Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

PHOTO + SYNTHESIS

‘Blind Spot’ challenges us to look beyond the limits of vision

- By Rebecca Foster

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.

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