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: NYC
Humza Deas Scales New Heights For “F8 and Be There”
Move over, Margaret Burke-White. There’s room on that girder for a new generation of daredevil photographers who will take any risk to get the shot. Humza Deas started climbing bridges and skyscrapers in New York City for the adrenalin rush and street creds, documenting his feats with selfies of his shoes. Think of him as a new kind of vertical flaneur, soaring rather than strolling, with a rarefied perspective on the street. Instead of Life Magazine, Instagram is his platform. Now he’s beginning to parlay social media fame into a paying gig. Continue reading
Café Mouffe: Don Byron’s New Gospel Quintet
Don Byron is one of the jazz artists I hope to hear this week. He has a gig at Jazz Standard on Thursday-Sunday. For now, here is Hide Me In Thy Bosom and Precious Lord.
Building a Concept of Architectural Tolerance
Rick Bell, executive director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, says he doesn’t claim ‘architectural tolerance” as a doctrine. But his evocation of a diverse and tolerant streetscape caught my attention. It sounds like something Jane Jacobs articulated 50 years ago. It’s certainly the kind of street this flaneur would walk down. I want to think that such architecture naturally would accommodate the accessibility needs of people with disabilities.
Fashionista Street: Soft Lines & Preposterous Shoes
According to Bill Cunnningham’s latest On the Street photo essay, “A signature look has emerged during the last days of New York Fashion Week: draped dresses worn with shoes that make a statement.”
