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| Traveling through 15 countries, Kevin Connolly, who has no legs, discovered that people stare the same everywhere, but what
they see may be different. In Ukraine, he was seen as a holy man; in Vienna, a beggar. Chris Toalson |
A legless artist documents the world in 32,000 stares
Tired of gawkers, Kevin Connolly traveled by skateboard, capturing their sheer human curiosity.
from the January 22, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
On a European trip last year he got tired of it. In what he admits to being a passive-aggressive response, Connolly looked the other way, held his camera at hip-level, and snapped a starer's photo.
"I wanted to stare back at that guy, to let him know that, 'Yeah, I catch you looking,'" he says. "And the way I did that was with my camera."
Afterward when Connolly looked at the photo, blurred from both the movement of the camera and the movement of the man, he was surprised to find he liked what he saw. And the seed was planted for a major creative project.
The following summer, bolstered by a grant and by winnings from a second-place finish in the X Games monoski-cross – a side-by-side race for disabled skiers, Connolly packed his bag with camera gear, 14 pairs of duct-tape-reinforced gloves, and his skateboard. He then set off on a journey around the world to explore an aspect of human nature on which he held a unique perspective.
• • •
Connolly traveled to 15 countries in three months, from New Zealand to Japan, through Europe, Iceland, and then through America until he was back in Montana. Always shooting from the hip, he would start his days heading away from the sun, rolling through villages, and shooting people as he rolled. He would break for lunch, edit photos in his digital Nikon, and then start rolling back toward his hostel as the sun started to set.
"Because I'm not looking through the frame, I really wanted to push the idea that this isn't me trying to frame-up a shot and get someone to stare at me; this is just what people are doing. To really focus on the aspect of human nature that the photos present, rather than, 'Oh, look, those are real pretty.'"
Specifically, Connolly is interested in the seemingly instinctual reaction of staring at something that doesn't fit into a person's normal day-to-day existence.
"The thing I just loved was you had an executive-looking type guy in say New York City, someone who's clearly wealthy enough to afford a very nice suit and a good cell phone, staring at you in the exact same way that a beggar in Ukraine would.
"The notion of leveling everyone out through that one universal reaction, I think is really interesting."
Connolly also discovered that people invent stories for him that are closely intertwined with the places they live. In Ukraine, for example, he was thought to be a holy man. In Vienna and much of Eastern Europe, he was taken for a beggar, and people stuffed money into his backpack.
In his hometown of Helena, Mont., he was mistaken for a wounded Iraq war veteran.
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