A Sensorial Beauty Within Blindness.

An intorduction, by Amberley Long, 2019.

I would like to underline the matter of art not only being something that is visually pleasing, but a gift that can be appreciated with every sense; even if some are taken away from us. By having contact and researching those who are visually impaired, this has highlighted to me, without assuming, a perception of how they live life with their other senses that are now more appreciated. I have discovered this, by investigating more specifically into vision and visual impairment in a more scientific way. Incorporating this concept within my practice of Fine Art, I feel the need to bring awareness to the fact that when we look at art it doesn’t just have to be valued with our sight, which could mean that the art would be tactile, a performative environment, a binaural audio and other sensory types of art etc. “The impulse to touch with a fingertip, to smell, to place one’s ear to, to drink, to taste, to ear or to kiss these pages, is never far away.”. Even those who have the ability to see and have ‘perfect’ vision, still have a type of blindness.

Introducing the book ‘The Blind Photographer’ as one of the main sources of my research, it has given me an extensive amount of understanding surrounding the intelligence of these artists who have found a way to use their visual impairment as an ability to achieve greatness within their artwork for others to highly appreciate. This emotional read engages the rare talent of this ‘disability’ to be something that is neglected as a skill. Mentioning the countless artists who have many unique abilities of using the camera has the reader feeling amazed and appreciative.

By watching interviews and researching deeply into what visually impaired people actually see, they just see ‘nothing’. Not black, not white. Just nothing.

Anon- “Do you just see black?”

Tommy Edison “No you have to see to know what black is, so I don’t see black, I just see nothing.”

I am going to be questioning what it means for someone to be blind and if it holds back someone who is visually impaired? When sighted people, like myself, go into a space of thinking and daydreaming, we can only visualise things that we have either witnessed before or that we know what they are. The thought of how obscure the imagination is, makes me wonder how visually impaired people imagine when they have been blind from birth. Is what sighted people imagine what we have actually seen, or is imagination in general a concept of it being something that our brain concludes together as an image?

This makes me think about perceptions, by focusing on the beauty that is surrounding us and isn’t as cherished as one thinks, my primary aim within this dissertation is to highlight the point of natural beauty by looking and exploring all of the senses and how sight isn’t something that one needs to be able to appreciate life.

- To read more, please email me for a PDF of this piece. -