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How blind photographers visualize the world
- cosmic_ape 3y agoIs there a way to listen to the actual content? This is only a brief summary of the radio show.
- enugu 3y agoThere is also this recently discovered phenomena of aphantasia which is fascinating. Lot of people dont have mental images and grow up not even aware that others can form such images. Here's one interesting account. https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A2862324277332876%7D&path=%2Fnotes%2Fnote%2F&paipv=0&eav=Afboz6jIZlxirHAHlctDVkh_pJu4aeo5aWfiCXqQLxTYZDm08WWqrD2lUx2tEJhQvS0&_rdr https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A...
- KMag 3y agoA few years ago, my wife and I figured out she has aphantasia. Suddenly, it made sense why she has trouble with navigating, why I have to draw things for her so often rather than just explaining the shapes of the various parts and how they fit together, and also why she finds reading most books so boring. When she reads a book, any description of how things look just goes in one ear and out the other. When walking around a city, she can't overlay a mental map over what she's seeing. On the other hand, I've always had good 3D mental visualization, likely part of why I was drawn to Mechanical Engineering.
- EGreg 3y ago"On the other hand, I've always have good 3D mental visualization" It is also a difference between the sexes https://news.emory.edu/stories/2019/04/esc_gender_gap_spatial_reasoning/campus.html https://news.emory.edu/stories/2019/04/esc_gender_gap_spatia... although some studies claim women are just as good but use different strategies that take longer: https://neurosciencenews.com/spatial-cognition-sexes-15576/ https://neurosciencenews.com/spatial-cognition-sexes-15576/ possibly related: https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/intelligent-people-slower-solve-hard-problems/ https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/intelligent-people-slower-so...
- pcl 3y agoThese aren’t necessarily related. I have aphantasia (am aphantastic?) but have a great sense of direction, and think very spatially. Just not with pictures or lines in a “mind’s eye”, as people call it.
- godshatter 3y agoI like using the word "aphant" to describe myself in this context.
- vidarh 3y agoI have aphantasia, but significantly above average spatial reasoning. I'm not convinced those things are straightforwardly connected.
- ravishi 3y agoSame. My brother doesn't have aphantasia, but he has some kind of "spatial dyslexia" as we call it. Not diagnosed, he just has really hard time thinking about spatial stuff, drawing and writing (related to the form of his "typeface", not to spelling).
- haswell 3y agoI discovered I have this by reading an article about it in Scientific American. It completely blew my mind. I thought “visualizing” was a figure of speech, and was shocked to realize that people actually form images in their mind. I’m also a photographer, and pre-visualizing shots in my mind doesn’t happen the way I’ve heard others describe their process. I immerse myself in the scene, taking everything in as fully as I can while moving around until I experience the shot/composition I want. This turned into a kind of mindfulness for me that has led to a much deeper appreciation of the natural beauty everywhere. I do wonder what’s it’d be like to visualize, but lacking this ability has been interesting in its own way.
- lacrimacida 3y agoAs as painter with aphantantasia myself I have a similar experience to yours and do find my own experience to be interesting and not lacking in any way, though it’s impossible to make the comparsion to non aphantasiacs. I feel that I do have an imagination and mind’s eye in my own way somehow connected to intuition, hard to describe into words but it’s like there’s a vail that obstructs the minds eye but I can feel what’s behind it. When I paint I am excited to see what emerges as if the veil is slowly dissolving. One thing that I have a hard time with as an aphantasiac is mostly reading books with extensive descriptive imagery, lots of minitious details…
- mysterydip 3y agoOne of the things that kept me from pursuing art as a hobby was my skill of drawing couldn't match the detail and fidelity of the image in my head I wanted to draw, frustrating and discouraging me. With aphantasia, how was your experience starting out?
- lacrimacida 3y agoI started painting accidentally more or less. I have to say my experience was empowering and boundless on an imaginary scale. I enter flow state so easily at this point but the first time I stumbled onto it I painted for 12 hours straight and I didn’t feel tired nor did I feel excited about what I produced, I was just calm and pleased with the experience - it felt like a therapeutic purge. The second time I attempted to do it I failed and felt frustrated. Eventually I understood how to enter that ‘door’ and started preparing before each session. Once in a while Im not in the right state of mind and I stop the session, find something else to do with my time. Another painter told me this is a known thing and he described an exerice he was showing his students: take a piece of paper, a pencil and draw circles of any kinds, small circles, large circles, circumscribed circles, most likely the shape doesn’t matter but the repetitive mindless action. He said in half an hour or so you’d want add something to that shape, then add something else after which one can let go of the exercise and just let the flow take over. Never tried the exercise myself but I see it working. When I paint I have my own preparation ritual. This works in other areas such as programming, though the experience is slightly different. With afantasia though I found that what’s what’s holding me back is picturing other peoples code model in my head and often I feel a map would help.
- guardian5x 3y agoWhat does the link say? (for people without facebook account)
- alanbernstein 3y agoIt's quite long, and fascinating. I'm able to view it in a private browser tab, so I don't think it requires an account.
- irrational 3y agoI wonder how many things like this there are. I have two that I am aware of. Musical anhedonia (a neurological condition characterized by an inability to derive pleasure from music) and I never dream while sleeping (I’ve never heard a name for this). In this case though, I am aware that others do have an emotional response to music and that others do dream while sleeping.
- vidarh 3y agoHaving entirely non-verbal thoughts is another one that tends to freak those of us who incessant monologues out. Some both don't think verbally and have aphantasia.
- vidarh 3y agoThis article is great[1] > Ed Catmull, 74, has the condition aphantasia, in which people cannot visualise mental images at all. > And in a surprising survey of his former employees, so do some of the world's best animators. [1] "Aphantasia: Ex-Pixar chief Ed Catmull says 'my mind's eye is blind'" -- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256
- glanzwulf 3y agoWould be interesting to actually be able to see this. But alas I'm a little bit too far from Walnut Creek
- pkilgore 3y agoDescription intriguing but not much detail available at link.
- tapper 3y agoAs a blind man this sounds like a load of BS to me! I have bin blind from berth and would have know want or need to invest all this time on something I can not see to enjoy the end product. How would you know which pics arr the rite ones? How can you show them to people when you cant even know what is on the piece of paper you are holding in your hand. If you put a pile of 10 pieces of paper in my hand and marked a line on one piece then I could not pick it out. Blind people can not be photographers. Now if you are telling me that they are low vision then that changes things but fully blind just know! I bet most of the pics are shit any, but know one wants to say. As a blind person you get this all the time. They lie to you and say well dun in a baby voice. I go to the gym and lift Weights: and people think it is so cool that a blind person can stand in one spot and lift Weights. It pisses me off no end! "O you are so good for what you do!" No mate I am just a blind dude that wants to stay healthy and not get fat. well fatter any way lol. I mien how hard is it to just lift a Weight bar some of the dumbest people I know are gym rats. Sorry about my spelling.
- lacrimacida 3y agoCould you describe into words how your mind works, how imagery is rendered in your mind’s eye and how you perceive the world around you? Also, do you have a mind’s eye like non aphantasiacs do? I suspect not all blind people perceive the world in the same way just like the non blind.
- tapper 3y agoOK here goes. Pleas don't mind the spelling. I was born with glaucoma and had both my eyes removed when I was 2.5 years old. I cant remember being able to see, but I can remember wearing verry thick glasses. They made my nose ake. I cant remember what things look like or cullers. If someone asked me to think about something like a beach I would think about how it would feel under my hands - feet to be on the sand, the sound of the see and the smell of the see. I would all so think about the feel of wind and sun on my skin. Because you have to be in motion to feel things with your hands I would think about all this as if I was walking a cross it. If I am asked to picture somthing simple like a cup or a plate I will remember what one feels like in my hands. When I have dreams I have ones that have all the other censes in them but no site. I have verry strong emotions in them and some dreams can stick with me for a long time. It's strange as I am not like that in my waking life. I don't think that has anything to do with me being blind though.
- boondoggle16 3y agoDeciding to repost this as a top-level comment because it has more info about the show and 4 images: https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/06/30/check-out-blind-photographers-exhibit-sight-unseen-in-walnut-creek/ https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/06/30/check-out-blind-phot...
- charlieyu1 3y agoI like the photos. Feels very different from other photographers. Not photoshopped and no fancy things, but the emotion is still there.
- 123pie123 3y agoone weird thing that I found out is that not everyone has an internal monologue something my younger self could not shut up - not so now, I've learnt to control it