"It has often been said that savants have photographic or eidetic memories, but
as I photocopied Stephen's drawings I thought how unlike a Xerox machine he
was. His pictures in no sense resembled copies or photographs, something
mechanical and impersonal - there were always additions, subtractions,
revisions, and, of course, Stephen's unmistakable style. They were images and
showed us some of the immensely complex neutral processes that are needed to
make a visual and graphic image. Stephen's drawings were individual
constructions, but could they be seen, in a deeper sense, as creations?"
(Dr Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, Picador,
1995)
> BACK