SIGHT UNSEEN
International Photography by Blind Artists
May 02, 2009 - August 29, 2009
Opening Reception: May 02, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Quotations
The matter isn't how a blind person takes photographs, but rather why he would want images.
Evgen Bavcar
Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.
Duane Michals
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...
Jacques Derrida
... above all I visualized. 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?
Jacques Lusseyran
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.
Evgen Bavcar
Blind or not, we all live in the amphibious and changeable kingdom of light and shadow. No photograph exists that has not passed through darkness-not even the most radiant image. No blind person is forever shut out from light, however narrow through which he or she peers.
Alfonso Morales
...all photographers, in the end, imagine and remember their images much more than they actually perceive them... In other words, [like a blind photographer], all photographers, in the end, see things with their eyes closed.
Benjamin Mayer-Foulkes
At times, my mind seemed fuller than it had ever been, cataloging empirical clues-the wind, the sun, the time, the overhanging dangers, the textures underfoot, the openings and closings of space, the flow of people and traffic-while constructing a map, a plan, a purpose, and an order.
Andrew Potok
Why do I need my eyes more than another?
It seems to me they never focused anything.
I console myself purely and simply with the thought.
Samuel Beckett
What gift could be an appropriate exchange for the gift of blindness? What could I give, what would I want to give which could match the numinous darkness and brilliantly destructive qualities of blindness?
John M. Hull
The sensorium of the blind who possess some marginal vision is by turns magical and disturbing. There is nothing in front of you, nothing behind. Now there is a shadow in the shape of a man who has appeared from the mist. How lovely and terrible this is! It's a mad, holy vision, the repeated appearance and disappearance of the physical world."
Stephen Kuusisto
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.
Evgen Bavcar
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.
Jose Saramago
Who are you going to believe, me or your own two eyes?"
Groucho Marx
Blindness isn't just the blind person's problem-it's also the sighted person's, if not more so.
Evgen Bavcar
The thing that is done can no more be taken back, but I will make him a seer to be sung of men hereafter, yea, more excellent than any other. (Zeus in the Odyssey granting newly blinded Teiresias powers of insight and prophecy)
Homer
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.
Jacques Lusseyran
My images are fragile; I've never seen them, but I know they exist, and some of them have touched me deeply. Evgen Bavcar
I write without seeing. I came. I wanted to kiss your hand... This is the first time I have ever written in the dark... not knowing whether I am forming letters. Wherever there is nothing, read that I love you.
Diderot, to Sophie Volland, June 10, 1759
Heaven gives its glimpses only to those Not in a position to look too close.
Robert Frost.
International Photography by Blind Artists
May 02, 2009 - August 29, 2009
Opening Reception: May 02, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Quotations
The matter isn't how a blind person takes photographs, but rather why he would want images.
Evgen Bavcar
Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.
Duane Michals
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...
Jacques Derrida
... above all I visualized. 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?
Jacques Lusseyran
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.
Evgen Bavcar
Blind or not, we all live in the amphibious and changeable kingdom of light and shadow. No photograph exists that has not passed through darkness-not even the most radiant image. No blind person is forever shut out from light, however narrow through which he or she peers.
Alfonso Morales
...all photographers, in the end, imagine and remember their images much more than they actually perceive them... In other words, [like a blind photographer], all photographers, in the end, see things with their eyes closed.
Benjamin Mayer-Foulkes
At times, my mind seemed fuller than it had ever been, cataloging empirical clues-the wind, the sun, the time, the overhanging dangers, the textures underfoot, the openings and closings of space, the flow of people and traffic-while constructing a map, a plan, a purpose, and an order.
Andrew Potok
Why do I need my eyes more than another?
It seems to me they never focused anything.
I console myself purely and simply with the thought.
Samuel Beckett
What gift could be an appropriate exchange for the gift of blindness? What could I give, what would I want to give which could match the numinous darkness and brilliantly destructive qualities of blindness?
John M. Hull
The sensorium of the blind who possess some marginal vision is by turns magical and disturbing. There is nothing in front of you, nothing behind. Now there is a shadow in the shape of a man who has appeared from the mist. How lovely and terrible this is! It's a mad, holy vision, the repeated appearance and disappearance of the physical world."
Stephen Kuusisto
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.
Evgen Bavcar
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.
Jose Saramago
Who are you going to believe, me or your own two eyes?"
Groucho Marx
Blindness isn't just the blind person's problem-it's also the sighted person's, if not more so.
Evgen Bavcar
The thing that is done can no more be taken back, but I will make him a seer to be sung of men hereafter, yea, more excellent than any other. (Zeus in the Odyssey granting newly blinded Teiresias powers of insight and prophecy)
Homer
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.
Jacques Lusseyran
My images are fragile; I've never seen them, but I know they exist, and some of them have touched me deeply. Evgen Bavcar
I write without seeing. I came. I wanted to kiss your hand... This is the first time I have ever written in the dark... not knowing whether I am forming letters. Wherever there is nothing, read that I love you.
Diderot, to Sophie Volland, June 10, 1759
Heaven gives its glimpses only to those Not in a position to look too close.
Robert Frost.