Ray Lifchez generously donated a small sample of slides from his personal collection for “A Place for Every Body”. Many of following photos show the faces of everyday people who are not historically represented in the canon of the disability rights movement. History tends to favor the movers and shakers, the trailblazers and “the firsts”.  This collection of photos does not include those people. It portrays a behind the scenes look at the daily lives of folks with disabilities at a formative moment in Berkeley’s history when the personal life of an individual was very political. They feature everyday moments of reflection, relaxation, and often play.

The above photograph captures a man in a powerchair donning a 35mm camera in a kitchen or community center, perhaps. Ken Okuno, the photographer who took a wealth of the photographs for Design for Independent Living, snapped this photo. The man in the image appears either deep in thought or looking at something beyond the frame that’s invisible to the viewer. His groovy clothing and handcrafted clay jewelry signal a strong sense of ethnic pride during a time of resistance to the oppression of people of color. The calendar in the background timestamps this image March 1978, a year after the 1977 sit-in at the HEW building in San Francisco.