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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: Tom Roberts
Tennessee Needs That Beacon In A Sea of Red
The Obama banner hanging outside Tom’s studio in Loudon, Tennessee caught the eye of blogger David Ettlin,who stopped to chat and later wrote about the visit in The Real Muck: There wasn’t much – the depressed town only recently received … Continue reading
Brave Beacon in a Sea of Red
Tom Roberts sent this photo of his artist studio in Loudon, Tennessee. He volunteered the studio for Obama campaign headquarters for Loudon County. Tom writes: The building, across from the county courthouse, faces motorists heading north on highway 11, and … Continue reading
Perusing the Portland Farmers’ Market
Saturday morning, market day. Almost time to walk to the farmers’ market. I’ve been going there longer than I can remember. This summer I realized how these outdoor markets are a movement now, as much a part of the daily … Continue reading
Ransacking The Archive: Letter to Tom Roberts
This was written for Tom on the August night in 1975 when the world learned of the death of Dmitri Shostakovich. Letter to Tom Roberts I stopped reading books. Is that possible? My eyes hurt. My doctor says there are … Continue reading
Flaneur’s Gallery: Market Day in Costa Rica
A market in Feria, Costa Rica. [Photo by Tom Roberts] There’s more snow and ice here this morning. A stroll through a farmer’s market in the Tropic of Cancer would be a welcome respite. Thanks, Tom! Tell us more.