Blind photographers spotlighted in new show at Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek

Photography is much more than what meets the eye.

This is old news for artist and UC Berkeley alumna Alice Wingwall, who has relied on her memory to take photographs since losing her vision 23 years ago.

Wingwall’s work is filled with contrasts, wafting between sharp and light focus on people, places, and events, to regain access to the vision she once had before a degenerative retinal disease took her eyesight. However, this development meant little to the creative who always had an imaginative life as a sculptor and photographer. Instead, without eyesight, she feels freer to envision something more complex, giving her “a longer breadth of vision.”

Wingwall is one of 13 blind photographers pushing the limits of photography at Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek in the exhibition, “Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists.” Renowned Southern California artist Douglas McCulloh curated the exhibition featuring over 100 photos from photographers who are completely or legally blind.

It’s the first show of its kind to bridge the gap between the long and double exposures characteristic of impressionist art with the blind photography movement.

The exhibit runs through Sept. 17.

“The expression is wonderfully rich and all over the place,” McCulloh said.

Pete Eckert’s chromatic art illustrates the diversity visitors can expect to see at the gallery. The Sacramento-based artist primarily shoots infrared photography at night to create hued, visceral images of his subjects that mirror the brushstrokes of a painting. Eckert has done advertising projects for Volkswagon, Google and Swarovski and uses darkness as “a metaphor for blindness,” he said, and believes that the two are related.

As he gradually lost his eyesight to Retinitis Pigmentosa 25 years ago, Eckert sought to find a medium that could convey his disposition. Film cameras manually retrofitted with braille and tactical notches accomplish much of this, as well as – unexpectedly – a black belt in martial arts that he obtained shortly before going blind to protect himself. According to the photographer, it’s given him a phantom sense of movement that aids his vision. “I can see light emanating from my bone structure,” he said.

McCulloh says “Sight Unseen” and blind photography are inherently political forms of artistry. Sighted people are flooded with imagery that, according to McCulloh, often narrows the possibility for creating visually interesting creative work – a conundrum that blind people exist outside of. To McCulloh, who is sighted, blind photography is uniquely original, as it represents the inner visualizations of artists who rely on memory, touch, and sense alone to create images. In other words, it’s the “zero point,” or foundation, of all photography.

“These artists are claiming a stake in the visual world,” McCulloh said, and that exhibits such as “Sight Unseen” are an assertion by blind photographers to be just that: seen.

The project is in its 14th year and continues to travel across the globe since its inception at the California Museum of Photography at UC Riverside in 2009. McCulloh is a senior curator at the museum and is known for his fondness for chance – or happenstance – in art. Whether it’s the time, place, or subject, McCulloh prefers to leave aspects of his photography up to fate.

It was this long-term fascination with chance in visual media that led him toward blind photography. McCulloh thought to himself: What’s the chanciest art in photography? and supposed it involved those who cannot see. However, the artist concedes, that this couldn’t have been further from the truth.

As he’s continued to work with blind photographers for the last 18 years, McCulloh has learned that the work is far from accidental or contingent – instead, it represents a sight so distinctive, it cannot be seen by the naked eye.

‘SIGHT UNSEEN: INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY BY BLIND ARTISTS’

Through: Sept. 17

Where: Bedford Gallery at Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek

Hours: Noon-5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday

Admission: Pay what you can; 925-295-1490, www.bedfordgallery.org