Sight: which is so paramount to the photographers work, was brought up in the Dyer reading, the movie, and the picture of the blind women we examined in class. The movie made the viewer examine (or at least me) what exactly constituted “truth” and its importance not only in life, but in photography as well. Martin, the blind photographer, considers photographs to be the ultimate truth, they are “proof” that something happened, that a moment in time existed. However is this really so? We brought up issues in class about how photography is not truth, it is the world as the photographer is portraying it. And for Martin, his photographs, to him, can only appear to him as other people choose to describe them. He cannot know what is actually in the photograph.
The movie also made me question how realistic it is to have a blind photographer. However the concept of taking a photograph “blind” isn’t foreign to the photography world. The dyer reading talks about how one photographer, Paul Strand, would take subway pictures without looking through his lens. He would simply point and shoot, without himself knowing what picture he was taking or those in his pictures knowing they were being photographed. This was a way to perhaps cut down the photographers interference with the photograph.
Just as shooting individuals who do not know they are having their picture taken, (such as the photograph of the blind women we looked at in class) is a way to try and capture a more “real” or “truthful” representation of the world through a photograph. Shooting individuals who are blind, either physically or simply blind to the fact they are being photographed prevents them from posing, or adopting a different and perhaps false persona in front of the camera.
However this brings up the question to me of whether its ever possible to capture a completely truthful image on film, and that I am not sure of.
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