I'm a long time member of the Seeing With Photography Collective, based in New York City, and am posting some of my individual images here at Flickr. Our group has people totally blind, visually impaired and "normally" sighted. I'm in the visually impaired-legally blind category, and still retain a little eyesight, but not much.

Coming from diverse backgrounds and life experiences, we in our group share an awareness of sight loss, along with the determination to dialogue and integrate our images into a more universal context. Sighted assistants, or members, focus and compose the view frame directed by the blind artist. Then, in a darkened room, we leave the camera's shutter open as we slowly paint our sitter with a small flashlight ...human scaled exposures, lasting many minutes, rather than the instant shutter click we typically hear. Luminous distortions, blurred or glowing forms result from the technique, not digital altering. The nature of our visual limitations can provoke any viewer or perceiver of these portraits...Is less, more? What is seeing? What does one choose to see?

 

Seeing With Photography has an extensive Pro site here at Flickr, its usually updated weekly...

 

www.flickr.com/photos/seeingwithphotography/

 

Youtube video "Lifting the Blindfold: Voices of the Seeing With Photography Collective" below-

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXfq3hMFUTA

  

EXHIBITION NEWS

Our images will be exhibited in Rome Italy this fall...

Sep. 30, 2010 FotoLeggendo

 

Dec. 30, 2010 Via Libetta 1

 

00154 Roma

 

Italia Seeing With Photography Collective is delighted to be included in "Sight Unseen"

 

The next upcoming venue for this exhibit will be in December of 2010 in Moscow, Russia. Mark Andres, Victorine Floyd Fludd and I will be going to Moscow to the exhibition opening and to teach a 2 day workshop. Have wanted to go to Russia, it is just too exciting. There MAY be some highly, um high profile people who might be posing for our light paintings at that time. I'll update you when this is confirmed.

 

Esquire Magazine, Russian edition, will be publishing our work.

 

"Sight Unseen, the first major exhibition of work by the world's most accomplished photographers with visual impairments, makes the surprising proposal that these photographers possess the clearest vision in society. Featured works are by Ralph Baker; Evgen Bavcar; Henry Butler; Pete Eckert; Bruce Hall; Annie Hesse; Rosita McKenzie; Gerardo Nigenda; Michael Richard; Seeing with Photography Collective, NYC; Kurt Weston; and Alice Wingwall. Sight Unseen is an exhibition on a rich subject full of paradox and revelation, which invites viewers to think deeply about photography, vision, and our ways of seeing.

 

SIGHT UNSEEN: International Photography by Blind Artists has been curated by Douglas McCulloh and originated by UCR/California Museum of Photography, an affiliate institution of ARTSblock, the University of California, Riverside, and toured by Curatorial Assistance, Pasadena, California

 

June 10, 2010 Centro de la Imagen

 

Plaza de la Ciudadela 2, Centro Histórico,

Mexico D.F., CP 06040

 

La Mirada Invisible, exhibition