The blind photographer

[Curt]

Dead Link Removed

Please take a look at this site it's like nothing I would ever have thought possible.

 

[Pinholemaster]

This does not surprise me 'cause photography comes from the heart.

I've been blind on my left eye since I was 2 1/2 years old and need glasses to see clearly in my right eye.

 

[Alex Bishop-Thorpe]

Well my first thought was "Nonsense...preposterous." (and then I adjusted my little imaginary monocle and walked off in a huff), but really I'm impressed. An entirely new take on things, there are some really brilliant photographs there.

 

[removed account4]

if a deaf man can write symphonies
it makes sense that a blind person
can make photographs.

--john

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

I wonder how the photographers themselves appreciate their productions, how they relate to what they have photographed, and how they go about the editing process. There are myriads of ways in which you can assess a scene other than visually, and I'm interested in the photos that show good composition.

I've read some article a while ago about the use of relief maps to communicate pictorial data to blind people. They were able to understand perspective and the spatial location of objects within such a picture, and later on to produce them. It's one of the cornerstone of some theories about the nature of images that consider them not as visual data of any kind, but rather simply as the transformation of 3D information in 2D.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Another great example of a blind photographer is John Dugdale. Of course he started out seeing, but lost most of his vision to an attack of CMV Retinitis, and has been losing the rest of it since. If he has any left at all, it is less than 5% in one eye only. And he uses an 8x10 Studio Deardorff!

 

[bjorke]

You know, this guy made me the WORST watch......

I met several members of the blind photo group at PhotoSF last year. There was only one, however, whose work I felt had anything interesting about it.

 

[Wyno]

wyno

There was a movie done here in Australia called "Proof" with Hugo
Weaving about a blind photographer. It's worth a look
Mike

 

[Travis Nunn]

A gentleman in a photography class I took several years ago was legally blind. He took some really nice photographs.

 

[Chazzy]

Another great example of a blind photographer is John Dugdale. Of course he started out seeing, but lost most of his vision to an attack of CMV Retinitis, and has been losing the rest of it since. If he has any left at all, it is less than 5% in one eye only. And he uses an 8x10 Studio Deardorff!

I like his work too. I have mainly seen the cyanotypes, but I understand that he is also making albumen prints these days.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Yes, he's doing albumen now. I saw one of his albumen prints from a 20x24" neg. Of a sheep. He's a very inspirational person to meet and talk to - if you need someone to revive your photographic energies, taking a seminar from John is just the ticket, because his passion and creativity come through so wonderfully.

 

[Stephen Frizza]

Blind client in bondi

This is Amazing! I had no idea more than one blind person would be taking photographs. I say more than one because I used to work in a small lab in bondi and you could be guaranteed once a week there was a woman called samantha and she was blind. She would some in with her dog and leave one roll of film from a kodak disposable camera. I was always puzzled by this until one day my curiosity got the better of me I was young and rude and asked. Do you take these pictures? and she replied yes. and I was totally puzzled. (mind you the images indicated one of two things she either couldn't see or had no idea how to compose an image. well she took photographs because other people could see them. And she enjoyed showing other people where she had been and who she had photographed because they would talk to her about the places and she could hear more about how they looked etc and recount her experience of the place with them. That was about 6 years ago now, but she was an awesome lady.

 

[mabman]

A friend and former colleague is legally blind (macular degeneration). He was into photography in his younger days when he could see, and decided to get back into it.

With his Olympus E-volt something-or-other and autofocus, he's taken some really nice shots.

Once, just to see what it would look like, he tried manually focusing - it was a bright sunset scene - it was interesting to see what he saw, as it were, but because of the extreme out-of-focus-ness and the brightness, it made my eyes water. I told him he should do a series of these for the national blind organization, to give other people an idea of what vision loss looks like.

 

[Cheryl Jacobs]

A friend and former colleague is legally blind (macular degeneration). He was into photography in his younger days when he could see, and decided to get back into it.

With his Olympus E-volt something-or-other and autofocus, he's taken some really nice shots.

Once, just to see what it would look like, he tried manually focusing - it was a bright sunset scene - it was interesting to see what he saw, as it were, but because of the extreme out-of-focus-ness and the brightness, it made my eyes water. I told him he should do a series of these for the national blind organization, to give other people an idea of what vision loss looks like.

That's a project I've been working on sporadically for the last few years. My vision is currently estimated at around 20/6000, correctable to 20/40 on a good day. Without my contacts, I can only read a book if the pages touch my nose.

- CJ

 

[Bill Mitchell]

Anyone who doubts that there are a great many blind photographers, should take a look at the images posted daily by the thousands on photo.net.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Bill- that's evil

Are you sure you mean blind, and not just stupid?