Blindness as Creative Force – Fall 2026 News & Events

Dear readers, After relying on a barely accessible newsletter platform for almost a decade, I’ve decided to turn my jam-packed newsletters with carefully curated image descriptions into seasonal round-up posts at DrMLGodin.com and AromaticaPoetica.com, and just send out a simple, text-based email blast to alert readers. So here’s the Fall 2026 Blindness as Creative Force Newsletter! Please reach out and… Read more

“100 Years of Blindness: A Scented Performance-Lecture on Photography” – April 15!

After a sold-out performance on March 1, I’m delighted to announce a second chance to experience “100 years of Blindness: A Scented Performance Lecture on Photography” on April 15, 7pm, at Olfactory Art Keller, NYC! Buy tickets! What happens when we explore photography without sight? In this experimental performance lecture, blind author and artist Dr. M. Leona Godin conjures five… Read more

NYPL Works In Progress Talk with David Lowe, Photography Specialist

On October 19, 2023, I was honored to present my work-in-progress as a 2023-24 NYPL Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellow at the New York Public Library. Thanks to Deirdre Donohue and David Lowe for supporting this talk with their brilliance and kindness! The entire talk with ASL interpreters is below as a Vimeo link and my lecture notes follow.     Face of… 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