la mirada invisible

Pete Eckert

As I sit here eating pepitas at 3am, I happened to come across a post about an exhibit titled "THE INVISIBLE EYE: MEET MEXICO’S BLIND PHOTOGRAPHERS". Read it here. Basically, this guy called Gerardo Nigenda was "one of the early pioneers of the seeming oxymoron, 'blind photography'."He would never see the photos he took. In some of his work, he imprinted braille. Fifteen blind mexican photographers were featured in this show, about which Miguel Angel Herrera expressed his thoughts:

"Like [blind Cuban artist] Eladio Reyes has said, “The word ‘image’ doesn’t come from seeing, but from imagination.” Photographs taken by blind people enrich the medium because they involve other senses in the process: hearing, taste, touch, smell."

A hispanic website about digital photography also spoke about the photographers: "a pesar de sus problemas de visión son capaces de dejarnos atónitos y cuestionarnos si la ceguera del prejuicio es peor que la ocular." (Meaning...) In spite of their vision problems, [the photographers] are able to leave us amazed and questioning/reflecting on whether "the blindness of prejudice is worse than the sight [of the blind]". In so many cases, people are able to turn their disabilities into their strengths when really accept the challenge.

In Pete Eckert's photo above, the following question was raised by a hispanic blogger of digital photography:

Pero ¿qué ocurre cuando no podemos ver o hemos perdido el 80% de nuestra visión? Lo que ocurre es que esa visión fotográfica es más intuitiva.

What happens when we cannot see or have lost 80% of our vision? What results is a more intuitive photographic vision. (The writer also explains that Eckert paints with light what he sees in his mind.) The effect is an image pulsating with energy and organic forms, but at the same time these photographs conjure images of a fire or burning men.

Photo by: Gerardo Nigenda. 

In many of his photos, Nigenda captures himself touching the subject, endearingly making the viewer aware of the camera-subject relationship. Braille is imprinted in many of his images.