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About the Flaneur
I walk through my blindness the way I wander down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, alert to the raw material of the senses. I am a flaneur. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm, unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, Return of the Flaneur to Galerie Vivienne. After that, try Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur. Then stay tuned.Kiki: Man Ray’s Dada Muse
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s Le violin de Ingres (1924). See more from Imaging Paris.Lee Miller: Surrealist Muse
Lee Miller traced a meteoric trajectory from flapper fashionista to surrealist muse. She played the Statue in Jean Cocteau's first movie. Picasso painted her portrait. She apprenticed with Man Ray and later became a noted war photographer for British Vogue. Read more.Miss Tic: Paris Street Art
Poet and street artist Miss Tic isn't exactly a kid in a hoodie with a can of spray paint. Maybe she can still run like hell when the police show up, but can she sprint in high heels? Well-known in international avant-garde circles, her work is exhibited now at the Venice Biennale as well as the alleys of Paris. Read more. See Ethics of Love for a video montage of Miss Tic's provacative poetry. More Paris Street Art.
The Lake and the River
I’ve canoed on Lake Superior for almost as many years as I’ve been losing eyesight. I return year after year like a migrating loon to learn the other side of a slow, uncertain process that we could call “going blind.” After 35 years with the lake as my teacher, I know what lies on the other side. I call it letting go of sight. Read Big Water. See more about the Great Lakes.What is a village? A small place, yes, as wide as the world, layered with histories and stories, where you can walk wherever you want to go. My vision of that place is Yellow Springs 2.0.
Not This Pig
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in Not This Pig (2003).Re-Imagining Accessibility
Re-imagining accessibility through the transformations of culture -- particularly the transformative promise of accessible technology for people with disabilities -- is the work of the Fair Use Lab. What does Shepard Fairey’s Hope poster have to do with accessibility? Read more: Shape-Shifters in the Fair Use Lab [MiT6 2009]Blind Photographers
In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in New York, the social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it. Paul Strand probably didn’t give her much credit for making culture, either. Read more: Curiosity & The Blind Photographer [MiT5 2007] See more on blind photographers.BottomFeeder U.S.A.
BottomFeeder U.S.A.
- Attention Economy – October 14, 2023
- Attention Economy – September 30, 2023
- Attention Economy – September 26, 2023
- Attention Economy – September 23, 2023
- The Rhetoric of ‘Class Warfare’?
Linking Out
- AFB Blog
- Amy’s Anomalies
- Ânkoras & Asas
- augmented illusions
- Buzz Machine
- Cold Holler
- David Morley
- Gabriela Anaya Valdepeña
- Henry Jenkins
- Jafabrit's Art
- Kaitlin Foley
- l’azile
- Planet of the Blind
- Reading in the Dark
- Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir
- Richard Florida
- Spoken Word in Paris
- Tim O'Brien
- Visual Culture Blog
- Yellow Springs Arts
Category Archives: Walter Benjamin
Imaging Paris: Passage des Panoramas
Passage des Panoramas, Paris. [Photo by deneux_jacques] Thanks to deneux_jacques for sharing this image in the Creative Commons. See his superb photo set, Ah, Paris! Imaging Paris documents places in the city and the images that inhabit them. “Just as … Continue reading
Walter Benjamin: Art & Mechanical Reproduction
I’ve alluded several times to Walter Benjamin’s 1937 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” I cited it as a kind of shorthand for several ideas that I want to explore in a blind flaneur. After … Continue reading
Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur
As I have lost eyesight over the past thirty years, walking has been the simplest and most dependable solution to the functional limitations of my disability. When I stopped driving cars at age eighteen, walking was the mode of transportation … Continue reading
Vygotsky & Bakhtin, Madelstam & Walter Benjamin
My friend and teacher Nancy Mack invited me to visit her seminar on Lev Vygotsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, and the social nature of language. When I took her course ten years ago, it was the most stimulating subject I encountered in … Continue reading
Two Views of Place de la Bastille
Two 19th-century illustrations depict Place de la Bastille in the years before and after Victor Hugo ‘s description of the Elephant in Les Misérables IV.6. 2: [above left] Elephant caparaconne d’or by Alvoine, from the time of Napoleon; [below left] … Continue reading
Imaging Paris: La poésie est un sport de l’extrême
[Photo by gadl] Art is everywhere in Paris. You don’t have to stand in line or pay 10 euros to enter the museum. As the flaneur knows, the museum is the street. You pay with your attention. This image represents … Continue reading
Walter Benjamin: The Pearl Diver
Illuminations (1968) is the most-widely read anthology of Walter Benjamin’s writing in English. The essays gathered there, including “Unpacking My Library” and “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” were chosen by Hannah Arendt. She also contributed … Continue reading
Return of the Flaneur: Galerie Vivienne
[Photo by Ms. Modigliani] When I’m in Paris I cross the river at least once to walk up Rue Vivienne, which runs north from the Louvre and Palais Royale. Compared to the grand boulevards, Rue Vivienne feels like a narrow, … Continue reading