10 confronting images that you need to see

"I never wanted him to think that he was normal. I wanted him to be aware of how different he was and see that as an asset." These are the words of Timothy Archibold father of 8-year-old Elijah and subject of a spellbinding book Echolilia/Sometimes I Wonder which you can buy here.

Eli's parents had always known that he was different, but they couldn't explain how and certainly couldn't answer why. His dad started taking photos of him “for something to do, something to fill the time”. He says, he wasn’t trying to create a masterpiece -- "Echolilia" happened completely by accident.

Midway through kindergarten, while the shoots were already underway, Eli was diagnosed with autism. His parents were surprised but they weren’t sad. They already knew and loved their son.

These are some of the truly captivating images and text taken from the book, a masterpiece that was never intended to be that way.

Eli in my sweatshirt

My eldest son was born in 2001. He was always a kid who went to the beat of his own drummer. When he was 5, we began making photographs collaboratively as a way to find some common ground and attempt to understand each other. Soon after we began the project, Elijah was diagnosed on the autistic spectrum. Though the diagnosis gave me the words and history to understand my son better, it didn't take away the mystery and the need to try to find an emotional bridge to him
The conversation

"Echolilia" is an alternate spelling of a more common term, "echolalia," used in the autistic community to refer to the habit of verbal repetition and copying that is commonly found in autistic kids' behavior. I liked the idea of it: photography is a form of copying. Kids are a form of repetition. And looking at my kid with photography allowed me to see myself anew
A funnel

When we collaborate, sometimes I lead, sometimes he leads, but Eli often does something unexpected ... something I'd never have been able to think of. We look at the images together on the digital camera and try to refine them, try to improve them, take them in other directions. I liked the idea of turning creative control over to a child, while I operate the camera.
Spaceman

In the late afternoon, the electronic noises start. The beeping of a garbage truck when it is backing up, the sounds of an engine shifting into high gear, the beeping of a microwave oven. The sound is very loud.

"Can you make those noises any softer please?"

No, I can't. That is the volume that the machine creates. It can't be turned down.
Closed system

"The doors will be closing. Please stand clear of the doors."
"The doors will be closing. Please stand clear of the doors."]

Repeated obsessively whenever we encounter a moving door. At the library, on a bus, at the supermarket. It comes from deep within and interrupts common conversation. It's stated as an impulse, not as a collection of thoughts expressed, repeated in exact tone and rhythm without meaning. This is echolilia.
Two sides of the same sheet of paper

Eli is not what one would think of as traditionally autistic. He has a huge vocabulary, goes to public school, gets good grades. But he is clearly on a different channel.
Elijah in a fairy tale

We had a large plastic container in the room and Eli had been playing in it the night before, putting his body all the way into it. I think I asked him if he wanted to make some photographs with it when it was sunny the next day. He started just being in it: standing, hiding beneath it. Then we realized that it could contain him lengthwise if he curled himself up like he were in an egg.
Special Branch

It was Christmas break and Eli was home from school for two weeks. He had gotten fixated on having fires in our fireplace during that time: the fire, the matches, the kindling, the logs we'd find at a park ... every detail he was taken by, and the ritual of starting a fire was something he repeated and repeated. Around that time he got attached to one of the logs and would not let us burn it. He liked its size, the knobs, the natural handles it had. He suggested we make some pictures with it.
Tooth Fairy

Eli had recently lost a tooth and also had come home with this mask of cut paper. We had been discussing the tooth fairy: Who is she? What form does he or she take? Does she fly? Walk? Is it a boy or a girl? Eli felt she was white, like a tooth in some way, and we made some photographs with the white shirt he had on, white mask, hovering around our backyard fence. We looked at the pictures, and he felt it wasn't really the tooth fairy but us trying to guess at the tooth fairy's shape in a photograph.
Front Yard

For me, these photographs are not of him; they are about a relationship. I always think of that relationship as having three components: him, myself and then the shared stuff that we can't really define. The feeling we get when we look at all the photographs together is the channel that defines the project. That is the echolilia thing.