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A little boy balancing precariously on a rope, a colorful bird perched on a tree, and fishermen at twilight all have one thing in common: They caught the attention of a photographer with a disability. The resulting images were among the winning entries in this year's Global Ability Photography Challenge, organized by Youth4Jobs, a nonprofit organization in India working to help people with disabilities access education and employment.
Now in its third year, the photography competition — run through Youth4Job's digital platform NotJustArt with help from U.N. India and UNESCO — received 320 entries from 14 countries.
"Persons with disabilities not only narrate stories differently because of their lived experiences, but they also have access to stories beyond the reach of non-disabled individuals," says Vicky Roy, an eminent photographer and one of this year's judges. He was searching for photos that tell a story and have a strong emotional impact, while also standing out for their composition, creativity, originality, subject, timing and lighting.
Here's a closer look at the eight winners, who represent a range of disabilities, including speech and hearing impairments, intellectual disabilities and low vision.
Balancing for life
Awinash Kulkarni, 56, became a paraplegic at the age of 21, when he fell 50 feet from the wall of the Bhushi Dam in Lonavala. He feared for the future of the subject of this photo, perched high in the sky to entertain others.
"Seeing the young boy perform by the side of the Atal pedestrian bridge in Ahmedabad, I was struck by his hardship — he was performing a risky act to help his family, at an age when he should have been in school, while his parents were collecting money from those watching," Kulkarni says.
Kulkarni was in the last year of a graduate program in engineering at the time of his fall. "The shock of never being able to walk again hit me more than the years of treatment and rehabilitation, which delayed my getting back to college in a wheelchair," he says. "I'm grateful for my family's support, and for being employed at Helpers of the Handicapped, Kolhapur, a job that pays me enough to travel, and see and photograph new places."
A colorful guest on an ancient tree
Nithin Yadagiri, a 20-year-old with an intellectual disability, tends to copy what people around him are doing.
"When the selfie culture caught on in India, Nithin started to take selfies, and that soon expanded to taking photographs," says Saraswathi Yadagiri, Nithin's mother. So when his family was part of a tour group at the Kolleru Bird Sanctuary in November 2023, he joined the crowd in photographing this stunning parrot.
The bright, bold colors of the bird stood out to him. "Red, green and blue are basic colors that Nithin recognizes, 'mixed' colors like purple or magenta confuse him," Yadagiri says.
Fishermen casting their nets in the twilight glow of the Godavari River, with the bridge elegantly silhouetted in the background
Sai Mohith will never forget the evening he photographed this scene in 2019. "I was with friends in a park by the river. Seeing a fisherman keeping his boat steady in the Godavari, a river known for its high waves, while his coworkers cast nets, was reminiscent of how we try to keep our lives afloat despite the challenges that come our way," he says.
"I correlated with their struggles," says Mohith, "not only because I have been blind in my left eye since birth but also because I have low vision in my right eye."
It was the last photograph he was able to take. A week later, he suffered an eye ailment that led to five operations in six months and left his right eye too sensitive to light to indulge his passion for photography again.
Raindrops on petals, a quiet reminder of life's delicate beauty
"We have the ability to find beauty in everything that happens in life," says Deepanshi Sharma, a nature photography enthusiast who saw this pomegranate flower one evening in a park near her home in Delhi.
Sharma has needed to use a wheelchair ever since she lost all bodily sensation below her chest after being diagnosed with Pott's Disease and tuberculous meningitis in 2021, at the age of 19, when she was in the first year of a graduate program in physiotherapy.
"I choose to be happy and believe that whatever happened must be good for me because I've become more confident since the diagnosis, despite losing the ability to feel and walk and control my bowel movements and much more," says Sharma, who regularly posts her work on Instagram.
Double exposure
This photo by Rohan Goyal, a 32-year-old with Down syndrome, captures his mother in a pensive mood laid over the image of a tall building. She is "thinking about how to blend into the modern world," says Goyal, who was initially prescribed photography as a form of therapy.
"A speech therapist asked us to teach him photography, and quiz him on the photographs he took, just to get him talking," says his father, Ravindra Goyal. He soon got connected to Know Disability, which offers professional photography training for students with intellectual disabilities.
Now, he's skilled in multimedia and animation — and he always has a camera slung around his neck, so he's ready for his next shot.
The Deaf Blind: Struggling for inclusion
To Akanksha Kamble, this shot of Jyoti Saroj, who is deaf, in front of a chalkboard is more than just a photo. "It is my message to deaf and deaf-blind individuals — you are talented, capable and deserve a place in education and the arts," says Kamble. "It is also a call to educators, institutions, and policymakers to take action for accessible education and career opportunities. Everyone deserves to learn, create, and succeed — regardless of their abilities."
Communication was always a challenge for Kamble in school. "Most educational institutions lack sign language interpreters and do not accommodate the needs of deaf and deaf-blind individuals," says Kamble, who is deaf (but not blind). "Without accessible resources like tactile sign language, captioning, or assistive technology, learning becomes a struggle."
She persevered and holds a graduate degree in fine arts, with a specialization in interior design. Today she works as an art researcher.
Congruence
All of the winners are from India, except for Canadian David Carpenter, 52, who captured this striking shot of the Toronto Reference Library. Amid the interesting geometric shapes and incredible architectural lines, you see two figures climbing the stairwell, separated from each other. That loneliness is what Carpenter wanted to capture.
"Every person with a disability has felt that loneliness at some point in time," he says. "I experienced it a year ago when I was first diagnosed with young-onset dementia due to early-stage Alzheimer's. I didn't feel like talking about my condition to anyone, and I fell into a cocoon of shame."
But Carpenter, a marketing-communications specialist by profession, has since emerged. "I've realized that you can still have a full life despite being diagnosed with a debilitating condition," he says. "I exercise, I photograph, which I love, I host fundraisers for persons with disabilities, and I intend to still be around when I'm in my 70s!"
Divine spirit
"I love taking photographs of beautiful faces and colorful cultural scenes," says Aravind R, 24, who has been deaf since birth.
He was at the Thiruchendur temple in Tamil Nadu for the Hindu festival Dussehra, a festival celebrating the victory of good over evil, when he spotted the subject of this photo. "His eyes were really profound and his make-up and jewelry stood out from those around," he says.
He learned photography three years ago from Srivatsan Sankaran, a deaf artist who was a finalist in the Global Ability Photography Challenge in 2022 and has since started a photo blog.
Charu Bahri is a freelance writer based in Mount Abu, India, who reports on health, society and the environment. She has contributed to The British Medical Journal, Dialogue Earth and Stanford Social Innovation Review, among others.
