Oliver Sacks, “The Mind’s Eye: What the blind see,” The New Yorker (2003)

"...to find a new way of living, of ordering one's world, when the old way has been destroyed."

"Thus he speaks of how the sound of rain, never before accorded much attention, can now delineate a whole landscape for him..."

Georgina Kleege, “Blindness and Visual Culture: An Eyewitness Account,” Journal of Visual Culture
Vol 4 (2) (2005), 179-190.

"One gained the ability to perceive color. Another developed a sort of telepathic vision, allowing him to form images of places at great distances. Mary's sensor gave her a literal hindsight..."

Georgina Kleege, “Molyneaux Redux,” Invisible Culture 19 (2013)

"...she wonders, when they could just reach out and touch the objects for themselves. So perhaps that is the problem, she muses. Perhaps these people have no sense of touch"

Georgina Kleege, “Molyneaux Redux,” Invisible Culture 19 (2013)

"She's learned to get around with her sight, though her movements are halting and uncertain. She often feels dizzy, so if the researchers are not looking, she closes her eyes."

H.G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind” (1904)

"'Yes, see,' said Nunez, turning towards him, and stumbled against Pedro's pail.
'His senses are still imperfect,' said the third blind man.
'He stumbles, and talks unmeaning words. Lead him by hand.'"

Claudia Rankine, excerpt from Citizen (2014) "After considering Butler's remarks, you begin to understand yourself as rendered hypervisible in the face of such language acts."

Claudia Rankine, excerpt from Citizen (2014) "She says sometimes she can hear her own voice silently to whomever - you are saying this thing and I am not going to accept it."

Claudia Rankine, excerpt from Citizen (2014) "When you arrive and announce yourself, he blurts out, I didn't know you were black!"

Ralph Ellison, excerpt from Invisible Man (1952) "...and opening the knife with my teeth - when it occurred to me that the man had not seen me, actually; that he, as far as he knew, was in the midst of a walking nightmare"

Trinh Minh-Ha, “The Image and the Void,” Journal of Visual Culture (2016), Vol 15, Issue 1, 131-140.

"Whether a work is explicitly visual or not, the claim to 'making visible' is ubiquitous. It continues apace with today's new technologies for seeing faster, all at once, and always more - even at night... "

Joan Didion, “Los Angeles Notebook" "There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air... The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument... To live with the Santa Ana is to accept...a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior."

Hans Blumenberg, “Light as Metaphor for Truth: At the Preliminary Stage of Philosophical Concept
Formation"

"...that the technology for this discovery could ultimately make possible the most violent of methods and devices...lighting is used to refer to thoughtless accentuation by artificial light

Plato, The Allegory of the Cave from The Republic, Book VII

"Wouldn't it be said of him that he'd returned from his upward journey with his eyesight ruined and that it isn't worthwhile even to try to travel upward?"

Richard Dyer, “White,” Screen 29:4 (Autumn 1988): 44–64.

"Thus it is said that there are inevitable associations of white with light and therefore safety, and black with dark and therefore danger..."

Paul LaFarge, “Colors/Black,” Cabinet Magazine 36 (2009-2010)

"...who notes that sight, unlike touch or taste, continues to operate in the absence of anything visible..."

Jared Sexton, “All Black Everything” "One sees black and black alone, or one sees everything else without it, we might even say against it. To see black at all is to see all black everything"

Shawn Michelle Smith, “Photography, Darkness, and the Underground Railroad: Dawoud Bey’s Night
Coming Tenderly, Black,” American Quarterly Vol 73 (1), 2021, 25-52.

"A lynching photograph shows a white man captured in the camera’s flash, posing at night by the naked body of an African American man hanging from a tree. Documentary images show African American men and women demonstrating and protesting racial injustice, caught in the arms of white policemen, fallen by the side of the road, wounded and bleeding."

Joseph Albers, excerpts from Interaction of Color (1963)

"If one says "Red"...and there are 50 people listening...it can be expected that there will be 50 reds...all these reds will be very different."

Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, “The Color of Subjectivity,” in Objectivity (New York: Zone Books,
2010), 273–83.

"Was the objectivity of the empirical sciences of mind compatible with the objectivity of mind?"

David Batchelor, “Chromophobia,” in Chromophobia (Reaktion Books, 2000), 21-49.

"...colour has been the object of extreme prejudice in Western culture...the prejudice has remained unchecked and passed unnoticed."

Carol Mavor, excerpt from Blue Mythologies (Duke University Press, 2012)

"...flavours are often inseparable from the artificial colours they love...ask a child what flavour they want and they will reply 'red' or 'blue.'"

Michel Foucault, “Panopticism” from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (NY: Vintage Books, 1995) (1975), 195-228.

Individuals are afraid to act out, from fear that they are being watched, and will not be validated, or will be punished, by others.

James Turrell: changing the perspective of the viewer would change how we see the sky.

Bey's work to capture the Underground Railroad built off changes in vision, to approach this piece in "black-and-white printing, and more particularly to gelatin silver prints..." to embody "a world shaped by blackness." This shift in the artist's methods were able to bring about the meaning of the work in a way that previous methods couldn't. Weens also seeks to change her photography methods to accurately capture the skintone of African Americans, which previous photographers struggled with. This same concept is further explored in the movie "Mother of George."

Trevor Paglen, “Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking at You),” The New Inquiry, 2016.

"The fact that digital images are fundamentally machine-readable regardless of a human subject has enormous implications. It allows for the automation of vision on an enormous scale and, along with it, the exercise of power on dramatically larger and smaller scales than have ever been possible."

Monty Python's 1971 piece and Steyerl's 2013 piece emphasize that we only consider ourselves to be "seen" if others notice us. We feel invisible and less perceived, although we exist with just as much permanence. This highlights the emphasis we place on seeking validation and notice from those around us.

Similar to the concept of the Panopticon, Acconci's 1969 images and Calle's 1981 image can comment on how individuals act different when they know they are being watched by others. These pieces can comment on how following a certain individual changes greatly when they know they are being followed, as opposed to not knowing, because we place strong emphasis on the views of others.

The film "All Light, Everywhere" comments on how we constantly seek to advance objective visual culture, by hyperfocusing on our views through recorded videos and images.

The 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz" introduces color into the film against a mainly black and white background. By doing this, it seeks to bring out the same emotions in all of the audience. For example, the red cheeks on Dorothy are meant to emphasize her rosiness and innocence. The use of this color against neutral backdrops allows for the audience watching this to feel the same emotions, unifying their perspectives.

The depiction of the main character in this movie (Blonde Venus) as a playboy's mistress comments on how our reliance on color and visual characteristics may cloud our judgement of situations and people. The main character in this movie is ridiculed and shamed for her job, and as a blonde girl, is used to comment on the "Blinding Blonde" trope. Often, people who encounter blondes already have preconceived notions of how they will act, showing how vision can overwhelm the rest of our senses.