Blind

Paul Strand, Blind, 1916

Does anyone believe this woman is blind?

Isn’t the point of the picture that she’s not?

Someone forgot to tell Gerry Badger. In The Pleasures of Good Photographs, Badger actually criticizes Strand for taking advantage of his subject:

“Of course, the blind woman was one of Strand’s easier targets, precisely because she could not see the photographer at work. Thus the image emphasizes, cruelly yet most vividly, the control of the photographer who captures or steals an unasked-for representation of a wholly unsuspecting soul.”

He then relegates Strand’s thoughts on the matter to a skeptical footnote:

“Apparently the photographer, sensitive to the candid nature of these street images in relation to the studied nobility with which he tried to invest later subjects, insisted that the woman was not totally blind, and was not a beggar, but had a license from the city of New York to trade on the streets.”

Yet as anyone with eyes can see, the woman is in fact wearing a badge that says “Licensed Peddler, New York City.”

Badger’s must be blindness of a different kind. But The Pleasures of Good Photographs is, generally, a pleasure nonetheless.