EYES WIDE SHUT: A History of Photography

A trend on Instagram involves celebrities posting photographs that capture them with their eyes closed. But, of course, such photographs are nothing new. Amateur photographers, for example, have regularly captured people blinking ever since the introduction of hand-held cameras. 

However, the frequency of this particular pose on social media sites would suggest that, despite its casual appearance, the look is prescribed. These celebrities have shut their eyes deliberately, in order to facilitate just such pictures. 

What does this phenomenon mean, and how would one place this desire, this urge to be seen as unseeing, in a history of photography? In his paper, Professor Batchen will explore this question, seeking to reflect on the generative relationship between sight and blindness within the practice of photography, from 1839 to now.

Geoffrey Batchen is the Professor of History of Art at the University of Oxford. A specialist photo-historian, Batchen’s books include Negative/Positive: A History of Photography (2021); The Forms of Nameless Things (2022); and Inventing Photography: William Henry Fox Talbot in the Bodleian Library (2023). He has also curated exhibitions seen in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Iceland, and Japan. His next book will be an anthology of essays about the daguerreotype.