The Art of Seeing

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The Art of Seeing

One of our discoveries on our trip to Oslo, Norway was the Edvard Munch Museum, which I wrote about last week. Right by the entrance, there were three copies of Munch’s paintings (which looked very real to me) screwed into the wall. This by itself was very unusual, but then I read the description of what it was – “Touch the Art of Edvard Munch.” A new printing technology developed by Canon, along with the Munch Museum and the Norwegian Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted made it possible for people to have a sensual experience of art. The images are printed in a way that it can be touched; allowing people to sense the image rather than seeing it with the eyes.

I do not know what it really means, but this reminds me a story of when a group of blind people were asked to describe an elephant by touching different parts of the animal’s body. To paraphrase the Russian adage, “The walker cannot comprehend the rider” – the seeing person cannot comprehend what the blind sense. Nevertheless, the new technological development breaks the boundaries of our perceptions and possibilities. Meanwhile, I personally had my own limitation. To paraphrase another saying, “A shoemaker without shoes”, for a short time I became a photographer without a camera. As I wrote a few weeks, my cellphone died, and then on the second day in Oslo after visiting the Munch Museum, so did both of my two photo cameras. For my cameras, one solution was to simply go back to the hotel and charge the batteries, and to have a spare battery with me. I realized however, what was left to use what many of us take for granted – my eyes. When I walk with a camera, my reaction is very fast, I notice something interesting and immediately click to take a photo. Now I had the time to see.

We visited a local tourist attraction – the Oslo Opera house, which is the home of The Norwegian National Opera and Ballet. The building has a slanted roof, which people can climb up onto. I saw a lot of people clustered in groups, a boy riding a bike while texting, another one riding uphill, children eating colorful cotton candy, a woman with bright green reflective glasses in a white frame holding a glass of wine, a sailing boat with balloons attached to the mast, three men with yellow turbans, reflections on the building and the water, and much more. After a while of observing, the photographer in me found an immediate solution – to borrow my wife’s camera; her cellphone was still working, so she also had the option to use it to take photos.

P.S. Do we take our ability to see art for granted? After all, modern technology still cannot help blind people to see the beauty in our world; the beauty in everyday encounters with other people and our surroundings. These four images and this story is the last one from our trip to Norway.

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Cheers,

Manny<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> Signature