‘Visible Spectrum’ - Portrait book of Autistics

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Although Mary Berridge's son displayed signs of autism from birth -- including motor skill and speech delays, difficulty with change and sensory sensitivity -- it took over seven years for him to be formally diagnosed.

Having sought multiple professional opinions over the years, the North Carolina-based photographer believes that an oversimplified view of this varied and complex disorder was to blame.

"In retrospect, he was a textbook case," she said in a phone interview. "But he didn't check every box."

Her son Graham, now aged 18, was eventually identified as having Asperger's syndrome, one of a range of conditions on the autism spectrum. Berridge believes that his misdiagnosis was symptomatic of the effects of wider, pervasive stereotypes -- and of our difficulties speaking openly and honestly about the disorder.

“There's so much fear around autism that people don't want to bring it up," she said. "They don't want to suggest it unless they think it's 100 percent true. They're like, 'Oh your kid's just quirky”

Hoping to challenge misconceptions among the neurotypical, Berridge spent more than five years capturing photographs of young people with the condition. The resulting book, "Visible Spectrum: Portraits from the World of Autism," is filled with moments of warmth, depicting her subjects as unique individuals with diverse experiences and rich relationships.

But the photographer is also keenly aware of stereotyping autistic people as having obsessive interests or being "geniuses." ("Most autistic people are not geniuses," she writes, "but each looks at the world in a unique way, often refreshing in its originality, lack of pretense and reordering of priorities.) As such, many of her images depict everyday scenes: playing outdoors, relaxing at home or embracing family members.
"There are a lot of stereotypes -- and there might be some truth to some of them," the photographer said. "Autistic people do spend a lot of time in their heads... But they can also be very social. And they like having friends, and most of them like interacting with other people.

”Visible Spectrum: Portraits from the World of Autism," published by Kehrer Verlag, is available now. A US edition will be available on May 10, 2022.