Category: Art

Neal Slavin’s “Blind Woman” (1963) * Image Descriptions

“New York City, Blind Woman” (1963) is by Neal Slavin, world-respected photographer and film director. I first met Neal, briefly, at the old Lighthouse Music School (now FMDG Music School), where he brought his ICP students to assist him in taking a large group shot of all us students—children and adults, with and without our instruments. More on that photo… Read more

A Quartet of Image Descriptions for Paul Strand’s “Blind Woman” (1917)

A picture speaks a thousand words, so lay them on me! Paul Strand’s “Blind Woman” is the first photograph I wrote about as my writing sample for Face of the Blind: Essays on Photography, as part of my successful application to be a New York Public Library Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellow this year. As I wrote in my proposal, image description is… Read more

NYPL Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship for “Face of the Blind: Essays on Photography”!

Thanks to a Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship, New York Public Library will be my office this fall! I’m excited to bang around the library telling people I’m doing research in the Wallach Photography Collection… Face of the Blind: Essays on Photography Proposal by M. Leona Godin Many anonymous blind people populate the  photographs of NYPL’s Wallach            Collection. Through a series of essays,… Read more

My Portrait—Graffitied By Me—Hanging Out with the Mayor in City Hall

Almost ten years ago, I was invited to the SoHo studio of artist Roy Nachum. He had me choose colors and paint my portrait on a big piece of paper on the wall.. It basically consisted of long stripes of hair and round sunglasses. I think I chose silver and black. I was wearing gold and black and purple. He… Read more

Contemplating the Many Things Worse than Being Blind at the Helen Keller Forest Hills Tribute Mural

Thanks to a wonderful writer friend, Jess DeCourcy Hinds, I learned about The Helen Keller Forest Hills Tribute Mural in Queens, New York, where Keller lived for many years. Sadly, Keller’s home no longer exists. In its place stands the Reform Temple of Forest Hills at 71-11 112th Street, which was formerly 93 Seminole Avenue. That’s “where Helen Keller resided… Read more

The Brain-Smashing, Pity-Bashing Art of Blind Punks

“You must sing like an angel,” a woman said to me as I prepared to go onstage with my “Avant Accordion Brain Smash” act in a Brooklyn warehouse performance space. She either did not notice my hand-sewn black bustier, or decided that my white cane rendered all the badassery surrounding it null. When I began bellowing about some murderous renaissance… Read more