What is it that the seen is hiding, and what blindspots are created, intentionally or otherwise, by the conventions of the visual? Are visual blindspots related to emotional ones? What is it that we distract ourselves from seeing? The saturated visibility and sharpness of the conventional visual is distracting us from the validity of our subjective inner eye. Thus, our encounter with photographs both seen and unseen set the scope and framework of this immersive piece, where physical, conventional blindness serves as a leading metaphor hinting towards a proposition for a deeper sense of seeing. This encounter captures an intuition.
re-thinking visual
laetitia boulud | alex de jong
laetitia boulud
Now it’s clear to me that in my pre-sighted memory, I saw something that struck me. Something I shouldn’t have seen. This froze my eyes open and my being became alert. It is as if i saw a secret. That caused a feeling of loneliness, That moment determined my way of being. that alert sensor-like state leads me to longing for rest, and a search for that other being to explain to me what that was, that i saw.
alex de jong
About two years ago i went blind and at first i thought that i wanted to kill myself. Of course the interesting thing was that i was a photographer too. I felt like a stranger, a tourist, in the world of blindness and a stranger in the world of sight that i had just left.
re-thinking visual
Through objects and time streams, through sound and photographs we show the workings of our brain, the insides of our mind. We separate all sensory input streams from each other and from their input. This creates a form of synesthesia in a tangible and traceable way.
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luminous
From when my vision first started changing, I remember the feeling of combined dread and excitement. The fear produced in me by the strange colors I was perceiving, by objects abruptly appearing and disappearing, by the way everything acquired a painful luminosity. Yet, all this was exciting too, in a way, because of the visual spectacle, because it demonstrated so excellently how the visual orld we take for granted is a mirage, an illusion. Now, the dust has settled, at least some of it, and my new way of seeing has become as common-place as the old.
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between worlds
Alex is 46 years old, he is a photographer and a Tibetan Buddhist monk. He is a teacher. He is an artist. He is a husband. He is a father. And Alex is my dearest friend. Since the end of 2006 we have been working as a team. For two and a half years, email was the only formal way we chose to communicate: only writing. In 2009 we started using Skype-talking. Later we met physically.
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phototalk, by avi pitchon
Two photographers – Laetitia Boulud and Alex De Jong, discuss each other’s photographs. they investigate the subject of photographs – the ‘what is going on’ in photographs, the relationships between the actual thing/situation/presence that is captured and the meaning it triggers for the viewer. Phototalk charts the way this relationship ignites what Barthes refers to as a sense of adventure and as a “mad loveâ€.
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longing for sight
a place where unseen memories are collected. a place of isolation and of expanse, where inner and outer meet. a place that is so intimate that it needs to be shared. a place where you can wander around and feel safe. a place to get lost in.
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