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Photography: Access to Sight Most people see to photograph, I photograph to see. I was born legally blind with 20/400 vision in both eyes. Because of a combination of astigmatism, nastagmus, eccentric fixation and myopia (all acute) my eyesight was not optically correctable. Over the past twenty years, I have lost most of this vision due to a retina degeneration problem. Presently, I function with less than five percent of normal vision on the periphery of my right eye. Shortly after my present vision loss began, I discovered that photography allowed me to keep open this priceless channel of perceptive communication. It was startling to look at a self-portrait and realize I had stopped seeing myself in a mirror. It was equally startling to realize I had stopped seeing the faces of my friends and relatives. If I had not become seriously interested in photography at that point in my life, I would today consider myself blind; as long as I can photograph I will never be blind. Photography allows me to see what I otherwise could not see.
The world through my eyes, and the world through my photography and a magnifier. Visually impaired people around the globe can use photography to better see their world. The reason a photograph is easier to see than the scene it represents is simple to understand. A photograph is not reality, but an abstraction of reality. Even the most correctly developed photograph is a high-contrast abstraction of the object it represents. Thousands of colors, shades, hues and textures are reduced to a few shades of gray between black and white. Confusing shapes and distances are reduced to a two-dimensional representation. Although eyesight is measured in numbers such as 20/20, 20/100 and 20/200, these measurements are not exact. Much as no two individuals with "normal vision" will see the same, so is it true of the visually impaired. A black-and-white photograph helps reduce the differences in degree of vision by allowing the individual to view a person, place or object in the situation best suited to the individual's particular vision problem. While everyone loves the beauty of a color photograph, color can often add back some of the confusion by reducing the detail and resolution that carries vital information. The most important aspect of reducing a scene or object to a photograph is that it allows the visually impaired person to have total control of both detail and perspective. There are two aspects of the control of both detail and overall perspective. First, a photograph allows individuals with diminished vision to view the scene or object represented by the photograph in the best light and at a distance from their eyes that best compensates for their particular problem. While many require a great deal of light for best results, other might have a vision problem that requires them to see the light coming from the back of the print. A photograph allows a person with diminished vision to get close enough to breath on the object and in some cases use a magnifying device. Secondly, the photograph allows the visually impaired individual to see both detail and perspective at the same time. If a person were to try to move close enough to view each element within a scene, they could not see the other objects in the scene. Thus, they would lose over-all perspective. If they backed away far enough to have an over-all perspective, they would lose detail without gaining perspective. Photography literally allows you to make the large small enough to see and the small large enough to see. Many of us see the world as though it were painted by Monet. A photograph crystallizes time and space and gives our world definition. I love Monet's work, but I prefer my world in focus. My latest interest is digital photography and the desktop darkroom. Digital images give me the control I need to see my world better. Here is a shot of some friends I recently took with a KODAK DIGITAL SCIENCE DC40 camera.
My good friend Elain and her family. To Photograph Is To See Menu | Introduction | Biography | Paper | Photographs | |
