The playful symmetry of a cactus’ many needles. Sun bright on ivory petals framed in blue water and sky, or exploding through a lacy armature of branches. Seattle-based photographer Forrest Sargent says that he uses his camera to uncover the “hidden light” in things.

Meanwhile Sargent, who is just 20 years old, shines his own hidden light through these haunting images. Strappingly handsome, six foot two, and profoundly autistic, he is unable to speak in the usual way. When he tries, he utters a cacophony of sounds that have clear meaning to him but to no one else. Until just a couple of years ago, even Sargent’s parents were unsure how much was going on inside the mind of their son.

It turned out to be a lot.

Luckily, Denny and Rebecca have found a way to communicate with their son. They went to Texas to learn a technique for teaching non-verbal autistic kids how to form words by pointing to a letterboard, known as the Rapid Prompting Method. RPM was developed by the mother of a witty non-verbal young man named Tito Mukhopadhyay, who is now the author of books like The Mind Tree and How Can I Talk If My Lips Don’t Move?

The method is controversial. Critics point out that RPM is expensive and lacks independent verification of efficacy. But Denny believes it was a breakthrough for his son. “For the first time in his life,” he recalls, “Forrest was able to articulate a preference to us beyond ‘juice’ and ‘peepee.’”

And what his son wanted was a camera.

Read more here:

http://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/2011/02/09/hidden-light-the-visual-language-of-an-autistic-photographer/