Category: Disability studies

Valentin Haüy’s Essai (1786) * On the Education of Blind Children * NYPL Rare books * Image + Description

I wrote about Valentin Haüy and his founding of the first school for blind children in 1785 in There Plant Eyes. My dear friend David Lowe, who is a photo specialist in the Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs at the New York Public Library, read my book (Thanks, David!), and because he did, when he saw Valentin Haüy’s… Read more

Image Description and the Critical Blind Gaze * NYPL Public Lecture

*As a 2023-24 Diamonstein-Spielvogal Fellow at the New York Public Library, I was asked to give a public lecture in the Vartan Gregorian Center for Research in the Humanities on March 8, 2024 called: “Image Description and the Critical Blind Gaze.” Below is the recording of the lecture—including questions from the star-studded audience!—followed by a cleaned-up transcript of my lecture… Read more

AI Describing AI * Whitney Museum * Photo/Description Journal

Thanks to Bojana Coklyat for inviting me to co-lead a verbal description  tour with Art educator Paula Stuttman at the Whitney Museum on May 9! It was great fun to discuss some of the works in “Harold Cohen: AARON” with the help of Be My AI, an app for blind people powered by GPT4 that produces robust, nearly instantaneous image… Read more

New York Public Library Talk: “Image Description and the Critical Blind Gaze” – In-Person on March 8

I’m thrilled to present “Image Description and the Critical Blind Gaze” at The New York Public Library (NYPL) in-person on March 8, 2pm! Free, but please register. About the Talk Author and scholar M. Leona Godin uses photographs in the Library’s collections to explore the strange relationship between sighted photographers and blind subjects. The photography division of The Miriam and… Read more

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