Photographing Legally Blind Individuals

Have you ever wondered how photographers direct and pose people who are legally blind?

I ask because when our subjects have very limited (if at all) eyesight, they can’t really look where we tell them to look, without a bit of additional help. So, how do we, photographers, communicate with these subjects? How do we guide them in order to best express their personalities?

Let me start with a brief personal experience interacting with legally blind individuals.

My first up close and personal encounter with a legally blind (almost completely blind) individual happened years ago when I was teaching high school math. I had a student who had very little eyesight. He was a tall and skinny guy, kinda shy, but once you got to connect with him, he could really chat. And he knew his way through the entire school building. We were meeting for after-school studies, while I was trying to teach him geometry of all things math. Since his father was a culinary chef, I tried to use food analogies, for example, pizza, when explaining the concept of circles, angles, and whatnot. Long story short, he became quite good at geometry, and, most importantly, started to like it, too.

Years later, I met award-winning, legally blind photographer Kurt Weston. I wrote about his story in A&U Magazine, (several times) and wrote a book about him and his work. We became friends and he became my first mentor in photography.

Weston is the subject of my August 2022 cover story published in A&U: Art & Understanding Magazine.

Kurt Weston’s Blind Vision series of self-portraits capture the physical and emotional impact that visual loss can have on an individual. 

In order to represent his visual disturbance—which he described as “pieces of cotton stuck in my eye, floating every time I move my eye”—he sprayed a glass with foaming glass cleaner and took a self-portrait sitting behind it.  “You see my hand pushing away the foam, which is what I would love to do,” he explains, “I would like to be able to wipe away all that cotton that keeps floating in front of my eye and get a clear view of what I want to see out in the world.”          

Weston believes that black-and-white offers his art a concentration of expression.  And he likes that intensity, in particular in his portraits.  He uses regular film and prints his images on silver gelatin paper so that they can last forever.  He wants future generations to be able to look at this work and say, “This was happening at this time in history and this is the impact it left on people whose lives it touched, this pandemic.”

Over the years, I’ve got to photograph some amazing, individuals, artists, and friends who are also legally blind or have limited eyesight.

For example, several years ago, thanks to my long-time friend, award-winning author T.J. Banks, I got the chance to photograph a legally blind, remarkable artist featured in T.J. Banks‘ book, Sketch People. 

That brings me back to my initial question: How would we photograph a blind or visually impaired person?

The challenge may start with the realization that, as photographers, we can’t really say: “look at me” or something of that sort, because the subject, doesn’t really see us.

NOTE: read more about Mark Remaly in “A Hands-On Philosopher: Mark Remaly,” by award-winning author T.J. Banks. The story, an excerpt from Bank’s Sketch People: Stories Along the Way, was published in the August issue of A&U: Art & Understanding Magazine.

While visiting an artist studio in the NYC area, I ran into a visual artist who was presenting her beautiful art pieces while rollerskating with them around her studio space. Her name is Kelly B. Darr. I was hooked right away. I couldn’t take my eyes off the artwork or the beautiful, fairy-like artist. Nowadays, I own a few of her art pieces.

We became friends. Years ago, I also interviewed Kelly B. Darr and got to learn everything about colors and A Universe of Colors one (in particular Kelly B. Darr) can create.