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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.Letting Go of Sight
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: surrealism
Who Spied On Lee Miller?
Lots of people lined up to peek through the keyhole for a glimpse of Lee Miller, whose meteoric career arced from Vogue fashion model to Surrealist muse to intrepid war photographer. The voyeurs included Condé Nast, Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, … Continue reading
Posted in surrealism
Tagged 1940s, Berlin, fashionista, Hitler, Lee Miller, photographers, surrealism, WW II
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Lee Miller: Surrealist Solarization
Posted in Art, fashionista, Tutelary Spirits
Tagged 1930s, Imaging Paris, Lee Miller, Man Ray, photographers, surrealism
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Judith Thurman on Lee Miller
Tom mentioned a Lee Miller profile in this week’s New Yorker. It’s written by Judith Thurman, author of Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette. The full text isn’t available yet on the New Yorker web site, but here … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Lee Miller, Man Ray, Paris, photographers, surrealism, Uncategorized
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Mouffe at the Movies: The Blood of a Poet
Reel 1: Jean Cocteau. The Blood of a Poet (trailer). Lee Miller played the Statue in Jean Cocteau’s Surrealist classic, The Blood of a Poet (Le Sang d’un Poéte). It’s a trippy, enigmatic film laden with “deep” imagery. The original … Continue reading
Posted in Café Mouffe
Tagged 1930s, films, Jean Cocteau, Lee Miller, Paris, surrealism
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