Dr Simon Hayhoe, Editor of ECO: On Blindness and the Arts and has written two books on the subject of blindness and art, God Money & Politics and Arts, Culture & Blindness. He lives in Leicester, UK.

Photography by blind and visually impaired artists is fast developing into a new genre in the field of contemporary art . This is neither a patronising nor wildly optimistic statement, but one based on the unique qualities of tone, texture and the subjects of these photographs. Two forms of this art in particular provide examples of these aesthetic features:

The first form of art work is the studio and landscape work being developed by blind and visually impaired collectives, either working in small geographical areas, such as the Seeing With Photography collective, New York (http://seeingwithphotography.com/), or through web based groups such as Tim O’Brien’s Blind Photographers collective (http://photos.blindphotographers.org/). What I get most from these groups’ work is a sense of depth in the tone used in the photographs, something that did not surprise me when I first came across it.

During research for Arts, Culture and Blindness, I was lucky enough to observe a legally blind student with achromatism – total colour blindness – studying for an A Level in Art, and discovered that she saw better in a dark room under infra-red light than many sighted people did whilst using similar equipment. This finding was reinforced when I later read Oliver Sack’s wonderful observations of a colony of achromatics on the Pacific atoll of Pingelap, who saw the local landscape better than the sighted population as the sun set. In such cases, the perception of tone was far more intense for people with no recognition of colour, making the experience of contrast far more important. This finding is most apparent in many of the black & white images seen in collections of the blind and visually impaired collectives. It is also, however, observable in the colour photographs in these collections, too. In these circumstances, the artists again are experiencing colour purely as tone, and therefore see more enriched tones than the subtle variations that sighted people notice.

In addition, strong colour is also of the utmost importance to those who are not achromatic, as many of these artists are more reliant on intense colours to enhance what little vision they may have left. This appears to be a contradiction for many who view these works without experience of blindness, as they assume that blind and visually impaired artists appreciate less or no colour at all. However, it is a brilliant quirk of a separate world with a rich and varied sensorial experience that these forms of art teach us a little of what it is like to have compromised vision.

The second form of art work that I have observed is produced during exercises involving novice photographers who are blind or visually impaired, the vast majority of whom are school aged students. Each of these students are given a simple camera without any adjustable parts and asked to take photographs of different elements of their everyday lives. This form of project was begun in San Francisco, US, by Tony Deifell and his organisation Seeing Beyond Sight (http://www.seeingbeyondsight.org/) in 2002, but has now been
taken on by many schools and organisations worldwide.

The art work that is produced by such projects is often fascinating but always moving and socially illuminating. This is mainly due to the subjects of these photographs, although at first appearing to be mundane, taking on a quality of child like fascination within a sense of movement and a carefully organised environment. Perhaps the best and most moving example of such image creation was conducted by Partho Bhowmick and his organisation Blind With Camera (http://www.blindwithcamera.org) in the school for the blind in Mumbai, India. The images that he collected from this project show an unimaginable world of institutionalisation and groups of friends, contrasts of dark insides with baking hot outsides, shadows, small intrigues and longings.

But what most entertains me about the images from all of these projects is the participants’ lack of regard for formal rules of composition or subject choice. This is a group of students who have little or no training in art forms and so can take pictures with an abandon that gives the viewer a new perspective both on what it is to be blind and also what it is like to have different conventions and expectations. If this genre is to be appreciated to its fullest, it is perhaps these elements of the exciting new world of photography by blind and visually impaired people that we will take with us most.

Hayhoe S (2008) Arts, Culture & Blindness. Youngstown, New York: Teneo Press
Sacks O (1998) The Island of the Color Blind. New York: Vintage

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Eco: On Blindness and the Arts

Eco: On Blindness and the Arts is  Simon Hayhoe’s project to bridge academia and the arts around the issue of blindness.

ECO was founded as an on-line knowledge base in 2006, in order to provide research resources, information and a gallery about blindness in the arts. It has now expanded, however, to include information about blindness in information technology and computing as well. Its aim is to introduce these subjects as fields of study.

ECO is a webpage for educators and practitioners of the arts or information technology, or simply people who have an intellectual interest in touch arts, computer programming, IT, access or disability. It is an electronic resource to introduce you to the ideas behind this topic. It is also the beginnings of an on-line library on this subject.

The site offers both links to useful resources and a ton of related academic articles. The site features a Flash-based image gallery featuring blind artists and related exhibits , projects and institutions.  I happen to be one of the featured artists in the gallery, though I hope my objective reporting here has not been compromised.

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