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Blind Spot
Blind Spot | Teju Cole
9 posts | 4 read | 9 to read
The award-winning author of Open City and photography critic for The New York Times Magazine combines two of his great passions in this innovative synthesis of words and images. "To look is to see only a fraction of what one is looking at. Even in the most vigilant eye, there is a blind spot. What is missing?" When it comes to Teju Cole, the unexpected is not unfamiliar: He's an acclaimed novelist, an influential essayist, and an internationally exhibited photographer. In Blind Spot, readers follow Cole's inimitable artistic vision into the visual realm as he continues to refine the voice, eye, and intellectual obsessions that earned him such acclaim for Open City. Here, journey through more than 150 of Cole's full-color, original photos, each accompanied by his lyrical and evocative prose, forming a multimedia diary of years of near-constant travel: from a park in Berlin to a mountain range in Switzerland, a church exterior in Lagos to a parking lot in Brooklyn; landscapes, beautiful or quotidian, that inspire Cole's memories, fantasies, and introspections. Ships in Capri remind him of the work of writers from Homer to Edna O'Brien; a hotel room in Wannsee brings back a disturbing dream about a friend's death; a home in Tivoli evokes a transformative period of semi-blindness, after which "the photography changed. . . . The looking changed." As exquisitely wrought as the work of Anne Carson or Chris Marker, Blind Spot is a testament to the art of seeing by one of the most powerful and original voices in contemporary literature.
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blurb
marianese
Blind Spot | Teju Cole

When you are at a great reading but the room is too hot and stuffy and crowded and has no disabled seating and you have to stand there in the heat so you end up posting on Litsy from the disabled restroom till your friend comes out. 😥😥😥

Lindy ☹️ 6y
marianese Finally they opened one of the doors to get some air in the room! And I was able to go back in to catch some of it. He's really delightful, though the way they showed photos from the book was not great. I'd like to pick it up sometime for sure. He's turning into a new author crush for me. 6y
5 likes2 comments
blurb
8leagueboot
Blind Spot | Teju Cole
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This is my first time reading and experiencing the photography of Teju Cole. You know that amazing feeling when you have discovered a new favorite, a new strong voice of wisdom in your life? I'm having that feeling.

ohyeahthatgirl So glad to hear this is good! I've really enjoyed his fiction. 7y
38 likes1 comment
review
mrozzz
Blind Spot | Teju Cole
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Pickpick

On its own I doubt I‘d find the photo series very interesting. However, the poetic, factual, contemplative words were apt partners for the pictures made during his travels and reminded me of Hallberg‘s “Field Guide to the North American Family” but in no comparable way competed in attraction. Although at times too erudite to hold my interest, the fluid connection between history, current events and Cole‘s personal history is fascinating.

88 likes3 stack adds
quote
mrozzz
Blind Spot | Teju Cole
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Photography is good at showing neither political detail nor sweep. Politics is a matter of discourse & discursive compromise. Photography is quite good at metaphor and evocation. But politics is hard to compress into a rectangular frame. At best a photojournalistic image can show some of the theater of politics. In process, it can bowdlerize what is political about politics. Unfortunately the public often reads this as political truth in itself.

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mrozzz
Blind Spot | Teju Cole
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“I last walked there on September 11, 2001. Since then, I‘ve gone near it many times—in taxis on West Street, on foot on Greenwich Street, by Trinity Church—but have been unable or unwilling to go into the plaza. 13 years pass. I finally return, in May 2015, with the camera as a mask. The fusion of dream and reality into a single reality.... The power of a gesture that speaks without being spoken to.”

65 likes2 stack adds
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mrozzz
Blind Spot | Teju Cole
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The first time our ancestors climbed a tall tree or came in a migrating band to the edge of a cliff they experience vertigo. Hundreds of thousands of years later we experience jet lag, which is to chronological displacement as vertigo is to spatial displacement.

Finally we figured out how to move across time faster than time moves across us. In epiphany you are neither here nor there. In jet lag you‘re both here and there at the same time.

🧐

emilyhaldi 🤯 7y
mrozzz Right? @emilyhaldi a lot of that in this book.... Cole is quite intelligent. 7y
Liz_M I still need to read Open City, but this looks lovely! 7y
mrozzz @Liz_M I need to as well! Found this at my library so decided to start here. 7y
68 likes4 comments
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mrozzz
Blind Spot | Teju Cole
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I‘ve been chosen for cuddles! My perfect Christmas!

📚+🐕+💗+🕑🕘🕦=😊

Hope everyone else is having a great Xmas Eve with people & pets you love or if not celebrating, then I hope you‘re having a relaxing Sunday 🙂🙃🙂

#ReadingThroughTheHolidays2017

Jinjer Sweet!! 7y
Tanzy13 🐶 7y
89 likes2 comments
quote
mrozzz
Blind Spot | Teju Cole
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Human beings have poor peripheral vision. We pay attention to what is most salient—we are prone to cultural biases. They vary from place to place, are notoriously stubborn, and are often unconscious. Sexism and racism are born of skewed perceptions, of overvaluing masculinity and whiteness and treating them as absolute categories, which they are not. We, all of us, are prone to these debilitating forms of blindness.

Foreword by Siri Hustvedt 🙌🏻

minkyb Sounds great! 7y
mrozzz @minkyb Yes! I really like Siri. It was a nice surprise. 7y
70 likes1 stack add2 comments
blurb
shawnmooney
Blind Spot | Teju Cole
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I have yet to read any of Teju Cole's stuff and my oh my does this his latest ever sound intriguing!

http://brittlepaper.com/2017/06/excerpt-teju-coles-book-blind-spot/