Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists

This isn't a review (yet), I haven't seen this exhibit, but I followed this link from BBC and it looks quite thought provoking:

http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/exhibitions/sightunseen/

SIGHT UNSEEN presents work by the most accomplished blind photographers in the world. It is the first major museum exhibition on a rich subject full of paradox and revelation. This exhibition occupies the ground zero of photography.

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This exhibit seems to raise all sorts of interesting questions about composition, the editorial process, ethics... and it gave me the thought that these artists have, in some sense, attempted to recapture their vision by showing their photographs to an audience and hearing their response.

If you were to lose your vision, how would you cope, as a photographer? I suppose that hearing people comment about your photographs might be a way to relive the visual memories. But would you continue to photograph?

Looking at some of the photos made me realise that this is a much more interesting idea than I initially thought... So much we take for granted. I suspect it would be very hard for me to continue photography if I lost my sight, but who knows? It certainly makes me think hard about what I get out of photography. More on that later perhaps, after I have thought about this some more...

There is an interesting film (quite old now) called Proof, where Hugo Weaving (the guy who played Agent Smith in The Matrix) plays a blind man who takes photographs. Worth a look.

I visited this and was impressed, not only by the imagery, but by the curator, local photographer Doug McCulloh.
Doug also has an interesting show at our local Art Museum as well.

If you are in the So Cal area, it's a worthy visit..

I'm disappointed John Dugdale isn't included in this. Or Ken Keen. Both of who work in cyanotypes and large format cameras to cope with their loss of sight.

Akki14 said:

I'm disappointed John Dugdale isn't included in this. Or Ken Keen. Both of who work in cyanotypes and large format cameras to cope with their loss of sight.

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Put me down as a fan of John Dugdale too.

I would at least try to continue photographing, but only B&W. I would first manage to build devices helping to get an impression of what is going on in a scene. An easy one would be a "spotmeter". It would transfer luminance levels into more or less high tones. Large areas of fine-detailed structures would add random noise.
Normal light meters and distance meters with voice output could be bulit, too.

Lightproof said:

I would first manage to build devices helping to get an impression of what is going on in a scene. An easy one would be a "spotmeter". It would transfer luminance levels into more or less high tones. Large areas of fine-detailed structures would add random noise.
Normal light meters and distance meters with voice output could be bulit, too.

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Interesting ideas, kind of brings sonar vision to mind. Why not try it now, since you have your sight and can compare the results? Such devices might be of tremendous service to those who already have declining vision.

This is no idea of mine, it is just a transfer of existing techniques. For example, there are little colour scanners with voice output helping blind people to find out the colour of clothes in their wardrobe ect.

There are even rifle scopes for blind people out there. They just use some grey-scaled targets instead of the official ones: blind shooter

Building such devices tempts me, but I first have to improve my programming skills. The luminance --> frequency thing would be pretty simple (just a circuit). Judging the "content of fine detail" needs matrix metering or something equal complicated like a webcam & special software. This is hard stuff for me, surely some cybernetics scientists already have what we need.

I have never met Ken Keen but I have spoken to him a couple of times. I like his work photographing the interiors of old churches and the alt.process he uses to display them.

From the point of view of a person who actually makes photographs this exhibition raises a number of conundrums. Photographs by blind photographers indeed? I guess it depends on what you mean when you say "by".

Years ago I worked in a place that had a cold drinks machine in the corridor. If I placed a $2 coin in a slot and pressed a particular button the machine would make clunking noises and two seconds later a cold can of Coke would fall into a delivery hatch. The process was nearly 100% reliable. It was a case of do the exact actions in the right sequence; get the result. So, was I as an artist entitled to sign the can of Coke as my artistic production? Coke by Maris indeed!

The gallery's treatment of this material seems to ignore the deep pathos of people jerking technology they cannot see to generate pictures they cannot visually endorse for which they receive praise that they cannot fully share with the praise givers. Maybe the gallery is trafficking in a bit of sensationalism, maybe even some exploitation but the sharp question remains. Can an artist be legitimately credited with a work that they didn't personally make and cannot, even in principle, experience?

What ever is done in their name the blind "photographers" themselves have nothing to answer for. And if they bring questions about execution and attribution into the minds of their exhibition patrons they will have done something very creditable indeed.

Maris,
I'm glad you posted before I did, as I would not have been so generous.
"Sight Unseen presents works by the most accomplished blind photographers." This is patently absurd.

I see a purely cynical and insulting gimmick, designed to exploit the visually impaired, as well as "Polite" society," who seem unwilling to express their confusion at the emperor's choice of suits. Shame on them.

Maris, I am sure that these very points will be raised and discussed in the course of the exhibit. But...

Can an artist be legitimately credited with a work that they didn't personally make and cannot, even in principle, experience?

What ever is done in their name the blind "photographers" themselves have nothing to answer for. And if they bring questions about execution and attribution into the minds of their exhibition patrons they will have done something very creditable indeed.

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... first of all, I do not have the impression that all of these artists (nor some mentioned in this thread) are completely blind; there are all manner of disorders of the visual system that would still permit a person to compose in an unusual way, whether on ground glass or with a loupe or similar devices.... even if they are 'legally blind.' For example, I recall a contestant on a recent US talent show who had something like a 1 degree field of view. Now, his talent was not photography, but... you get my point It is possible.

But let's take the extreme case and suppose that a person were completely blind, i.e. totally insensitive to light. I suppose that person could still produce photographs with real meaning and artistic ownership.

The way I see it, we fully-sighted people make our photographs by relying on feedback... through the lens, through a viewfinder, through ground glass, or shooting from the hip with no viewfinder at all... whatever. All of those are well established ways of producing photographs. Why couldn't a person rely on the the other senses to roughly form a composition and then rely on feedback from others to determine whether that photograph was successful? And don't we fully-sighted individuals also ultimately rely on feedback of others if and when our work does go on display? Anyway, if a fully-sighted person did decide 'audience be damned' and simply shoot entirely for him/herself, then what is the print but a meaningless piece of paper? So feedback is intrinsic to the printed art.

Another interesting question I think this raises is to what extent all the rules and regulations of modern photography might actual impede our ability to record an experience in raw form. I don't just mean rule of thirds and sunny 16 and all that... I mean, how we decide, on the spot, whether a photograph is 'worth' taking.

You know, these days, sports photographers sometimes wire up several cameras with pocket wizards and fire them opportunistically. They are anticipating interesting perspectives. Success isn't guaranteed.. but is it ever? That's not my thing, but I do sometimes 'wing it' and photograph without composing, especially when using my mini-tower tripod, which places my camera ~30 ft up. More commonly, my camera is simply too high up on a normal tripod for me to seal the deal with a loupe or normal viewfinder. Now, I've gotten some pretty nice results that way. For me it is an issue of imagining the result and then enjoying the new perspective, whatever it may be. Granted, I get to view the neg/slides afterwards and sort keepers from trash, but... I could learn to give that up, I think. I suppose that I could conclude that the act of imagining the scene was enough for me and the act of accepting the result is for the audience.

Finally, I don't think that pre-visualization has to be done with the eyes open, I have a large number of anticipated photographs I'd like to make of scenes that I haven't actually seen. Did you ever imagine a particular landscape and then wonder where you might find such a thing? I don't think this is so unusual, actually. It's as natural as dreaming.

So, I see your point(s) but... I think there's quite a bit more to this. At least for me, it raises many questions about what composition really is.

There is obviously a potentially gimmicky side to this stuff - which was my initial reaction to the idea of photography by blind people.

But if you accept that a significant part of photography is subject choice and composition, which could in some cases be done by feel (or be aided by description of a scene) rather than purely by sight, then the idea of a blind photographer becomes more plausible. The movie Proof that I referred to in my earlier post above really is worth seeing and does make you think about what we take for granted and gives you an idea of why a blind person might want to take photos, and why those photos might be thought provoking for a sighted audience. For example, a photo of a nude, or a photo of a street scene full of colour, taken by a blind person takes on an added significance - the photographer could not see these wonderful things that we enjoy all the time but wanted to record them (perhaps for that very reason).

It seems likely that in almost all cases the blind photographer will enjoy some assistance from a sighted helper when it comes to deciding which photos work and how they should be printed. But many well known sighted photographers enjoy this assistance too, albeit probably to a more limited extent.

I am not backward in criticising ideas that are complete BS (like your Coke analogy Maris), but this one is more thought provoking than it may at first seem. While in many cases it may not be appropriate to praise a wholly blind photographer for the printing skill employed in his images, it may nevertheless be perfectly appropriate to praise him/her for other aspects of their images. Or, depending upon what the photographer intended, it may simply be right to thank them for opening our eyes to something we rarely think about...

Also, the description "blind" often applies to people with various degrees of partial sight, which would therefore allow increasing scope for input by such a photographer to other parts of the photographic process.

I attended the opening and the lecture by the curator and you'd be surprised how involved most, if not all, these photographers were. One paints with light using coordinates inputted by a laser pointer and a special lens with markings for focus/depth of field. Whether they had help with the printing and final presentation does not undermine their ability to "see" the image and create it.

Maris said:

From the point of view of a person who actually makes photographs this exhibition raises a number of conundrums. Photographs by blind photographers indeed? I guess it depends on what you mean when you say "by".

Years ago I worked in a place that had a cold drinks machine in the corridor. If I placed a $2 coin in a slot and pressed a particular button the machine would make clunking noises and two seconds later a cold can of Coke would fall into a delivery hatch. The process was nearly 100% reliable. It was a case of do the exact actions in the right sequence; get the result. So, was I as an artist entitled to sign the can of Coke as my artistic production? Coke by Maris indeed!

The gallery's treatment of this material seems to ignore the deep pathos of people jerking technology they cannot see to generate pictures they cannot visually endorse for which they receive praise that they cannot fully share with the praise givers. Maybe the gallery is trafficking in a bit of sensationalism, maybe even some exploitation but the sharp question remains. Can an artist be legitimately credited with a work that they didn't personally make and cannot, even in principle, experience?

What ever is done in their name the blind "photographers" themselves have nothing to answer for. And if they bring questions about execution and attribution into the minds of their exhibition patrons they will have done something very creditable indeed.

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I guess that composing a worthwhile photograph is solely about having perfect sight in the same way that composing a worthwhile piece of music is solely about having perfect hearing. That's why Beethoven was always such a plonker...

lol good point.

As a photographer with vision that is estimated at approximately 20/6000, I have always found these sorts of projects very interesting. I believe photography is equally about what one sees and what one feels, which presents a fascinating range of possibilities.

I started some time ago a project to try to demonstrate what the world is like to me without my contact lenses. (I can't wear glasses, as they are literally so heavy that they cause damage to the bone structure of my face.) I got a few images in, then neglected the project. It was incredibly difficult; for me to attempt to read a book without my lenses, I have to close one eye and literally press the book up to my nose. The attached image is actually much too sharp to demonstrate my eyesight; I took my best guess and composed by feel.

- CJ