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Photography
by the blind brings up to explore the very fundamental issue in
contemporary culture as ‘how do we see, how do blind see’
We
who see do not even know how it is that we see and also unaware of
the
process of ‘learning to see’. Neurologist Oliver Sacks * has an
interesting case -
A
man born blind, in adulthood, his sight got restored. At that point, he
can ‘see’ but he cannot interpret the visual data at all. A set of
stairs, which was familiar to him, is now
a jumble of lines and shadows and the jumble changes utterly with angle of
view or
shift of light. He literally cannot recognize it as stairs. He leans to
see his cat
in ‘visual’ profile, but if the cat shifted posture he can no longer
differentiate
the cat’s shape from that of his room
Unexpectedly,
the world of sight became a nightmare for him. Eventually he again
loses his sight and it was a relief for him. He returns to a world where
everything
makes sense by touch and sound. Stairs becomes stairs and his cat becomes
cat
Seeing
is learned and the blind man has never learned to see
This open another big question, if
sighted person has to ‘learning to see’, what
is the parallel to ‘learning to see’ for a blind person
We
normally think of seeing the visual reality through our eyes. Seeing is as
much touching and hearing, but because vision is so overwhelming, we are
unaware of that
When
a sighted person sees a cup, he is also feeling it with his mind's hand
Blinds
can arrive at mental pictures of the visual realities around them through
touch, sound, feel of heat, visual memories of sight and other cognitive
abilities. Mental picture is a lot like seeing, only less powerful
When a blind person
touches a cup, he is also seeing it with his mind’s eye
Dr. John Kennedy, an authority on Art by the Blind through research
has come to believe and states, "The
geometry of direction is common to vision and touch” and "Where a
sighted person looks out, a blind person reaches out, and they will
discover the same things”
It
is well established scientifically that visual cortex of the brain that processes all
visual inputs in a sighted person is reallocated ** in blind person for
processing
touch and sound and is also highly active during visual thinking *** in
the blind
‘Learning
to see’ is common for both sighted and blind, the vehicle and route of
seeing is different. But the blind person as to work much harder than the
sighted person to get visually aware to create mental pictures
What
would be more interesting to explore what they (blind) see differently
from
what we (sighted) see and how ‘learning to see’ in the blind is
cultivated and
translated into visual art
*
The New Yorker, March, 2003, **
New Scientists, January, 2005, *** Psicologica, # 26, 2005
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