A unique photography exhibition, 'World Unseen', which has been travelling across the world since 2024, is being hosted by the Photo Museum Ireland in Dublin's Temple Bar.
The exhibition offers a photography experience to include visitors with visual impairments through the use of technology and sound, and offers a sensory experience to bring the pictures to life.
David Redmond is a content producer from Vision Ireland who is enthusiastic about the positive impact of this exhibition. He said that the "crucial part of this, is that they have taken the concept of touch to bring it to something that is inherently visual, such as these images".
"By blending the two," he added, "they have been able to create something which gives us the key information and additional context of the pictures".
Artistic Director of the National Photo Museum Trish Lambe, which is the national centre for contemporary photography, described the exhibition as "a landmark show" because it is "so exciting and experimental".
She said that while "today marks the opening of World Unseen", it is also "the launch of our new accessibility services, so we're really thrilled to host it".
The exhibition was created and produced by Canon, and Audrey Frost from the team there explained that "within Ireland, there's up to 300,000 people who live with sight loss, so this exhibition gives them a chance to experience photography, touch and feel images".
"They have a Braille description, and they also get to an audio description of the images too," she outlined.
World Unseen offers a tactile, and sensory experience which encourages visitors to touch and feel the photos on display, Ms Frost added.
Photography and content creation students from the City of Dublin Ballyfermot FET were among the first in the doors to experience the show.
Josue Pena was impressed with the experience of touching the photos, describing them as "something completely different".
Fellow student Fin Corcoran said that he had "never really thought of photography as being a tactile thing, so bringing pictures to life by touching them is really interesting".
Mr Redmond said that "being able to create something that two people, one sighted, one blind, can experience pretty much something very similar, is really, really exciting for inclusion".
The exhibition has travelled internationally and runs in Dublin until Sunday.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
