About the Flaneur
![Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day (La Place de l’Europe, temps de pluie). 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]](../../../../wp-content/uploads/2009/02/gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day_1877_wiki.jpg "gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day")
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.Letting Go of Sight
![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../../../../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
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.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).Media in Transition @ MiT
Disabled Americans today have to negotiate for the kinds of accommodations made for FDR, and the caveat “reasonable accommodation” is built into the law. President Franklin Roosevelt did not have to negotiate. He could summon vast resources of the federal government – money as well as brains – to accomplish the work of disability. And it was accomplished with such thoroughness and efficiency that its scale could be called the Accessibility-Industrial Complex had it been directed toward public accommodations and not solely the needs of a single man. Read FDR and the Hidden Work of Disability [MiT8 2013]
Shepard Fairey claimed that his posterization of a copyrighted AP news photo of Barack Obama was a transformative work protected by the fair use doctrine. In other words, it was a shape-shifter. I claim fair use, too, when I reproduce and transform copyrighted works into media formats that are accessible to me as a blind reader. Read Shape-Shifters in the Fair Use Lab [MiT6 2009]
The social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars in New York never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it, either. In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in 1916, he could not have expected that one day blind photographers would reverse the camera’s gaze. Read Curiosity & The Blind Photographer. [MiT5 2007]
Tag Archives: Imaging Paris
A Courtesan’s Advice For Carla Bruni: “Don’t Eat That Bling!”
Comparing the extravagance of Carla Bruni and Marie-Antoinette reminded me of another sordid tale of conspicuous consumption from The Daily Mail, which got its facts from that august nexus of science and celebrity gossip, the British Medical Journal. A study published last December in the BMJ found toxic concentrations of gold and mercury in the remains of Diane de Poitiers, mistress of the 16th-century French king, Henry II . Diane likely succumbed to the French nobility’s predilection for drinking elixir of gold (think of it as a bling smoothie) in hopes of preserving eternal youth. Continue reading
Was Man Ray’s “Emak-Bakia” the “Avatar” of the 1920s?
When Man Ray’s short film “Emak-Bakia” debuted in Paris in 1926, critical opinion was mixed. One angry viewer shouted that it gave him a headache and hurt his eyes, to which another retorted, “Shut up!” A brawl ensued, which spread through the audience and spilled into the street. Then the police arrived to quell the riot.
The King Is Dead. Long Live The Herons!
The statistics are staggering for the wine auction at La Tour d’Argent, the venerable Left Bank restaurant with a 27-room wine cellar [left; photo by David Queen/Wikipedia]. The auction fetched more than a million euros, according to AFP. A bottle … Continue reading
Revisionist Remix for ‘A Moveable Feast’
Hemingway with his first wife, Hadley Richardson, left, and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer. [Source: Hemingway Collection/JFK Library/AP/NYT] Ernest Hemingway said some mean things about Gertrude Stein and Zelda Fitzgerald in A Moveable Feast. He never forgave Zelda for suggesting … Continue reading
Paris, je t’aime - Bastille
After I posed the rhetorical question yesterday about video tributes to world-class neighborhoods, Alex sent me Paris, je t’aime-Bastille. Point well-taken, and many thanks! According to Wikipedia: Bastille (XIIe arrondissement) — by Spanish writer-director Isabel Coixet. Prepared to leave his … Continue reading
