Behold (in progress, working title)
Walking around one day in 2020, trying to make sense of my recent glaucoma diagnosis, I came upon a metal ring on the ground. It was weathered, greasy, and stiff, and appeared to have had some former industrial life. I held it up in the foreground of the landscape in front of me and something changed.
The ring has become a stand-in for the smudged, dark circle I see through my right eye, a ring of blindness caused by the deterioration of my optic nerve. It’s a beckoning muse through which I frame the world as I see it.
As I attempt to maintain some hands-on control, and obsess, ruminate and speculate about my vision, the project has expanded. Is the ring growing? Closing? Getting darker? Denser? How is my light and color perception changing? I’m vigilant, always “testing” my own eyesight, observing what and how I’m seeing.
Throughout, everyday moments, objects and topographies become significant events imbued with meaning, worthy of attention, a chance to hold on.
Making these images helps me move beyond the fear of losing more vision, and to a playful space, where I build curiosity about my eyesight, and this condition that is the leading cause of blindness for people over sixty.