Tragedy and Levity: A Reconstructive Approach

This research project is intended as a photographic inquiry into the phenomenon of cortical blindness, a form
of visual/spatial loss resulting from damage to the brain, rather than the eyes. Cortical blindness has been
described as the loss of one’s sense of ‘whereness’; people suffering from this form of visual/spatial loss (as
a result of dementia or brain injury) must often deal with an experience of space that is nearly impossible to
fathom, much less relate to, for unimpaired others. Traditional narrative techniques having repeatedly proven
ill-equipped (or too didactic) to attend to this near-ontological rift, my aim is to shed light on the experience of
cortical blindness by approaching it through the mediums of photography and collage, which I see as offering
unique narrative opportunities. To that end, my research will center on photographic experiments in which
the camera acts as a stand-in for the brain; if cortical blindness occurs because certain neurological
connections in the brain are impaired, is it possible to visualize this experience by analogy using a camera in
which certain mechanical/electrical connections are also (intentionally) impaired? Such an approach
addresses the pressing need for more artistic research projects at the intersection of disability and
photography, while exploring how our perceptual norms (and the exclusions they create) relate to the
cultural, photographic, and institutional apparatuses of which we form a part.