Tera Girardin Talks New Book Faces of Autism
Photos courtesy of Tera Girardin
Tera Girardin is a Twin Cities- based portrait photographer and author of Faces of Autism: inspiration. admiration. celebration., a beautiful and meaningful coffee-table book featuring photos of children on the spectrum. Faces of Autism was published in April of 2017 and asks the reader to move beyond autism awareness. Girardin asks us to embrace autism admiration, which she describes as taking a sincere interest in and learning about and from autistic children.
Read on and learn more about the author and her inspirations for this must-have book for every autism family in this insightful Q&A:
Paste: What inspired Faces of Autism?
Tera Girardin: I’m a mom to three teen boys. My youngest son, Alex, was diagnosed with autism when he was three. When he began treatment at an intensive early intervention program, I was inspired by him and all the other children in the center. As a photographer, I felt compelled to photograph them. I didn’t know the first thing about publishing a book! But I knew it had to be done. So I began with what I knew, photographing children, and took it a step at a time.
Paste: Your tone in Faces of Autism is one of kindness, compassion, understanding and experience. I imagine those are characteristics that serve you well as a photographer and why you connect with your subjects, such as the nonverbal girl that asked you to be in the picture with her. Tell me about that session.
TG: The session with Liz … she’s just such a loving little girl to begin with! And she never forgets a person either and we had met once before. So it didn’t take long to build a connection with her because she’s so engaging—despite being nonverbal. I was first thinking she was done with photos because she kept moving from the spot I placed her. But she kept dragging me back with her and I kept backing up to take her photo! Back and forth we went and it wasn’t working very well! It was amusing when I finally realized she just wanted to include me in her photos. So we took a few selfies and I nearly was knocked over by her tight hugs!
Paste: In Faces of Autism, you ask readers to go beyond practicing autism awareness in order to embrace autism admiration. As a fellow mom to a child on the spectrum. I love this concept. Can you please explain for Paste readers what you mean by “autism admiration”?