"Night Flight" by Kurt Weston

LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired’s Insights exhibit was featured recently in the New York Times. “‘Insights’ Showcases Blind and Visually Impaired Artists” gives an nice overview of the exhibit and it artists.

Now in its 20th year, “Insights” is the country’s pre-eminent selected exhibition of paintings, photographs and mixed-media pieces by legally blind artists. What began as an event focused on works of purely tactile interest — just 13 the first year — has evolved into a show of some 120 pieces where the emphasis is on the visual, and on an interpretation of it more in line with the one Ms. Kitazawa had in mind.

Featuring all genres of art, Insights puts serious though into what the exhibit really means, for art and for the blind.

“The exhibition is framed to be about limits and what can be done within them,” said Lawrence Rinder, the director of the Berkeley Art Museum, who was a juror for “Insights” this year. That thematic framing, he added, locates the show’s blind artists very much in the tradition of artists in general. “We all have limits of perception, and all artists work within that envelope.”

Accompanying the article, ” ‘Insights’ Showcases Blind and Visually Impaired Artists“, the times has a slideshow sampling some of the artwork, Art by the Blind. The Insights web site also offers this great video featuring one of the painters.

Tim O’Brien is a regular columnist on Blind Photographers. Legally blind, Tim writes about accessibility, photography and, occasionally, both together. You can find out more about Tim on his blog or by following him on twitter.

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Blind Photographers Guild at Photo LA

As we posted earlier, The Blind Photographers Guild is exhibiting their work this week in LA. I thought we could find out a bit more about this collective of excellent artists. Here is how member Pete Eckert and Douglas McCulloh  describe the group on Bruce Hall’s blog:

The Blind Photographers’ Guild is a small group of accomplished blind photographers. The Guild’s main goal is to place blind photographers and their work in the mainstream of visual culture. The group’s central premise is that blind photographers intrinsically operate at the ground zero of photography. Blind photographers by definition produce inherently conceptual photographs.  The best among them make world-class work that explores the difference between true inner vision and mere outward sight. These artists force consideration of a surprising 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 artist members of the Guild achieve their goals through the production, exhibition, publication, and sales of high level photographic art.  En route, they attempt to aid the cause of the blind community.

Well done, guys. Keep it up.

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Bruce Hall, untitled 1 & 2, from autism series, 2009 color print 11.25” x 15”

Blind photographers will exhibit at the 19th Annual International
Los Angeles Photographic Art Exposition this month. The Blind Photographers Guild, made up of Pete Eckert, Bruce Hall and Alex de Jong, will exhibit their work January 14 – 17, 2010 in Santa Monica, CA. More details here. This is another exciting opportunity for blind photographers to show their work as well as for the world to see through our eyes. Congratulations to Pete, Bruce and Alex (an integral member of this community) for teaming up on this project.

Alex has generaously shared some of his images from the exhibit:

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An exhibition called ‘Sight Unseen’ has opened at the California Museum of Photography which showcases the work of twelve blind photographers from around the world.

The curator of Sight Unseen, Douglas McCulloh, explains how visually impaired people are able to capture such beautiful images.

McCulloh articulates how true photographers are envisioned in the mind of the photographer, not in the eye. He goes on to discuss how this works in several of the exhibited photos. On a personal level, I find making photos to be more of a mental process than a visual one as well. A while back, I posted about Stitching Sight, which talks about how I build a mental image since I cannot use the viewfinder.

Take a look at Blind photographers showcase work.

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How can someone be a blind photographer? Or rather, why would someone want to be? A new exhibit on display at the University of California Riverside/California Museum of Photography explores these questions, through art created by some of the world’s most renowned blind photographers. Evgen Bavcar, one of the featured artists in the Sight Unseen exhibit, says, “My images are fragile; I’ve never seen them, but I know they exist, and some of them have touched me deeply.”

I talked with exhibit curator, Douglas McCulloh, a few weeks ago about the exhibit. I will have more on that interview soon.

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TIME magazine is highlighting a new exhibit at the University of California, Riverside with a photo essay, Photos by Blind Photographers. TIME describes the exhibit: “A spectacular new exhibit at the University of California, Riverside raises extraordinary questions about the nature of sight.”

Photographers include Bruce Hall, who is a fellow member of the Blind Photographers Flickr group. Another exhibited photographer is Gerardo Nigenda, a Mexican photographer whom I hope to interview for Bthe Blind Photographers web site.

You can learn more about the exhibit, Sight Unseen, at its web site.

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