PHOTO + SYNTHESIS
‘Blind Spot’ challenges us to look beyond the limits of vision
Teju Cole, a Nigerian-American novelist and New York Times photography columnist, has published four books. Whether a short novel of Sebaldesque wanderings in the Big Apple (“Open City”), or a collection of essays on literature, art and travel (“Known and Strange Things”), his works all share a dedication to seeing clearly.
All the more ironic, then, that Mr. Cole has had major vision problems — starting in 2011, when he temporarily went blind in one eye due to papillophlebitis: a perforated retina whose holes were cauterized by a laser. The experience only amplified what he refers to in the postscript as a “long-term concern with the limits of vision.”
Of course, as Siri Hustvedt points out in a perceptive foreword, it’s not only the vision-impaired who fail to see what’s in front of them; we all have a blind spot in our peripheral vision that the brain compensates for. Extending the metaphor, Ms. Hustvedt suggests that the connections in “Blind Spot” may go unnoticed unless the reader commits to looking deeper.
The book is composed of about 160 one- and twopage spreads in which images are matched with commentary — sometimes as little as one or two lines; other times more of a miniessay in multiple paragraphs. Each piece is headed with its location, with Lagos, Berlin, Brooklyn and various towns in Switzerland showing up frequently.
The first image, “Tivoli,” is a lesson in how to read the rest. It seems like an ordinary suburban scene: shadows of trees fall across a road lined by budding shrubs, with a motor home behind. But the lyrical description evokes the melancholy turn of seasons — “at times in spring, even the emotional granaries are depleted” — and likens the branches to neurons.
That philosophical approach elevates a few slightly undistinguished photographs. The recurring imagery of shrouds — car covers, scaffolding and curtains — acquires religious significance. In “Wannsee” a rip in a plastic sheet stands for the hole in Jesus’ side, while a man asleep outside a Lagos church brings to mind the deposition of the body of Christ.
Several of these images are in conversation with earlier works of art, whether sacred or secular. For example, in Tripoli a caged bird is a reminder of Fabritius’ “The Goldfinch.” Yet the camera also captures the art in everyday scenes: globes for sale in a Zurich shop window, the backs of pedestrians’ heads, or Gucci purses arrayed on a Venice sidewalk.
“Photography is good at showing neither political detail nor political sweep,” Mr. Cole insists; even when his travels take him to historically charged locations such as Beirut, Ubud (Indonesia) and Selma, he chooses to feature a tree, car or telephone pole and use the text to ponder the place’s significance rather than strain to find an image freighted with meaning.
It is, at times, difficult to spot the relevance of certain photographs that cannot stand alone without captions. Others, though, are striking enough to require no clarifying prose, with tricks of scale or tricks of the light, reflections, shadows and layers providing visual interest.
However, there are also fascinating stories hinted at here, such as a neck tattoo spotted in a Zurich tram. Afterward Mr. Cole looks up the name and date branded onto the woman’s flesh and discovers a tribute to a car crash victim from Phoenix, Ariz., in 2007; the tattoo bearer is presumably one of the two survivors.
This serves as a prime example of memory taking on visual permanence, which is precisely the aim of this hybrid text — no mere collection of tourist snaps, but a poetic reflection on the confines of vision and knowledge.