a bar counter, serving beer to two customers. Elsewhere, people ride horses, embrace loved ones, or kiss a friend—“active individuals” whose unique lives enrich the world around them.
Through Tasso’s lens, we hear the voices of a proud humanity—their gazes and postures affirming a deep self-awareness. As Alessandra Mauro notes in the book’s introduction, these are people “fully aware of who they are, and of their bodies,” and who seem to say—both to the photographer and to us, distant in time and space—“Look at me. This is who I am. Here, now.” There is no shame. No battle with the body. Instead, the book becomes a gallery where no one is excluded—“everyone has a place in the community”—as seen “through the eyes of those who truly see,” with empathy and respect. Each subject chose freely how and where to be portrayed.
The photographs are introduced by a reflection from Giuseppe Pontiggia (excerpted from *Born Twice*), and fourteen of the images include audio description and soundscape features, making them accessible to blind and visually impaired audiences. A simplified text version is also available at www.contrastobooks.com to support people of all ages with linguistic or cognitive challenges. A remarkable, unmissable body of work.
