Sorry, but to me that's something blown grossly out of proportion. Look at the composition; the children are exactly centred on the bench, the teacher is on the [image] left side at the back, everyone's hands are crossed; this has been the bog-standard forumula for elementary school class photos since there have been elementary school class photos. Could the photographer have done a better job at composing and "included" Miles better? Certainly. Should he have done that? Absolutely! To say, "the photo is discrimination and a reflection of a society that still attaches stigma to disability. Kids can be cruel but this comes from adults, which is even worse, she said. Adults should know better. to me seems almost slanderous.
This may well have been the first time the photographer was faced with a situation such as this, and given that it`s Life Touch, he may not have been an experienced photographer, just trained by them in the `Light one here, light two there, snap, snap, next please`routine. Coming across a situation that may not have been mentioned in the training, he didn`t know what to do, and did what he thought best at the time.
Having WORKED for Lifetouch 2 years ago...
I agree with this entirely.
Photographers who work for Lifetouch are RARELY actually photographers. There's only one other person that I know that works for them that is also a legitimately good photographer.
One of the girls that I started with didn't even own a camera of her own. Not even a point and shoot. And she was hired and trained.
LT photographers are trained to do the same thing over and over and over again... and when something is different it's briefly addressed in training, but not really practiced.
Seems to me that whoever took this photo probably did what they ALWAYS do... because they were trained to do so... and probably doesn't really have any TRUE comprehension of what composition is and when thrown in the curveball of a child unable to sit on the bench... just did what he/she always did and then tacked the kid onto the side... because to them, that's logically where the wheelchair fit.
Should they have had the common sense to slide the class over? Sure... but I HIGHLY doubt this was an intentional act of discrimination.
It's more like an unintentional lack of common sense.