"Proof", Paul Strand, and Geoff Dyer

"Shooting blind", whether literally or figuratively, creates a similar sense of "pure recording" that Walker Evans mentions in the Dyer article that a photographer like Paul Strand deals with in shooting the blind woman on the street. Whether it is the photographer him/herself or the subject of the photograph whose sight has been taken away, blindness on either end of the interaction between photographer and subject seems to yield a certain more truthful quality in the image (truthful referring to a natural, unhibited sense, much like what would be captured by a photographer whos presence goes unrecognized by the subjects in the photograph). The viewer then is given a voyeuristic view of the moment captured by allowing them to take on the role of both the eyes of the photographer and the eyes of the subject, if in fact they cannot see themselves.

In the odd case of the blind photographer, such as the character of Martin in "Proof", the viewer becomes the eyes of the photographer. In this film, the main viewer here was Martin's friend Andy, who spent a good deal of time verbally describing the subject matter of each of Martin's photographs to him after he received the developed film from his blind shoots. Much of the controversey in the film revolved around whether or not the photographs represented the "truth" for the photographer, which plays on the idea of the photograph being a creation that embodies both real and artificial qualities. For Martin, his blind ideas of what his photographs looked like became a visual memoir of his surroundings and memories in his own mind that became his entire visual life, which was ironically something that was given to him only through the lens of another's person's description of each photograph's subject matter as they chose to reveal to him. "Proof" as the title of the film plays on the concept of the photograph itself, and represents the dialogue beteween the viewer of a photograph, and how they see and process the subject and subject matter (which represents the dialogue between the photographer and subject being photographed).

The relationship between Martin and Andy in this film was incredibly significant - represented a metaphorical explanation of how the photographic process tricks the viewer into believing that everything within the frame is the truth (for both the photographer and the rest of the world). For the blind photographer who cannot even physically see his/her surroundings, what they're photographing, or what the photograph looks like, becomes forever created, manipulated, and influenced by another person's persepective and choices. By putting the photograph into words that are translated to the photographer by another, he is forced to put his trust in the words, the verbal, the text, to create his own visual tat may or may not be synonymous with the photograph itself - something that viewer's do all of the time with text and image. This poses a question: How much does the actual photograph, how what has been captured within the frame, even matter to how we process the visual into our own minds? How does text (visual or verbal) change this understanding?

This makes me think of how photography often only embodies the visual, as obvious as that sounds. But as the viewer, we look at a photograph and start to see the moment that was captured; we put ourselves in the position of the photographer at that point in time and proceed to play out the events both before, during, and after the moment the photograph depicts. We see what is within the frame, the internal information, and then we imagine what is beyond the frame, or what could have been captured had the photographer shifted the camera to the left or right. This combined with our own historical, cultural, and social approaches to the subject matter or the image, makes up the external information. Still, the photograph seems to embody only the visual, only sight, which even by itself is subject to a whole realm of varying approaches, perspectives, and "ways" of seeing. This doesn't even account for the fact that sight alone only accounts for a fifth of the five senses that we use to absorb, understand, and communicate with the world around us. So, the idea of a photograph representing the truth seems like an unaccomplishable task - something that Martin in "Proof" deals with throughout the film.

Geoff Dyer discusses in detail several examples of photographers who shoot blind subjects: those who cannot see and may not even be aware of the photographer's presence. He mentions that the blind subject serves as the "objective corollary" of the photographer's desire to be invisible, and at the same time allowing a photographer such as Paul Strand to see his subject, the blind woman on the street, as she is unable to see herself. In this way, he becomes her sight, just like in "Proof" where Andy becomes Martin's sight, except the person seeing is flipped.