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: NYT
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.”
Fashionista Street: Taking the Plunge
Bill Cunningham laughs with the puddle-jumpers on Fifth Avenue in this week’s On the Street photo essay. He muses that this form of water ballet isn’t appreciated in snow-sensible places like Wisconsin and Colorado where people plod in heavy boots, … Continue reading
George Plimpton & The Paris Review
A cocktail party at George Plimpton’s apartment in 1963; Plimpton is seated at left. [Photo by Cornell Capa/Magnum Photos/NYT] Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter wrote a long essay in the NYT Book Review based on George, Being George, a new … Continue reading
Joie de Vivre in the Luxembourg Gardens
Another October, and again I missed Nuit Blanche in Paris. Bill Cunningham was there, and his latest On the Street photo essay finds joie de vivre and vivid colors everywhere in the City of Light. Look for sapphire blue in … Continue reading
Fashionista Street: October in Paris
“Forget April in Paris,” Bill Cunningham says in today’s On the Street photo essay. “The exciting time is autumn, with the Eiffel Tower bathed in blue light and stylish women everywhere.” As the global economy contracts, Cunningham notes that bicycles … Continue reading
