[Leica] Blind photographers?

[Peter Klein <pklein@2alpha.net>]

Barney Quinn wrote:
> Yes, there are people in this world who have managed through sheer
> grit, determination, and raw talent to overcome blindness, deafness,
> and illness and to make world class contributions to their fields.
> Beethoven was stone deaf when he wrote his Ninth symphony. James Joyce
> was going blind and in extreme pain when he wrote Ulysses. The noted
> percussionist Evelyn Glynne is deaf. They are the exceptions. He, I
> think, is more of the rule

Barney's story about your Grandfather is touching and disturbing, but I
think it speaks more to what horrible things families can do to each other
than about sensory impairment and art.

As Barney said, the music and James Joyce analogies are exceptions to the
rule.  But there's good reasons why these people could do work at the
world-class level, and a blind photographer probably couldn't.  Beethoven
had a good portion of his life where he could hear, so he had the sound of
instruments and harmonies already stored up, so to speak.  And many
competent musicians can notate melodies and harmonies "from their head."  
I'm no Beethoven, but I can do it myself up to a point.  I have composed
on buses and in restaurants during my lunch hour, much to the bewilderment
of people around me.

A blind writer can dictate words to a secretary.  A blind composer can
dictate or play music to a musical secretary.  Bach was blind at the end
of his life, and dictated his last compositions. Including some of "The
Art of Fugue." And while Evelyn Glennie is deaf, she performs barefoot so
she can "feel" the music with her feet. I doubt she can perceive melody or
harmony, but being a percussionist, it doesn't matter.

Kit wrote:

> Well, perhaps you should take a look at what some of the blind artists
> have created before you make a sweeping generalization. And to say
> that you can mathematically represent music actually proves the point;
> mathematical representation of what is in the musician's mind is just
> that--a representation. So is the photograph, a drawing with light, a
> representation of what the blind person sees, or experiences. 

Sorry, Kit, I think it's apples and oranges.  I can see how a person who
became blind could draw or even paint well.  But a person who was blind
from birth?  They might be able to create something from a tactile point
of view that we might perceive in the visual plane.

Words don't require sight.  They exist as concepts, as sounds, or even as
tactile sensations (Braille).  Music, once its elements have been heard or
known, can be "heard" in the mind and recreated on paper.  Even sculpture,
which we think of as visual, could be done completely from the sense of
touch and space.  I think a blind person could be a wonderful sculptor,
even a blind-from-birth person.  If a sculptor had had some seeing
years to store up images, so much the better (here there's a direct
analogy to Beethoven).

But photography strikes me as a different thing entirely. You're not
creating something out of your own imagination only. You are RE-creating
something visual, filtered through your own visual sense, imagination and
technique.  And you have to fix your vision in a tangible medium that
others can see and that you can control.

How would a blind person do this competently? The only other-sense
analogies I can come up with for photography is are spatial perception and
tactile sensation, but it seems a very incomplete, er, picture.  How would
a blind person actually master their materials when they can't see the
result?  How would they compose their picture if they can't see their
subject?  And how would they control the medium?  Regular photographic
paper seems out. Varying temperature pixels on a special screen?

> It is the same with people who can seen in the conventional sense. If
> we argue that a blind person cannot legitimately take a photograph,
> then we have to agree that neither can a sighted person. Why? That
> assumption places all the emphasis on the mechanical function of the
> instrument (the camera) itself, and on the ability of the person
> behind the camera to adhere to some tacit rule that says "you have to
> see exactly the way the camera sees."

No, I don't think it's that at all.  It's that I don't see how a blind
photographer can translate their perception in to a visual medium in a way
that they can truly perceive and control, and communicate to others.  
Beethoven could hear music in his head, and write the notes down on paper
others could read. How would a blind photographer see his subject and have
artistic master-level control over a visual medium?

Recent Woody Allen flicks and early 1990s Australian movies
notwithstanding. . .

- --Peter Klein
Seattle, WA

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