Blind Photographers » museum http://blog.blindphotographers.org By, for and about blind and visually-impaired photographers Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:21:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Sight Unseen Spotted on NPR http://blog.blindphotographers.org/sight-unseen-spotted-on-npr/ http://blog.blindphotographers.org/sight-unseen-spotted-on-npr/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:01:00 +0000 timobrien http://blog.blindphotographers.org/?p=204 A few weeks ago, I posted about the Sight Unseen exhibition of blind photographers. University of California at Riverside and the California Museum of Photography are hosting this first international show of blind photographers. The good press keeps coming. NPR’s new photojournalism blog, The Picture Show, has featured the exhibit in a recent post.

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.

]]> http://blog.blindphotographers.org/sight-unseen-spotted-on-npr/feed/ 0 Photographs Described @ the Victoria and Albert http://blog.blindphotographers.org/photographs-described-the-victoria-and-albert/ http://blog.blindphotographers.org/photographs-described-the-victoria-and-albert/#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2009 20:24:59 +0000 timobrien http://blog.blindphotographers.org/?p=177 The Victoria and Albert Museum offers via Photographs Described for Blind and Partially Sighted Visitors. Currently this online collections has four historical images with descriptions for perusal.

This section of the website looks at four very different historic photographs from the V&A’s collection. Each photograph is reproduced in colour and is accompanied by an explanation of the photographic process, the historical context of the image and a vivid description of the photograph to help blind or visually impaired visitors imagine what the image is like.

What we need is a grass roots effort to do this for all museum objects. An online, downloadable WikiArtDescription service. Just show download the collection for a particular museum onto your iPhone or other smartphone. ID the relevant piece and, voila, here’s your description. Like your typical museum $5 audioguide, but free, universal, ubiquitous and user-driven.

This would make a great iPhone app!

]]> http://blog.blindphotographers.org/photographs-described-the-victoria-and-albert/feed/ 0 Blind Visitors Photography Project @ Victoria and Albert Museum http://blog.blindphotographers.org/blind-visitors-photography-project-victoria-and-albert-museum/ http://blog.blindphotographers.org/blind-visitors-photography-project-victoria-and-albert-museum/#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:26:54 +0000 timobrien http://blog.blindphotographers.org/?p=174 Ron Arad chair in front of Dale Chihuly's 'Tower of Light' in the Garden, photographed by a visually impaired visitor

Blind Photographers at V&A

Britain’s Victoria and Albert Museum ran a photography course for some of its visually impaired patrons. The museum has put together the results in a nice website: Photographs by Blind and Partially Sighted Visitors.

This is a collection of photographs taken by blind and partially sighted visitors to the Victoria and Albert Museum during a two day course. The photographer Eric Richmond led the course and started with an explanation of how photographers interpret their brief (sometimes in quite groundbreaking ways).

On the first day students were asked to take black and white photographs of the Sculpture Gallery. The second day’s brief was to take a colour digital photograph in the museum garden and manipulate it on a computer.

Take a look. It’s worth a whirl.

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