Teju Cole Extra Credit

10/5/20

Rhinecliff from Blind Spot

In Blind Spot, Teju Cole depicts the journalistic nature of photography as a process that quickly and easily preserves a large amount of visual data. Despite the camera’s capacity for depicting life in a rational and compliant way, Cole complicates the act of seeing and the artist’s agency through the metaphor of the blind spot. The metaphor of the blind spot reveals itself in Cole’s work through the unfamiliarity of his subject matter and his multimedia approach to text and image formatting.

Cole describes the blind spot as the subjectivity of the photographer. Although the camera freezes reality, Cole argues that the photographer’s consciousness is there but not easily seen. The matter-of-fact, diaristic mood of Cole’s photographs illustrate the photographer’s unique way of seeing. They depict landscapes in passing and random compositions of places and textures of nature. The variety of passive landscapes allows the artist to string ideas throughout the pages, and centers the narrative on Cole’s gaze. Cole’s gaze is mysterious, and I’m left with space in my mind wondering who he is and what he is doing in these places.

Cole’s addition of text provides some insight into the context of the photographs, but not a lot. It answers where the artist was at the time of the photo, the elements that strike him the most such as composition or color, or things that the artist did or liked at the time he took the photo. Although the photos have a life of their own, Cole’s text adds a layer of information that the reader can add to their imagination.

In seeing these mundane elements of Cole’s reality we are left with blind spots in our imagination as to who he is and what he does. This blind spot functions as an entry point for the viewer to imagine a story about never before seen places.