A Vision of No Vision

It seems simple: a photograph is a record the visual stimuli present in front of the lens of the camera. These visual stimuli are taken to constitute reality, thus it would seem to follow that a photograph is a record of this reality. However, the movie Proof provides ample examples of how the relationship between image and experience is not so concrete. One particular example that struck me was when Celia attempted to reconstruct Andy’s face from the photographs that Martin had taken. While the combination of the images served to provide a meager semblance of Andy, no one particular photo gave evidence as to what Andy actually was in real life. The photographs were a record of an experience, of a particular set of lighting and movement and perspective that defined the space in front of a camera lens in a particular moment – but this perspective was unique to the camera at that moment and could not have expressed the fullness of the reality we experience.

Even perception itself is subjective – no two people can observe the world in exactly the same way. Minute differences in retinal makeup can change details of a scene and eye deterioration can cause scenes to become blurred. Contact lens and glasses are employed to correct these deficiencies but even they are mediations on reality because they too are lens with unique properties that will altar forms. The most extreme form of this ocular subjectivity is blindness. Blind people still have eyes, just as everyone else does, but their genes cause them to pick up none of the visual data that most people are able to absorb. Both the movie and the reading, “the ongoing moment”, touch on the symbiotic relationship between photography and blindness. Photographers use their cameras as a manner of seeing the world through a different perspective – they realize that the world as it is cannot be accurately reflected in their photos. On the other hand, Martin used his camera as a means of finding some “proof” of what exists in the world, but this notion eventually failed. As Andy said, “everybody lies”. Our eyes can lie to us as well, and it is only the blind who escape from this grasping towards some permanent image of a fleeting moment.

The obsession that many of the photographers discussed in “the ongoing moment” have with blindness is voyeuristic yet it also seems to be a yearning to understand a lack of vision for those whose lives are understood primarily through their visual sensations. Vision is a sort of communication between two people. In Proof, the relationships that Martin values in the world are founded in partnerships of viewing and understanding the world. However, for artists such as Strand and Winogrand, the photographs they take of the blind deny the blind their voice in the relationship. The photographers see these people, but these people have no way of seeing back. They are denied any sense of subjectivity in their interaction with the photographer, and once the photographs are printed they become an object of visual consumption for any viewers that encounter the images. This is not to say that the photographers intentionally wish to strip the blind of their subjectivity, but to portray someone in a sensual arena that they have no option of participating in is to make them into objects stripped of any perspective. I do believe some of these images can serve a social purpose, but my initial reaction to Blind Woman, New York was repulsion. I felt like an intruder into the intimate life of this woman, who would never be able to look back at me and tell me her story. Her life and her ailments are laid bare to me, but she herself did not have any choice in whether she wanted these aspects of herself open to a public forum.