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Autistic Fixation Shapes Photographer’s Unique Images

Scott Standifer Disability Policy and Studies Office School of Health Professions University of Missouri dps.missouri.edu/Autism.html standifers@missouri.edu All images copyright Luna The Moon Girl, used with permission. The photographs of an emerging French photographer depict her fascination with reflections, a feature of her autism. The photographer, who uses the online name “Luna” to protect her privacy, has been quietly posting her haunting, evocative images in the Flickr photo sharing website for the last two years. With oddly vibrant colors, they show entrancing and disorienting scenes of overlapping images which trap one’s eye in layers of meaning. Like most people with autism, Luna has several fixations — topics which intensely fascinate her and dominate her thoughts. For Luna, these include cats, reflections, and vegan cooking. All three show up in her photographs, but her most moving images involve the reflections she finds everywhere. She explains that, for her, “When I’m shooting, I…