Photo by Christos Stavrou © 2007 All rights reserved

Photograph from a degree ceremony in Leeds University.

So, we are removing the barriers. We build special ramps by the side for all those who can’t walk the stairs. We reserve special spaces for those who were traditionally deemed as the unworthy surplus of educational systems… We publish books in braille and use complicated devices to communicate with all those who were thought incommunicable for us…

We publish even more useful, and colourful, prospectus and reports and photographs that proudly demonstrate our achievements… And now that all these newcomers are arriving to receive their diplomas and awards, still very few but they are coming, and still our awards indeed, we count their faces as the face of our own new progress…

But I wonder, did anybody tell them, those in the safe and proud side, that they should count instead all those who could not come, those who couldn’t make it… all those who actually are not here to be counted?…

Photo by Christos Stavrou © 2007 All rights reserved