SIGHT UNSEEN catalog - California Museum of Photography ...

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Curated by Douglas McCulloh

Exhibition generously supported by:
Henry W. Coil Jr. of Tilden-Coil Constructors
Marriott Riverside
Pip Printing is printmystuff.com
Guide by Cell
Blindness Support Services
Impact Printing
Important assistance from:
Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Oaxaca, Mexico
Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, Scotland
Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans
Palo Alto Art Center, Palo Alto, California
Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, Mexico City
Alberto Constantino, Mexico City
Gina Badenoch, Mexico City
Mark Daly, Palo Alto, California
Tom Donahue, Riverside, California
Andrea Duplessis, New Orleans
Jonathan Ferrara, New Orleans
Ted Fisher, New York City
Susann Gandolfo, New Orleans
Larisa González, Mexico City
Kelly Hill, Riverside, California
Patrice Hughes, Los Angeles
Beatriz Mejia Krumbein, Riverside, California
Sarah Lappe, San Francisco
Christine Leahey, Los Angeles
Iris Lee, New York City
Donlyn Lyndon, Berkeley, California
Benjamin Mayer Foulkes, Mexico City
Signe Mayfield, Palo Alto, California
Charles Megnin, New Orleans
Pedro Meyer, Mexico City
Ana Karen Muciño, Mexico City
Joe Mazariegos, Victorville, California
Paul Nesbitt, Edinburgh, Scotland
Kristina Newhouse, Los Angeles
Peter Benevidez, Riverside, California
Rozenn Quéré, Paris
Chris Rourke, London
Ryan Swoverland, Tokyo
Madoka Takahashi, Tokyo
Anayatzin Trejo, Mexico City
Joan Trujillo, Mexico City
And, of course, the staff of UCR/CMP and UCR ARTSblock
This book is published by UCR ARTSblock on the occasion of the
exhibition Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists
on view from May 2 to August 29, 2009 at the UCR/California Museum
of Photography.
Curator: Douglas McCulloh
Graphic design and production: Lisa van Olden
UCR ARTSblock Executive Director: Jonathan Green
UCR/CMP Director: Colin Westerbeck
© 2009 The Regents of the University of California
UCR/California Museum of Photography
UCR ARTSblock
University of California, Riverside
UCR/California Museum of Photography ISBN 978-0-9823046-1-7
All rights reserved.
UCR ARTSblock
University of California, Riverside
3824 Main Street
Riverside, CA 92501
www.artsblock.ucr.edu
www.sweeney.ucr.edu
www.cmp.ucr.edu
Cover photograph: A Close Up View, Evgen Bavcar
Photographs reproduced with the permission of the artists.
All rights, copyright, and reproduction rights remain with the artists.
Essays © 2009 Douglas McCulloh
Printed in the United States

nd revelation.
the ground zero of
lts are pure, unfiltered
e my head.
ely realized internal
t, photographs second.
nifestations of images
Curatorial Essay by Douglas McCulloh 2
I. Shooting Blind 2
II. Blind to Our Own Blindness 4
III. Seeing Beyond Sight 6
Ralph Baker 8
Evgen Bavcar 12
Henry Butler 22
Pete Eckert 28
Bruce Hall 34
Annie Hesse 42
Rosita McKenzie 50
Gerardo Nigenda 58
Michael Richard 80
Seeing with Photography Collective 90
Kurt Weston 100
Alice Wingwall 114
1

2
I.
Douglas McCulloh
Sight Unseen presents work by some
of 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.
The inherently conceptual work of these
artists proposes a surprising central
thesis—blind photographers possess the
clearest vision on the planet. “Heaven
gives its glimpses only to those/Not in a
position to look too close,” writes the poet
Robert Frost.
The artists of Sight Unseen—while as
divergent and individual as those found
in any collection of art-makers—produce
their work from three basic conceptual
stances. At the risk of oversimplifying,
here is a framework with which to
examine the making of this work.
One group of these artists construct,
maintain, and curate private, internal
galleries of images. Then they use
cameras to bring their inner visions into
the world of the sighted. “I photograph
what I imagine,” writes Evgen Bavcar.
“You could say I’m a bit like Don Quixote.
The originals are inside my head.” Bavcar,
Pete Eckert, Alice Wingwall, and the many
artists of the Seeing With Photography
Collective operate primarily in this mode.
Their images are elaborately realized
internal visualizations first, photographs
second. A portion of the work by Gerardo
Nigenda and Kurt Weston can also be
viewed in this light. For these artists,
photography is the process of creating
physical manifestations of images that
already exist as pure idea. Indeed, Bavcar
apologizes to sighted viewers that
they must make do with reproductions
because they cannot visit the private
gallery in his mind to see the originals.
A second group deploys cameras to
capture the outside world, but, being
blind, operate free of sight-driven
selection and self-censorship. Marcel
Duchamp wrote of “non-retinal art,” an
art of the mind, of concept, of chance.
These artists are engaged in non-retinal
photography. The results are pure, unfiltered,
and inherently conceptual. They
operate beyond the logic of composition
or the tyranny of the decisive moment.
Ralph Baker, Henry Butler, Rosita
McKenzie, and Gerardo Nigenda work
primarily in this mode. Naturally, these
artists employ senses other than sight as
pathways to vision.
For example, Henry Butler, an acclaimed
blues pianist highly attuned to the audio
world, uses sound cues as feedback to
guide his street shooting in New Orleans.
Gerardo Nigenda punches his images
with Braille descriptions of sensory
experiences—the smell, touch, or sound
of his subjects. Rosita McKenzie speaks
of photographs triggered by sound and
scent in the botanic gardens of Edinburgh.
The third and smallest group is legally
blind, but retain very limited, highly attenuated
sight. Most photographers see to
photograph. These artists photograph
to see. Bruce Hall, Annie Hesse, Michael
Richard, and Kurt Weston depend on
seeing devices, cameras central among
them. They live in a visual space created
by enhanced seeing. When Bruce
Hall looks into your eyes, it’ll be on his
forty-inch Sony high definition monitor.
“I think all photographers take pictures
in order to see,” says Hall, “but for me
it’s a necessity.” Susan Sontag calls
photographs objects “that make up, and
thicken, the environment we recognize as
modern.” These artists build their worlds
the modern way—one photograph at a
time. Their photographs operate in the
gap between the limitations of physical
sight and the desire for images. Kurt
Weston takes this tactic a step further.

He photographs in order to see, but
chooses politically charged subject
matter—AIDS, marginalization, blindness,
aging—to impel us look at issues of
importance.
Beneath all three approaches lies a key
question. “The matter isn’t how a blind
person takes photographs,” writes Evgen
Bavcar, “ but rather why he would want
images.” The simple answer is a basic
human need for images. “What I mean
by the desire for images is that when we
imagine things, we exist,” says Bavcar. “I
can’t belong to this world if I can’t imagine
it in my own way. When a blind person
says ‘I imagine,’ it means he too has an
inner representation of external realities.”
“The human brain is wired for optical
input, for visualization,” says Pete Eckert.
“The optic nerve bundle is huge. Even
with no input, or maybe especially with
no input, the brain keeps creating images.
I’m a very visual person, I just can’t see.”
Vision, even in the absence of sight,
is an addiction, a need. “…above all I
visualized,” writes Jacques Lusseyran,
blind hero of the French Resistance. “It
was an enchantment to watch appearances
on the screen inside me, and then
to see the screen unfolding like an endless
roll of film…. After all, isn’t it true that the
realities of the inner life seem like marvels
only because we live so far away from
them?”
Some of these artists suggest their
quest is more metaphysical. “I try to find
another light behind the black square of
Malevich, to overcome the shadows cast
on the objects of a universe which is but
the pretense of another, more authentic
reality,” writes Bavcar.
Of course, a blind person pressing the
camera shutter is also a political act.
Doing so lays claim to the visual world
and forces a reevaluation
of ideas about blindness.
“For a blind person, making
a photograph is a choice,
a radical choice, a political
move,” says Alice Wingwall.
“I was tired of people saying
to me, ‘How can you take a
photograph when you can’t
see anything?’ And I think
they weren’t asking me, they
were telling me—‘How can you do this?
It’s unthinkable.’ Well, I can do it. What
I say to them is that the image starts in
the brain.” These acts of creative imagemaking
additionally render the blind more
“visible” to the sighted, an important
matter for such a small and marginalized
minority.
In the end, of course, the power of
these photographs is not metaphysics
or politics, but vision. Simple witnessing
is the purest kind of creation. On his
deathbed, George Orwell discovered
he could quell his panic by reverting to
reportorial mode and writing a precise
inventory of his hospital room. In the
end, it is a heroic act just to say what is.
What do places look like when they are
not changed by seeing? How do people
present themselves when confronted
with a camera
operated by
an unseeing
darkness? What
happens when
artists operating
outside the
influence of
visual culture
decide to make
photographs? In
his novel Blindness, José Saramago writes,
“Perhaps only in a world of the blind will
things be what they truly are.”
3

4
II.
Inescapably, Sight Unseen questions the
sight of the sighted. Sight is so pervasive
and powerful that it makes us unaware of
our own blindness. Stated another way,
sight itself abets blindness. We see, and
III.
this is so strong that we think we under-
stand. Our minds are an internal Groucho
Marx: “Who are you going to believe, me
or your own two eyes?”
A central revelation of Sight Unseen is
this: photographers—commonly viewed
as specialized seers—are perhaps
the blindest people of all. The logic is
undeniable. Modern photography is the
easiest thing possible. Get a camera, put
it on automatic, and press the shutter.
The result: photographs.
What is the purpose, then, of
photographic training, toil, tuition,
assignments, critique, student loans,
graduate school, curatorial exercises,
photo museums, carefully staged
exhibitions? British photographer
Terence Donovan puts his finger on
it: “The real skill of photography is
organized visual lying.” A convincing
lie takes practice. Photographers,
therefore, internalize a lengthy set
of conventions: traditional subjects (or
rebellious countermoves), suitable
Douglas McCulloh
angles, appropriate lenses, depth of field
choices, proper color balance, correct
compositional techniques (and vague
countermoves), geometric balances,
effective crops, ephemeral gestures,
decisive moments. The list is—click by
click—a successive ratcheting down,
a narrowing of vision. It is, in fact, a
progressive blindness.
Compounding this, we live in a visual
era. We are so inundated with images
that we use them to build our world.
Photographers, consequently, inflict their
blindness on us all. Their blindness has
become a contagion.
Professional
photography is thus
a strange priesthood
that floods the world
with images moving
and still. People
trust the priesthood
to provide sight
(and possibly even
vision), but it offers
blindness. This is
why travel is such
a shock. Pick any
iconic place and visit. Compare image
to reality. The Roman Coliseum? It’s a
Golden Gate Bridge
remnant stranded in swirling Roman
traffic. Disneyland? The photo version
is a happy, ethnically balanced group of
children posing with Mickey in front of
the castle. The reality is largely concrete,
crowd control, and people lined up to buy
things.
In the meantime, cameras proliferate.
Photography is consciousness in its
acquisitive mode, writes Susan Sontag.
As such, it’s the perfect technology for
an acquisitive populace. In late 2008,
Facebook crossed the threshold of serving
up 15 billion photographs per day. “To
celebrate,” said Facebook engineer Doug
Beaver, “we got a bunch of cupcakes and
handed them out to our engineering and
operations groups. One of our engineers
calculated that if we had gotten one
cupcake for each of our photos, and lined
them up side by side, the line would reach
halfway to the moon.”
Questions arise. How can so many people
photograph so much and show us so little?
Can the deluge of photographs depict
everything and reveal nothing? Has the
actual practice of photography—in truth
an amazing means of acquisition—been
confused with seeing? Are we sighted,
or blind? Photographs are the keystones

of our cultural memory, and in his book
on blindness and art, Jacques Derrida
connects memory, blindness, and ruin.
“Ruin is… this memory open like an eye,
or a hole in the bone socket that lets
you see without showing you anything at
all, anything of the all. This, for showing
you nothing at all, nothing of the all.”
Cameras
produce
clichés. In
fact, the
French
word cliché
has two
meanings—
a trite
expression and a photographic negative. I
grew up traveling to National Parks across
the west. My family would carefully locate
Kodak’s signs marking where visitors
should stand with their cameras. Such
assistance is no longer required. People
have so completely internalized photography’s
circumscribed clichés that they
now hew to convention without direction.
We know where to stand. Artists express
their mild rebellion by taking a step back
and including the sign itself. We are blind
to other options. “I went on to Flickr
and it was just thousands of pieces of
shit, and I just couldn’t believe it,” said
photographer Stephen Shore. “It’s just all
conventional, it’s all cliches, it’s just one
visual convention after another.”
In White Noise, Don Dellilo describes a
visit to “the most photographed barn” in
America.
We walked along a cowpath to the
slightly elevated spot set aside for
viewing and photographing. All
the people had cameras; some had
tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits.
A man in a booth sold postcards and
slides—pictures of the barn taken
from the elevated spot. We stood
near a grove of trees and watched the
photographers. Murray maintained
a prolonged silence, occasionally
scrawling some notes in a little book.
“No one sees the barn,” he said finally.
A long silence followed.
“Once you’ve seen the signs about the
barn, it becomes impossible to see the
barn.”
He fell silent once more. People with
cameras left the elevated site, replaced
at once by others.
“We’re not here to capture an image.
We’re here to maintain one. Can
you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of
nameless energies.”
“Traditional photographers are the ones
who are really a little bit blind from being
constantly bombarded with images,”
writes Evgen Bavcar. “I sometimes ask
them what they see, but it’s hard for them
to tell me. It’s very difficult for them to
find genuine images, beyond clichés. It’s
the world that’s blind: there are too many
images, a kind of pollution. Nobody can
see anything. You have to cut through
them to discover true images.”
José Saramago’s great novel Blindness
depicts a city in which everyone has
been stricken blind. On the last page of
the novel, the Portuguese Nobel prize
laureate summarizes: “Why did we
become blind, I don’t know, perhaps one
day we’ll find out, Do you want me to tell
you what I think, Yes, do, I don’t think we
did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but
seeing, Blind people who can see, but
do not see.”
5

6
III.
It is a timeless cross-cultural belief that
there is a seeing beyond sight. The artists
of this exhibition chart connections
between two worlds: outward sight versus
vision with the inner eye. “I slip photos
under the door from the world of the blind
to be viewed in the light of the sighted,”
says Pete Eckert.
I’m not inclined toward the metaphysical.
Photographers of necessity concentrate
on the tangible world. The camera
captures light reflected from objects.
There is no need to amplify this mystery
with imagined spiritual schemes. And
the photographers of Sight Unseen, for
the most part, hesitate to ascribe deep
meanings to their images. However, as
photographer Duane Michals writes,
“Photography deals exquisitely with
appearances, but nothing is what it
appears to be.” Art itself is predicated
on the idea that simple physical realities
are latent with mysteriously compound
meanings. And the literature of blindness
is full of clues and whispers hinting
that we should pay attention to these
remarkable photographs that join the
invisible and visible worlds.
Firstly, perhaps the blind are immune to
the profoundly hidden blindness that
afflicts photographers. If
the sighted are blind from
too much seeing, blind
photographers, by contrast,
are unhindered by the
disability of sight. They
approach the world free of
emersion in visual media. “I
start out at the zero point
of photography,” says Evgen
Bavcar, “I am not influenced
by other photographers
because I cannot see and
therefore I cannot be under
their influence.” Jacques
Derrida arrives at a similar
conclusion: “By a singular
vocation, the blind man
becomes a witness; he must attest to the
truth or the divine light. He is an archivist
of visibility.”
“It is a grace bestowed upon the blind,”
writes Karl Bjarnhof in his memoirs
of blindness, to have “an eye for the
unseen.” Jacques Lusseyran writes
of the heightened inner world of the
blind: “Like drugs, blindness heightens
certain sensations, giving sudden and
often disturbing sharpness to the senses
of hearing and touch. But, most of all,
like a drug, it develops inner as against
outer experience,
and sometimes to
excess. At such times
the world unfolding
before a blind person
is perilous, because
it is more consoling
than words, and has
the kind of beauty
found only in the
poems or pictures of
artists with hallucinations—artists
like
Poe, Van Gogh and
Rimbaud.”
For all of recorded
time, people have
believed that the blind possess vision
reaching beyond the physical world.
Tiresias, the blind prophet who could
see into the future, was consulted by
the full pantheon of Greek mythology.
Democritus, it is said, blinded himself in
order to better see with his intellect. The
great shaman of Lap mythology is a blind
man who sees beyond the distractions of
light or darkness to commune with the
ancestors and the spirits. The tombs of
ancient Egypt are adorned with images
of blind harpists who, it was thought,
hovered between the two worlds and

could communicate with the deities. In
ancient Israel, the blind became hugely
learned, memorized vast texts, and
were credited with miraculous powers of
perception and prayer. “The Lord opens
the eyes of the blind,” states the Midrash.
The Talmud refers to the blind as sagi
nahor, Aramaic for “great sight.”
These figures embody the blind as
visionary. They personify the dialectic
inherent in seeing: mere outward sight
versus vision with the inner eye. None of
the artists in this exhibition claim to see
into the future. But it is worth noting that
in the descent into some common forms of
blindness, the sharpest vision remains on
the extreme periphery of sight. Recall that
it was a blind Milton who conjured the
sweeping landscapes of the heavens in
Paradise Lost, and the blind Homer who
detailed the souls lost in the underworld.
And blind writer Jorge Luis Borges strolled
every day with a woman friend through
the arcades of Buenos Aires relating what
he saw with his mind’s eye—fantastic
birds and creatures in a vaulting carnival—
and telling tales which thread their way
through the unseen world like meanings
through mythology.
The photographers of Sight Unseen
are wanderers, and there are different
models for this kind of exploration. “In
the middle of the journey of our life I
came to myself in a dark wood where
the straight way was lost,” wrote Dante.
Contrast Dante with the comments of
New Yorker humorist and cartoonist
James Thurber who, after becoming blind,
“thought of spending the rest of my days
wandering aimlessly around the South
Seas, like a character out of Conrad, silent
and inscrutable.” The two statements
on wandering are different in more than
tone. Dante suddenly discovers himself to
be in the dark wood. “I came to myself,”
he writes, as if he awakened there after
sleepwalking through the first part of his
life’s journey. What comes upon Dante
suddenly is neither the wood nor the
darkness, but the realization of his true
condition—alone in a dark wood where
the straight way is undiscoverable. His
is not a volitional act, a choice made, a
decision taken. He has been lost in the
darkness the entire time. For Dante we
simply are in the dark wood.
James Thurber, on the other hand,
ponders taking up blind wandering as
one would consider trying tennis or ice
skating. There is a jaunty audacity in this:
we are now blind; where shall we wander?
The balmy South Seas might just be the
place to do such wandering—silent and
inscrutable, blind and creative. Thurber’s
statement proposes that, though blind,
we can still embark on creative roads.
Street Photograph, New York
Charles Ernst and Douglas McCulloh
This photograph and the one on page 4 of the Golden Gate
bridge, are from a continuing collaborative project with
Charles Ernst, a sculpture student at the Braille Institute in
southern California. We began in January 1999. Charles is
blind and does the photography. He makes images based on
sound, hunch, intuition, the wind off the water, the noise of
the crowd. I make sure we don’t fall off a curb or get hit by a
car. We have been travelling to iconic locations—places that
photographs have put into everyone’s heads even if they’ve
never been there. Project photographs have been made in
Hollywood, Las Vegas, Disneyland, San Francisco, Yosemite
Valley, New York, New Orleans, Florence, and Pisa.
7

8
ralph baker New York
Ralph Baker is a blind street photographer
in New York City. Baker shoots, prints, and
sells small photographs at public events for
immediate money. “Million Man March.
That was a fun one. The Million Woman
March was also fun. Street parties are fun.
Some parades. St. Paddy’s Day parade is
great. Thanksgiving Day parade is good,
too. Fourth of July…” Locations that draw
crowds appear as repeated backdrops:
Times Square, the Christmas tree at
Rockefeller Center, Central Park.
He shrugs off questions about photography
by a blind person. “Yeah, that doesn’t make
a difference… My camera can see.”
Baker began his street shooting in 1966, and
has operated ever since without required
New York City vendor permits. Baker
considers himself an artist. “I’m compelled
to take pictures as a photographer… it’s
not a want.” But the police tend view him as
an unlicensed general vendor. The resulting
periodic trouble with the NYPD leads to
his most frequent self-description: “blind
common criminal street photographer.”
Every single image in this exhibition is one
of the photographer’s “failures.” These are
images that people did not want or buy.
In a street-based photo economy, a sale
equals success; these are washouts, rejects,
losers. This is a prime reason these images
are of interest. The world is full of perfect,
pointless images. These are glorious failures
shot by someone who cannot see. In fact,
Baker’s process of street sales is a culling
regimen. Successes, that is to say images
that meet with hollow, denatured formal
expectations, vanish into someone’s life.
Failures—read: the unexpected, the oddly
revealing—remain in the artist’s trove.
Untitled
Flipping through piles of Baker’s collected
images, therefore, brings a basic photo
dichotomy into high relief. Somewhere
in the frame are subjects enacting what
image socialization has pounded into
them—stand, strike a pose, present a gaze,
remain embalmed until the shutter falls.
The camera implacably returns their gaze.
All seems well. But leaking in from every
edge is the unkempt world of lively happenstance.
Unbeknownst to the subjects,
this camera is blind. Sighted photographers—most
especially professionals—know
to keep the real world out. Ralph
Baker cannot, so the photographs
crawl with life.
Baker was interviewed in 2005 by
journalist Raphie Frank.
How do you know when you’ve
taken a good shot or not? Well, I
only go places where there’s a good
picture. A person is only part of a
picture. The picture is a location or
an activity. The picture is a spot.
The pictures that you take, do
your subjects know the picture
is being taken by someone who
can’t see them? No. Few people
find out that I don’t see them.
How do you get that one over? I
ask them to stand at the line [on
the ground] and smile. Then I press the
button and print. Then I collect the twenty.
And they seem to like the pictures? I only
do special photos, commemorative photos
of locations, times and events. The desire
for the photo is already there.

He shrugs off question
about photography by
blind person. “Yeah, th
doesn’t make a differen
My camera can see.”
Untitled
9

e shrugs off questions
bout photography by a
lind person. “Yeah, that
oesn’t make a difference…
y camera can see.”
10
Untitled

Untitled
11

Blind Man’s Bluff
12
evgen bavcar pAris
Evgen Bavcar was born in a small Slovenian
town near Trieste in 1946. Childhood
accidents claimed both eyes before he was
twelve. He completed bachelor degrees in
philosophy and history from the University
of Ljubljana. He began making photographs
as a student. At 26, Bavcar moved to Paris,
intensified his photography, and completed
a masters and doctorate in the philosophy of
aesthetics at the Sorbonne. By 1988, he was
named official photographer of the City of
Light’s Photography Month. He continues
to live in Paris and has had more than one
hundred exhibitions across Europe, but is
little known in the United States.
Bavcar has written eloquently for decades
on his experience with blindness and
photography. It is appropriate to let him
speak for himself. The following quotations
are drawn from
various writings
and interviews.
“I was a terrible
child, who the
teachers could
hardly teach. I
especially liked
technology and
reading. One
day a branch
damaged my left eye, and I was unable to
predict the great calamity that had been
forewarned. For months, I observed the
world with just one eye, until one day a
mine detonator damaged my right eye as
well. I didn’t become blind immediately but
little by little, it went on for months, as if it
were a long farewell to light. So all the time
I had to quickly capture the most beautiful
things, images of books, colors and celestial
phenomena, and to take them with me on a
voyage of no return.”
“The pleasure I felt [when I took my first
photograph] resulted from my having stolen
and captured on film something that did not
belong to me. It was the secret discovery of
being able to possess something I could not
look at.”
“What I mean by the desire for images is
that when we imagine things, we exist. I
can’t belong to this world if I can’t imagine
it in my own way. When a blind person says
‘I imagine’, it means he too has an inner
representation of external realities.”
“My task is the reunion of the visible and
the invisible worlds.”
“I have a private gallery, but, unfortunately,
I am the only one who can visit it. Others
can enter it by means of my photographs.
But they aren’t the originals any more. Just
reproductions.”
“The smooth surface of the images taken by
the camera do not look at me, I only have the
physical proof of landscapes and people that
I have seen or met. That is to say, my gaze
exists only through the simulacrum of the
photo that has been seen by someone else.”
“I feel very close to those who don’t
consider photography as a ‘slice’ of reality,
but rather as a conceptual structure, a
synthetic form of pictorial language, even
a Suprematist image like Malevich’s black
square. The direction I have taken is closer
to a photographer like Man Ray, than to
forms like reportage, which is like shooting
an arrow towards a fixed moment.”
“[In my photographs] people appear
very different before the lens and before
themselves. They are different when faced
with an unknown or infinite darkness.
The absence of the photographer’s eye is
accentuated by the precarious irreversible
moment of taking a photo; that photo which
by coming from a hidden gaze is transformed
into a kind of double death.”
“Blindness isn’t just the blind person’s
problem— it’s also the sighted person’s,
if not more so.”
“Traditional photographers are the ones
who are really a little bit blind from being
constantly bombarded with images. I
sometimes ask them what they see, but it’s
hard for them to tell me. It’s very difficult
for them to find genuine images, beyond
clichés. It’s the world that’s blind: there
are too many images, a kind of pollution.
Nobody can see anything. You have to cut
through them to discover true images.”
“My images are fragile; I’ve never seen
them, but I know they exist, and some of
them have touched me deeply.”

immediately but little by
little, it went on for month
as if it were a long farewe
to light. So all the time I h
to quickly capture the mo
beautiful things, images o
books, colors and celestia
phenomena, and to take
them with me on a voyage
of no return.”
A Close Up View
13

lind
little by
for months,
g farewell
e time I had
re the most
images of
d celestial
to takeChildhood
Image
a voyage
14

A Dream of Motion
15

16
Umberto Eco

I didn’t become blind
immediately but little by
little, it went on for months,
as if it were a long farewell
to light. So all the time I had
to quickly capture the most
Hanna Schygulla
beautiful things, images of
books, colors and celestial
17

18
The Flow of the World
I didn’t become blind
immediately but little
little, it went on for mo
as if it were a long fare
to light. So all the time
to quickly capture the
beautiful things, imag
books, colors and cele
phenomena, and to ta
them with me on a voy
of no return.”

y
nths,
well
I had
most
es of
stial
ke
age Time Past
19

ittle, it went on for months,
s if it were a long farewell
o light. So all the time I had
o quickly capture the most
eautiful things, images of
ooks, colors and celestial
henomena, and to take
hem with me on a voyage
f no return.”
20
Broken Image

The Eyes of the Night
21

22
henry butler New orleANs
Henry Butler lives deep inside music, and,
as with most musicians, the delight is in
performance. He applies the same thinking
to photography. “My thing is taking the
photograph. I love to capture the image.
That feels good to me in the moment. Now,
I don’t always know exactly, literally what
I’ve captured…”
“What you have to know about Henry,”
says longtime assistant Andrea Duplessis,
“is that he’s an extreme intellect. When he
makes photographs, he reaches out with
that intellect and combines it with instinct
and intuition. His mind is what makes these
photographs. I once saw somebody tell
him, ‘You can’t know what red is because
you can’t see.’ He told them ‘I know what I
perceive the color red to be, and you’re in
exactly the same position.’”
Butler is a classically trained musician with
a percussive virtuoso piano style and eight
W.C. Handy blues award nominations. He
started playing keyboards at six and studied
at the Louisiana State School for the Blind.
Butler received formal music training at
Southern and Michigan State universities,
earning a Masters degree. A grant from the
National Endowment for the Arts allowed
him to study with keyboard players George
Duke, Cannonball Adderley’s Quintet,
and the late Sir Roland Hanna. Butler’s
early albums are jazz trio recordings
with top-flight instrumentalists Charlie
Haden, Billy Higgins, Ron Carter, and Jack
DeJohnette. Over the past decade, Butler
increasingly has returned to New Orleans
music and the blues.
Butler’s photography began in 1984 when
he sat for an extensive promotional photo
shoot. By the end of the session—labored
and seemingly eternal—he decided he could
do a better job behind the camera. He’s
been making photographs ever since. But
not much intimidates the
world-class musician with
the glaucoma clouded eyes
and wraparound shades.
“Shoot pool, throw darts?
I’ve tried both.”
As one might expect,
much of Butler’s street
photography is driven
by sound. In these
captured moments, we
see audio cues taken,
aural suggestions acted
upon. Butler tours and
shoots worldwide, but
many of the New Orleans
images are startlingly immediate portrayals
of his hometown’s distinctive denizens.
Off-center, vivid, and deliciously arbitrary,
the photographs also speak to Butler’s
gregarious, exploratory character.
As experimental as these images are, Butler
bases some of his photographic decisions on
his long-term study of the foreign country of
the sighted. Viewers need “what they call
‘composition,’” he says, “something in that
shot that gives them sort of a home base
so they can identify, and it makes it real
for them.”
Beyond that, Butler applies the ideas
inherent in his music—be open, embrace
variety, and experiment relentlessly. Then
trust that your audience will come forward
to meet you. “No two people will see
Key Bra
things in the exact same way. When I take a
photograph, it’s a great learning process for
me. Each person that describes it or looks
at it has a totally different way of seeing
it. People see colors differently; they see
different things in the same picture. They
interpret what they’re seeing based on their
own intellect.”

Happy Feet
When he
he reache
intellect a
instinct an
is what m
23

makes photographs,
es out with that
and combines it with
and intuition. His mind
akes these photographs.
24
Beads and Boobs

Big Ol Kiss
25

26
Showgirl

When he makes photographs,
he reaches out with that
intellect and combines it with
instinct and intuition. His mind
Polka Dots
27

28
pete eckert sAcrAmeNTo, cAliforNiA
“I slip photos under the door from the world
of the blind to be viewed in the light of the
sighted.”
To Pete Eckert, blindness is his advantage.
“Vision is so strong that it masks other
senses, other abilities; it even overrides
visualization. Sighted photographers always
talk about the difficulty of what they call
‘seeing.’ I tell them ‘If you can’t see, it’s
because your vision is getting in the way.’”
Eckert holds a degree in sculpture from the
Art Institute of Boston, and degrees in art
and design from California State University
San Francisco. But it was only after he
became completely blind in the mid-1980s
that Eckert began to pursue photography.
He started with a 1954 Kodak Retina IIa, a
camera with infrared focus settings on the
German-made lens. “I’m blind, so making
photographs using a nonvisible wavelength
really appealed to me.” Eckert has an adventurous
streak—he owns and occasionally
rides a motorcycle and holds a first degree
black belt in Tae Kwon do. Streetwise and
unafraid, Eckert undertook much of his
early infrared shooting late at night in far
flung precincts of urban San Francisco.
“The human brain is wired for optical input,
for visualization,” says Eckert. “The optic
nerve bundle is huge. Even with no input,
or maybe especially with no input, the brain
Cathedral
keeps creating images. I’m a very visual
person, I just can’t see.”
Eckert considers his current mode of imagemaking
“one shot cinema.” The aim is to
create open-ended narratives and capture
them in a single frame. Eckert conjures up
increasingly complex images and devises
a way to shoot them on location or, more
frequently, in the 30-foot deep studio he
has built in his Sacramento backyard. He
casts friends and neighbors and builds
props. He sets up his Toyo 4” x 5” composite
body view camera on a tripod. He notched
the focus rail with set focus points using a
diamond-coated jewelry file. When all is
ready, Eckert throws the switches that drop
his studio into total darkness and opens
the camera. Eckert roams the space and
“paints” his image with light.
“I use any light source I can understand.”
His palette includes flashlights, candles,
lasers, lighters, even black powder. The
roving light is an uncanny substitute for the
artist’s missing sight. The touch of the light
sketches an image onto the film. Areas that
the light misses remain blanks, darkness,
unseen.
Shutter open, Eckert moves through the
darkness deploying his lights to build the
image he sees in his mind. “Where I’m
going is so different that I have to have a
plan. I structure all my shoots the same
way. I visualize and then I adapt. I assume
it will be about three-quarters the way I
planned, and a quarter what happens.”
The photograph, of course, is a record of a
scene before the camera. But with Eckert,
it captures more: the artist’s gesture, the
passage of time, the realization of a mental
image, and the outward manifestation of a
purely inner mode of seeing.

Electroman
“Vision is so
it masks othe
other abilitie
overrides vis
Sighted phot
always talk a
difficulty of w
call ‘seeing.’
‘If you can’t s
because you
getting in the
29

so strong that
ther senses,
lities; it even
visualization.
hotographers
lk about the
of what they
g.’ I tell them
30
n’t see, it’s
Night Dream

Stations
31

32
Saloon

always talk about the
difficulty of what they
call ‘seeing.’ I tell them
‘If you can’t see, it’s
because your vision is
getting in the way.’”
Charlie By the Portal
33

34
bruce hall irviNe, cAliforNiA
Bruce Hall’s night sky was devoid of stars, a
vast sheet of darkness. Hall was born with
a word salad of eye conditions: nystagmus,
myopia, astigmatism, amblyopia, macular
degeneration and exotropia.
“I grew up hearing about stars, but I’d
never seen them. When I was nine or ten,
Aberration
He can’t seem to get off the roller coaster, the frenetic dance seems
endless, until I break the pattern and change direction. These necessary
changes in direction nearly always piss James off… as we drag him
kicking and screaming back into our world.
“beyond reach, into the light, time in the sun, trying to escape the
shadows, denied existence, worshipping the sun god (who doesn’t
acknowledge)”
“Maybe this is the way that James sees the water droplets, because we
know that children with autism experience the world in ways different
than typically developing children. Is this picture an insight into his
world or the world of the autistic child?”
a neighbor kid down the street let me look
through his telescope. We pointed it at
the North Star. It was like an opening into
another world.” Hall saw not just stars, but
possibilities. The childhood glimpse became
a turning point, directing Hall into a lifelong
engagement with seeing devices: cameras,
lenses, magnifiers,
telescopes, computer
screens.
Since then, Bruce Hall
has constructed his
world from photographs.
When he looks into
your eyes, it’ll be on his
forty-inch Sony high
definition monitor. Most
photographers see in
order to photograph.
Bruce Hall photographs
in order to see.
Hall is one of four artists
in the exhibition who,
while legally blind, retain
some limited, highly
attenuated sight. “I
think all photographers
take pictures in order
to see, but for me it’s
a necessity. I can’t see
without optical devices,
cameras. Therefore, it’s
become an obsession.
It’s beyond being in love with cameras; I
need cameras.” Susan Sontag called photographs
objects “that make up, and thicken,
the environment we recognize as modern.”
By this logic, Hall leads a hypermodern life,
employing an ever-present camera to build
his visual world one photograph at a time.
Hall calls his device-enabled interface with
the world “intensified seeing.” The devices
are extensions, amplifications of his body.
“Without cameras, my life would be bleak.
With cameras, I can see.” The result is a
strange form of double vision. “I always see
things twice. First, I see an impression. I take
what I think I see, later I can see what I saw.
I have certain aims, guesses, impressions,
but the photographs are always a surprise.”
This exhibition features photographs from
two of Hall’s most extended projects—
underwater photography and an ongoing
engagement with James and Jack, his
profoundly autistic twins. The subsurface
and autistic worlds are essentially beyond
reach. One can visit, gather glimpses
and impressions, but it is impossible to
truly inhabit either space. That Hall now
concentrates his photography on these two
subjects comes as no surprise. After all, he
has spent a lifetime using a camera to visit a
foreign world—everyday life.

frenetic
James is eight years old, cannot speak, and tell you how he feels, or what he wants.
He lets you know in other ways. James is usually over-stimulated. He loves water, or does he?
“James lives in two worlds.”
“blink, clueless happiness, living in the moment (and nowhere else), manic play, focus within, alone (not shared).”
35

36
Bath Time
He knows I’m present, and engages me when he wants to pull the plug, or pour the cup of water on his head, or mine. Autism clouds his world and
his interactions with everyone. In a nearly constant state of self-stimulation, James finds sensory pleasure in the feeling, sound, and sight of water.
James loves water, or is it something else? One day he may be able to tell me, but for now we watch for clues, and learn to engage on his terms
when possible.
“Children with autism generally love water. The feel and freedom of it seems to bring out joy and abandon, something that often eludes them in
everyday life.”
“...life suspended, between worlds, a moment in time.”

Without cameras, my
ife would be bleak. With
ameras, I can see.” The
esult is a strange form
f double vision. “I always
ee things twice. First, I
ee an impression. I take
hat I think I see, later I
an see what I saw. I have
ertain aims, guesses,
mpressions, but the
hotographs are always
surprise.”
Hands and fingers
Hands and body always on the move - the hands flail, as James jumps, and runs and touches, and engages the world in a way hard to understand.
Water, water, water, sensory stimulation, and overstimulation. Some say this is how
“persons with autism” calm themselves. Not everyone agrees. Some believe stimming damages the brain.
“autism descending, autism arrives on the planet, invades homes and families, insidious, distorted reality”
37

38
of double vision. “I always
see things twice. First, I
see an impression. I take
what I think I see, later I
can see what I saw. I have
certain aims, guesses,
impressions, but the
photographs are always
a surprise.”
exit
Patient and aware, I wait for the sea to reveal something new. It always does - always. These brief trips below water are never the same and always remarkable.
I must trust my compass to return to the boat after fifty minutes below, as my eyesight is poor, and often unreliable. I see the anchor rope… time to return.

limpet
Are you looking at me?
A stable simple creature, like a guide, to a place where I am in control, confident, serenely relaxed. I have license to make all decisions. I’m driving now. Driving.
This strange creature, underwater, clings to the reef, in 20 ft. of water, always felt like a guide watching over the
ever curious nearsighted guy snooping around in world mostly unseen. Shaw’s Cove, Laguna Beach, CA.
39

40
sunburst
Ascending from a dive at Catalina Island, watching a blade of kelp, and sunburst near the surface.

see things twice. First, I
see an impression. I take
what I think I see, later I
can see what I saw. I have
certain aims, guesses,
impressions, but the
photographs are always
a surprise.”
silhouette
Alone and relaxed, watching the kelp forest slowly move as the light drifts and skips through the canopy, I spy the fuzzy silhouette of a damsel - fish, the
California garibaldi as it moves into view. I pick up my camera and wait, and snap without disturbing the scene. Then drift back into pleasing solitude.
41

42
annie hesse pAris
Annie Hesse is restless. She has lived in
California, Guatemala, Southern Spain,
Crete, Cairo, Africa, London, and Paris. A
camera has accompanied her since she was
a kid. “The world spins by awfully fast and
I obviously have a craving to soak it all up.
With my vision the way it is, I can’t absorb
it. So the camera does it for me.”
In a famous essay, Walter Benjamin
describes the flâneur as the characteristic
observer of the modern age. Hesse is the
quintessential flâneur, someone who walks
the streets in order to experience them.
To Benjamin, this perspective of constant
motion offers the only chance to decipher
the current contradictions of order and
chaos and resolve modern dislocations.
Hesse’s photography began with a degree
from the San Francisco Art Institute, slightly
better sight, and a fast-moving career as
a punk rock photographer/participant in
northern California and London from 1978
to 1982. Her early black and white work is
studded with punk luminaries: Iggy Pop,
Fast Floyd, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The
Clash, The Avengers, The Sirens, The Vktms,
The Dreamists, The Offs with Snuky Tate.
The images look like someone who can’t
see hauled a camera into a brawl, and that’s
pretty close to the truth.
By now, Hesse defines herself a citizen of
the world. She once hopped a Yugoslavian
freighter from New Orleans to Casa Blanca
with an unsteady boyfriend (their messy
break-up occurred mid-Atlantic). She spent
a year hitchhiking throughout Africa and
lived on Crete for seven years. Except for a
short stint in Bellevue, Washington working
for Microsoft, she has been based in Paris
since 1985.
Describing the vision of the
“legally blind” is a treacherously
hazy business.
Hesse says she sees “rough
impressions, like Matisse at
his vaguest” and only with
her right eye. With only
impression to go on, she
makes photographs based
on hunch, conjecture, and
curiosity. And she does so in
the tumult of near ceaseless
travel. “In the chaos of a
foreign place, I might be
attracted to something about
the color, or the sound, or
vague forms. I’ll be right in
front of it and not know what it is. So I’ll
capture it. Later, I use the picture to figure
out what it was that I saw.”
Photographically enabled vision is a
condition of the modern world—the frozen
drop of milk, the fetus glowing in the womb,
the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima. But
Hesse has built her entire visual world
piece by piece from her own photographs.
Her memory is the camera’s memory. “For
someone who’s been visually impaired all
my life, I’m extremely visually oriented.
Photography has created my world. It stops
time, and I absorb it later.”
India, 2002

For someone who’s
been visually impaired
all my life, I’m extremely
visually oriented.
Photography has created
my world. It stops time,
and I absorb it later.
Eiffel Tower
43

44
India, 2002

For someone who’s
been visually impair
all my life, I’m extrem
visually oriented.
Photography has cre
my world. It stops tim
and I absorb it later.
India, 2002
45

who’s
impaired
extremely
ted.
has created
stops time,
it later.
46
India, 2002

India, 2002 (Mme. Singh)
47

isually oriented.
hotography has created
y world. It stops time,
nd I absorb it later.
48
India, 2002

India, 2002
49

50
rosita mckenzie ediNBurgH, scoTlANd
Rosita McKenzie’s photography is an
extension of her role as a disability activist
and champion for Scotland’s blind and
visually impaired. The photographs did not
begin through the usual collision of artistic
inclination and opportunity, but as a way
to reinforce a claim to the visual world.
McKenzie’s photographs continue to evolve,
retaining or even amplifying their political
content, but also expanding into a more
purely artistic endeavor.
McKenzie, a resident of Edinburgh, is
an advisor to the Scottish Arts Council,
and works as an educator and Disability
Equality Consultant. She advises a wide
variety of organizations on interpretation,
access, and participation for the disabled,
blind, and visually impaired. These include
the National Trust for Scotland, National
Museums of Scotland, the Royal Botanic
Garden Edinburgh. Her work on behalf
of disabled students at Queen Margaret
University College led to the university’s
disability computer center carrying her
name.
Her first exhibition of photographs came
at the invitation of Paul Nesbitt, director
of Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden’s
Inverleith House. McKenzie produced a
collection of garden images paired with
same size “tactile drawings,” Braille-like
touchable prints with raised lines. The
Aberdeen
University
tactile drawings are done by collaborator
Camilla Adams, an Edinburgh artist and
illustrator. “Rosita has an unusual way of
‘looking’ at things,” Paul Nesbitt says. “If
a sighted person was going around taking
photographs, you’d get staged pictures…
We tend to think this imagery and blind
people don’t go together, but Rosita has
convinced me that blind people have
images inside their head.”
Indeed, McKenzie’s images are imbued with
a freedom that comes with not seeing. “I’ll
hold my camera at arm’s length, lay it on the
ground, hold it overhead. I can be experimental
because I don’t see. Instead, I sense
the light on my face. I hear the rustle of the
wind in the trees or smell the fragrance
of the flowers in the air, and I think I’ve
really got to take this. People ask me how I
compose my shots. [Laughs] Well, I don’t.”
The photographs in this exhibition are
drawn from her work at the Royal Botanic
Garden and from scenes shot at Aberdeen
University and elsewhere in Edinburgh.
McKenzie’s work continues to expand.
She has ridden open air buses through
Edinburgh capturing street scenes and
rooftops. In early 2008, she began a series
of shop fronts and windows displays, titling
the work “Temptation Denied.” To the
sighted, a glass-fronted store display is a
framed view; to the blind it is a blank, a
cipher, a social and psychological barrier.
Through McKenzie’s camera, the shop
windows even become symbols of
inaccessibility.
In all of these projects, McKenzie operates
free of sight-driven selection and selfcensorship.
Marcel Duchamp wrote of
“non-retinal art,” an art of the mind, of
concept, of chance. McKenzie is engaged
in non-retinal photography. The results are
pure, unfiltered, and inherently conceptual.
They operate beyond the logic of composition
or the tyranny of the decisive moment.

Growth Lights
51

52 Colonies

Shade Tunnel and Tractor
53

54 Fennel and Hedge

Meconopsis with Netting
55

56 Red Car, Waterloo Place

Calton Hill
57

58
gerardo nigenda oAxAcA, mexico
In 1999, 32-year-old Gerardo Nigenda
documented the path through city streets
from his house to the Álvarez Bravo
Photography Center at the heart of
Oaxaca, the lovely city set in the high Valles
Centrales of Mexico’s Sierra Madre del Sur.
Blinded by diabetic retinopathy when he
was ten, Nigenda used a range of tools to
document his route—a camera and film, but
also sounds, memories, murmurs, impressions,
comments, reports. Then the artist
used a Braille writer to punch texts directly
into the photographs. Punctures pierce
the photo emulsion, and the narratives are
so crisply descriptive that they verge on
imagist poetry. “A half-open white door
made of two metal sheets.” “White pillars.
The wall has a green climbing vine with
purple flowers. Between the pillars there
are plants and pots that are also green.
The plants are mostly cacti.”
Nigenda calls the images “Fotos cruzados,”
Intersecting Photographs. “They intersect,
not just because of the angles from which
he takes them,” writes photo commentator
Alfonso Morales, “but, more importantly,
because they require an intimate
relationship with people who can see in
order to complete the cycle that starts with
a mechanical record and ends with mental
reconstruction.”
In fact, each photograph is a double
blindness. Nigenda needs a sighted person
to describe the photograph, but the sighted
rely on Nigenda to read the Braille. Both
transactions are required to create or to
read Nigenda’s images. The images unify
the graphic representation of photographs
with the coded writing of braille.
But they perform an additional trick: they
construct—even require—a bridge between
the worlds of the blind and the sighted.
Appropriately, the Braille system itself
crossed the same bridge. Braille was
originally intended not to lift the darkness,
but to perpetuate it. Louis Braille’s system
of clustered dots was an elaboration of an
earlier system created by Captain Charles
Barbier de la Serre, a sighted French artillery
officer. Barbier aimed to preserve total
darkness in the front line trenches. He
invented a code of raised dots to let night
watch officers read messages without
having a ray of light betray them in the
blackness of war. It was this code which the
young Braille transformed during summer
vacations home from the Paris Institute for
the Young Blind.
In the ten years since his photographic
journey from his house to the Bravo
Photography Center, Nigenda has
deepened his work into an ongoing exploration
of seeing beyond sight. One set of
photographs depicts landscapes. Their
Braille texts, rather than being descriptive,
focus on varied perceptions—hearing,
touch, smell—and their role in establishing
location, impression, and meaning. In
Nigenda’s most recent photographs, the
touch of the artist’s hands stand in for sight
and the Braille breaks loose of the standard
rigid columns, instead interacting with
objects on the photographic surface.
The logo for Oaxaca’s Álvarez Bravo
Photography Center is the photographer’s
famous “Parábola Óptica,” or Optical
Parable. In 1931, Bravo photographed an
oval sign of an eye hanging in front of an
optician’s shop. This seemingly straightforward
image is actually, like sight itself,
complex and elusive, not to be trusted.
Bravo gives us a hint with his choice of
the word “parabola.” The word not only
describes the shape of the sign (and eye),
but also means “parable,” a fiction designed
to carry multiple meanings. Then, before
printing, Bravo flipped his negative. All text
is reversed, the dark doorway is a mirror
image, the full photograph is an inversion.
Bravo’s photograph is a reversal, an
inversion. It is therefore the perfect destination
for an artist who brings photographs
from the realm of blindness into the world
of the sighted.

Patio del Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo
(The patio at the Manuel Álvarez Bravo Photography Center)
Then the artis
a Braille write
punch texts d
into the phot
Punctures pie
photo emulsi
the narrative
crisply descri
they verge on
poetry
59

60
Doña Espe
(Mrs. Espe) This is short form for Esperanza. Esperanza as a noun means hope.)
Then the artist used
a Braille writer to
punch texts directly
into the photographs.

Sergio
61

Then the artist used
a Braille writer to
punch texts directly
into the photographs.
Punctures pierce the
photo emulsion, and
the narratives are so
crisply descriptive that
they verge on imagist
poetry
62
El alma se desprende hacia la aventura
(The Soul breaks away toward adventure)

El inmenso aroma de mi afecto
(The great fragrance of my affection)
63

64
El cauce del camino húmedo es limitado por la tierra
(The roadway of water is enclosed by the earth)

punch texts directly
into the photographs.
Punctures pierce the
photo emulsion, and
the narratives are so
crisply descriptive that
they verge on imagist
poetry
El roce del viento y la seduccion del mar inducen a la interacción personal
(The gentle touch of the wind and the enticement of the sea leads to personal interaction)
65

66
Una ventana de luz puede iluminar el universo
(A window of light can illuminate the universe)
T
a
p
i Pptct

hen the artist used
Braille writer to
unch texts directly
nto the photographs.
unctures pierce the
hoto emulsion, and
he narratives are so
risply descriptive that
hey verge on imagist
La armonía del silencio con el movimiento del agua conduce al sosiego
(The harmony of silence with the movement of water leads to serenity)
67

ed
tly
phs.
the
and
so
e that
gist
68
La grandeza del sonido y el aroma, te perturba y masturba la vision
(The greatness of the sound and a sweet smell perplexes but stimulates the sight)

La convivencia de una frontera natural avasallada por el viento
(A natural boundary subdued by the wind)
69

70
En espera de ser vista
(Awaiting to be seen)

The images unify the
graphic representation
of photographs with the
coded writing of braille.
But they perform an
additional trick: they
construct—even require—
a bridge between the
worlds of the blind and
the sighted.
Aventurado hacia un clímax de calidez táctil
(Venturing toward a warm, sensuous, intense touch)
71

72
Mirando lo inusual
(Looking to the unusual)
The im
graphic
of phot
coded w
But the

Multimiradas en el ascenso corporal
(Multiple glances at the bodily rising)
73

74
Dócil y sedosa coincidencia de las sensaciones
(Coinciding calm and silky sensations)

But they perform
additional trick: t
construct—even r
a bridge between
worlds of the blin
the sighted.
La fragilidad del referente inicial induce a la evocación sensual
(The fragility of the initial rules induces sensual evocations)
75

the
tation
ith the
braille.
an
they
require—
the
d and
76
Un diálogo distante entre lo íntimo y lo cotidiano
(A distant dialogue between the intimate and the daily)

La sutileza del perfil se antepone a lo impetuoso
(The subtlety of the profile proceeds to the impetuous)
77

78
Entre lo invisible y lo tangible, llegando a la homeostasis emocional
(Reaching emotional equilibrium between the invisible and the tangible)

The images unify
graphic represen
of photographs w
coded writing of
But they perform
additional trick: t
construct—even
a bridge between
worlds of the blin
the sighted.
En medio del reposo (autorretrato)
(In the midst of resting—self-portrait)
79

80
michael richard los ANgeles
Michael Richard’s photographs are
exercises in highly concentrated seeing by
an artist whose sight was on the edge of
slipping away.
Richard’s photographs—thousands of
them—were produced in an intense
four-year burst following January 2002,
when a malignant tumor was removed
from behind his eyes. The operation left
him with vision “like the most extreme soft
focus photo you can imagine,” he said. That
August, at age 54, he enrolled in a photography
class at Braille Institute in Los Angeles
taught by former LIFE Magazine photographer
Jack Birns. Richard said he expected
a lecture class, but was instead handed a
camera.
Richard’s photographs are full of unlikely
discoveries, uncanny geometric balances,
formal views given a twist, and small details
very deliberately seen. For Richard, a grand
vista across Yosemite Valley would be a
cipher, but he could find the entire world in
a puddle in a parking garage.
This was his mode: put on his dark glasses,
hang a powerful magnifier on a string
around his neck and haunt a few square
blocks of urban Los Angeles. He would
often spend days very deliberately looking,
observing, noticing, then looking once
more, returning, circling, and scrutinizing
yet again. Richard subscribed to the dictum
of landscape photographer Robert Adams,
“No place is boring, if you’ve had a good
night’s sleep and have a pocket full of
unexposed film.” He dismissed the technical
details of photography as often overly
mystified. He stopped down lenses for great
depth of field and paced off distance for
zone focusing.
Richard had only a fraction of sight left to
him. To compensate, he cultivated a visual
concentration so deliberate and focused
that the photographs themselves are
layered with the residue of intense seeing.
There is no prevarication here, no hip, idle
claims by sighted poseurs and postmodernists
that we can never see. Instead,
there is a deep desire and a huge effort to
maintain a toehold in the visual world. As a
result, Richard’s work runs against the grain
of an era where billions of cell phone images
ping around the world, but no one trusts
what they see. Instead, this work emerges
from slow patience and the optimistic
position that with enough looking one can
actually cut through the blur of circumstance
and find a path to clear vision.
These images also contain lessons
drawn from music. Richard was a singer/
songwriter who built a successful career as
a professional musician, playing guitar for
television music, videos, and radio ads. He
toured with various big-name performers
including Little Richard and The Coasters,
and played with club bands throughout
the Southwest. In particular, Richard cited
the influence of avant-garde composer and
musician John Cage who announced he
was “giving up control so sounds can
sound.” “I can only control the subject
matter to a point,” Richard told journalist
Marty Elkort, “but then I have to let go
and follow my instincts, letting the subject
dictate how I take the picture.”
On August 28, 2006, the cancer that had
claimed Michael Richard’s sight took his life.
He was 58. “Although he was always a
very conscious and sensitive person,” says
his wife Patrice Hughes, “I think over the
[last] few years, he developed a kind of
second sight, an even deeper vision. We
don’t know which event can change the
course of our lives, but if we stay aware and
look hard enough, we can find opportunity
everywhere.”
To compensate
cultivated a vis
concentration
deliberate and
that the photo
themselves are

, he
ual
so
focused
graphs
layered
Strata Various
81

82
DoubleTake

To compensate, h
cultivated a visua
concentration so
deliberate and fo
that the photogra
themselves are la
with the residue
intense seeing.
Connected
83

84
OminousAnonymous
To compensate, he
cultivated a visual
concentration so
deliberate and focused
that the photographs
themselves are layered
with the residue of
intense seeing.

There
85

86
FunD’Mental

ivated a visual
centration so
berate and focused
the photographs
selves are layered
the residue of
nse seeing.
Revelation
87

88
Vantage

To compensate, he
cultivated a visual
concentration so
deliberate and focused
Way Out
89

90
seeing with photography collective New York
The Seeing With Photography Collective is a
group of photographers who have operated
as a cooperative artistic enterprise for more
than twenty years. The group’s photographs
have been exhibited internationally.
“A photographer will ordinarily have
sharper vision that the rest of us,” writes
Edward Hoagland in the introduction to
the collective’s 2002 Aperture Foundation
book, “but here impaired people are
trying to make us see more completely…
Stamina, tension, imprisonment, humor,
and hallucination are frequent themes, yet
the element of mourning is often playful,
and the collective enterprise is more than
therapy. It’s ‘Seeing With Photography,’ to
be precise: the name they have chosen.”
Since its genesis in 1988 in a class taught
by program director Mark Andres, the
collective has had a large and variable
membership, but all members have visual
impairment ranging from legal to complete
blindness. This exhibition features new
work. Many of the collective’s photographs
are credited to the group, but some of the
pieces in this exhibition are additionally
credited to individual members of the
collective. Here are comments by those
individuals.
Mark Andres: “We are shooting in the dark,
using flashlights for illumination, so that the
picture is made only where the flashlight is
hitting the subject. There is no image being
made in any of the places where the light
isn’t hitting. The images builds over time—
in fragments… It is very different from a
normal photographic method where you
see what you are going to take. The images
are constructed in your head, but also
physically. Then they come together, often
in very unexpected ways.”
Steven Erra: “Mark [Andres] and I talk
all the time about how most people don’t
really see. They don’t pay attention visually
to things… I only see parts of things at a
time, very small areas at one time. These
pictures that we’re taking now concentrate
on one area at a time. A sharpness, a
blurriness, a sharpness, a blurriness, your
eyes are always going from one to the other,
which is how I view the world, too.”
Victorine Floyd Fludd: “A good picture
comes not from outside, but from within. It’s
a love. Just like when you love someone and
you show the love. You’re going to go all out
to get that picture how you want it to be.”
Sonia Soberats: “When I tell people I do
photography, they don’t believe me. When
a person achieves something that others
think you can’t because you are blind, you
feel it much more.”
but here impa
people are try
make us see m
completely…
tension, impri
humor, and ha
are frequent t
the element o
is often playfu
collective ente

Portrait of Alan (Seeing With Photography Collective)
91

92
Box Portrait, Jacques (Seeing With Photography Collective)

ut here impaired
people are trying to
make us see more
completely… Stamina,
tension, imprisonment,
humor, and hallucination
are frequent themes, yet
the element of mourning
is often playful, and the
collective enterprise is
more than therapy.
Braille Self Portrait as Antique (Seeing With Photography Collective; Steve Erra)
93

94
but here impaired
people are trying to
make us see more
completely… Stamina,
tension, imprisonment,
humor, and hallucination
are frequent themes, yet
the element of mourning
is often playful, and the
Box Portrait, John (Seeing With Photography Collective)
collective enterprise is

Portrait in Paper (Seeing With Photography Collective; Mark Andres and Sonia Soberats)
95

96
Radiant Abyss (Seeing With Photography Collective; Victorine Floyd Fludd)

ut here impaire
people are trying
make us see mor
completely… Sta
tension, imprison
humor, and hallu
Children of the Damned (Seeing With Photography Collective; Victorine Floyd Fludd)
are frequent them
97

e trying to
see more
ely… Stamina,
imprisonment,
nd hallucination
ent themes, yet
ent of mourning
layful, and the
e enterprise is
n therapy.
98
From Within (Seeing With Photography Collective; Victorine Floyd Fludd)

Carnival (Seeing With Photography Collective; Victorine Floyd Fludd)
99

100
kurt weston HuNTiNgToN BeAcH, cAliforNiA
Kurt Weston’s recent photographs are
soaked in anger, loss, and the stigma of
disease and decay, and the artist is pretty
happy with the results.
“I not only want to look at these things,
photograph these things, but put an
exclamation point on them,” Weston
says. “I’m saying, ‘You need to look at this
disabled body, this aging body. And maybe
you need to reconsider your ideas about
what is normal or abnormal. You need to
look, and I’m going to make you look.’”
“Being considered the ‘other’ has always
driven my art,” says Weston. “First, being
gay, then having AIDS, and now being blind.
It’s been like a journey into otherness. A lot
of my work aims to show that all of us are
the other. We all have the other in us. We
are all headed toward decay and disability.”
Weston is a participant photographer in the
world of “the stigmatized, the grotesque.”
Weston has produced a powerful participatory
document from a marginalized world
in the same way that Larry Clark brought
us the troubled teens of Tulsa and Nan
Goldin the heart-shaped bruises of 1980’s
New York. The artist is no voyeur; these
are insider’s reports. “I am the stigmatized
person,” says Weston. “I am the disabled
body. I’ve walked through the supermarket
covered in purple Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions
and I’ve seen the people stare. Now, I’m
blind and hold onto my partner and I feel
the people staring.”
Weston’s blind self-portraits are a private
journal of disability put on public display.
“In this [Blind Vision] series, I try to capture
some of the edge, some of the hard reality
of how I became blind.” In 1991,Weston
was diagnosed with AIDS and by 1996
his eyesight spiraled into blindness from
opportunistic cytomegalovirus. He is totally
blind in his left eye; very slight peripheral
vision remains in his right eye. “In these
photographs, I turn myself into an object,
a stigmatized object. I try to make myself
look inhuman, grotesque. They may be hard,
but we’re dealing with a life-threatening,
terminal illness, with people being cheated
out of their lives, out of their sight.”
Weston’s newest work on aging—Hearts
of a Silent Age—manages the nifty trick of
respectfully rifling through other people’s
diaries, of reverentially revealing their flesh
and their secrets. Longevity is a natural
subject for an artist whose own lifespan
inevitably will be curtailed by AIDS. Threat
and decay is Weston’s daily world. It’s been a
bitter battle just to stay in this world, so he’s
not about to flinch now or look away. “These
photographs
are about the
realization of
loss, about
losing your
façade. They
say, ‘This is
your new
reality. This is
Intraocular
your strange new flesh. Let’s take a look.’”
The artist’s use of a scanner-as-camera
gives his work an overtone of hyperrealism
and immediacy. There is no space between
capture device and subject, no intervening
air, no subterfuge, no escape. Instead, the
amplified details of flesh and fabric are
in direct contact with the scanner’s glass
membrane. Appropriately, too, for Weston’s
concerns, scanners involve duration. There
is no shutter click. Instead, subjects face
the long, slow travel of the scanner bar, an
extended, indecisive moment. Additionally,
flatbed scanners have a very shallow depthof-field—commonly
half an inch or less.
Flesh against the glass is inhumanly vivid
and detailed, but anything more remote
fades quickly into blur and black.
Before he became blind and came to
California to die, Kurt Weston worked as a
fashion photographer in Chicago. “I toiled
in the artifice factory,” he summarizes. Since
becoming blind, Weston has earned an MFA
in photography, studying with Eileen Cowin
at California State University, Fullerton and
has exhibited work across the
country, including the Berkeley
Art Museum, Philadelphia
Museum of Art, and Kennedy
Center for the Performing Arts
in New York. “I guess its God’s
little joke, having someone who
is legally blind do so well in the
visual arts.”

Peering Through the Darkness
101

102
There is no shutter
click. Instead,
subjects face the
long, slow travel of
the scanner bar,
an extended,
indecisive moment.
Do You See the Big E?

Visor Vision
103

104
My Dying Machine

There is no shutter
click. Instead,
subjects face the
long, slow travel of
the scanner bar,
an extended,
indecisive moment
Street Life
105

is no shutter
Instead,
cts face the
slow travel of
anner bar,
tended,
isive moment.
106
The Final Silence

Ultimate Rush
107

108

String Theory: The Space Between Us
There is no sh
click. Instead,
subjects face
long, slow trav
the scanner b
an extended,
indecisive mo
109

110
Mask
There is no shutt
click. Instead,
subjects face th

Wiser Than Dreams
111

112
Strange Flesh

l of paradox and revelation.
ition occupies the ground zero of
hy. The results are pure, unfiltered
inals are inside my head.
are elaborately realized internal
lizations first, photographs second.
physical manifestations of images
that already exist as pure idea
filtered, and inherently conceptual.
e beyond the logic of composition
You are in My Vision
113

114
alice wingwall BerkeleY, cAliforNiA
Alice Wingwall’s images look like they
are constructed of photographs, but
the primary building blocks are actually
memory.
“My vision comes from putting a lot of
images together… and that comes from
the memory… a long time of memory,” says
Wingwall. “I think there’s a whole history,
many, many years of seeing and analyzing.
Looking at architecture. Being an architectural
history major, then moving into
sculpture and photography. I think I have
stored up a lot of images.”
Joseph at the Temple of Dendur
Wingwall holds an MFA in sculpture from
UC Berkeley and was director of the studio
arts program and professor of sculpture
at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
Perhaps her decades-long descent into
darkness from retinitis pigmentosa gave
special impetus to her collection of the
world as images. Now completely blind,
Wingwall is the archivist of a private
memory museum.
The west coast photographers of the f.64
group—Edward Weston and Ansel Adams
most notably—founded their photographic
practice on clarity and the notion of “previsualization,”
fully imagining the final image
before releasing the shutter. Wingwall, a
resident of the Bay Area, extends this ethos.
Starting with her visual
memory bank, Wingwall
builds images in her mind,
shuffling and resorting,
imagining possibilities.
“It seems crazy, but I
think I imagine more than
somebody else who is
fully sighted.” Then she
shoots, gathering images
that she cannot see. But
these elements are less
final art than raw material.
Wingwall continues by
internalizing reports of
the images—adding traces
of traces to her mental
library—and begins her
internal image-building anew, imagining
possibilities. Only after combining,
reordering, reimagining, does Wingwall
release a work into the world of the sighted.
“Though I’ve lost my sight, I haven’t lost my
vision,” summarizes Wingwall, “and vision is
a mental construction.”
This artist’s inside-out pathway leaves
traces in her work. Photographs are always,
to a considerable extent, about the frame,
the shadow of the camera. In Wingwall’s
images, objects jostle against the limits
of the frame, assigned their place through
happenstance rather than control. And
her embrace of multi-image composites
and sequences lets the frames themselves
multiply and move out into a more sculptural
space. To a considerable extent,
Wingwall’s blindness and resulting visual
freedom enhance her natural predisposition
to move beyond the frame.
In addition, Wingwall sees her photography
as a political act. “For a blind person,
making a photograph is a choice, a radical
move, a political move.” With her photographs,
Wingwall lays claim to the visual
world, even if she can’t see. “I was tired of
people saying to me, ‘How can you take a
photograph when you can’t see anything?’
And I think they weren’t asking me, they
were telling me—‘How can you do this? It’s
unthinkable.’ Well, I can do it. What I say to
them is that the image starts in the brain.”

Self-Portrait at San Trovaso
115

116
Lapidarium

Rumba at Dendur
117

118
X Marks the Spot