Loss of Sight Focuses His Artistic Vision

It wasn’t until he went blind that Michael Richard found his photographic vision.

That’s how the Studio City photographer describes what happened after he lost virtually all his sight three years ago.

Surgery to remove a tumor behind one of his eyes left him able to see only gauzy, indistinct shapes. Richard, 57, felt that his days as a scenic and documentary photographer were over.

“I figured photography was out of the picture. I couldn’t see to focus. So how could I shoot photos?” he reasoned.

But a visit to the Braille Institute in Los Angeles to learn to use his white cane unexpectedly led to his becoming an acclaimed abstract-art photographer.

Richard was startled to find that the Vermont Avenue agency offered a photography class. On a whim, he signed up.

“You sure don’t think of photography when you think of the Braille Institute,” he said. “I was thinking that it would probably be a lecture course, something covering the history of photography.”

Richard, whose primary occupation is as a musician, had specialized in nature photography before surgery in early 2002 to remove a malignant tumor left him sightless in his right eye. Born with a condition called acute amblyopia that made his left eye basically nonfunctional, he suddenly found himself unable to see anything distinctly.

For a visual artist, it was devastating.

Richard could only make out shapes with his left eye. Objects in front of him were ethereal and diffused, as if viewed through glass smeared with petroleum jelly.

“It’s like the world is a very Impressionistic painting,” he said. “Only the broadest of lines are shown -- it’s like the most extreme soft-focus photo that you can imagine.”

So he wasn’t expecting much when he enrolled in the photo class taught by former Life magazine photographer Jack Birns.

“I was anticipating that this was going to be a joke,” Richard said. “How can the blind take pictures?”

Birns was quick to build confidence among his 10 students. They could use automatic-focus cameras and commercial film processing, he promised. They would find plenty of pleasure in pointing and shooting.

Richard remembers being pleased when he got his first roll of film back. There were lines and forms that even he could make out.

Sighted viewers of his pictures praised their composition. He’d not lost his feel for photography, they assured him.

Richard’s wife, graphic artist Patrice Hughes, began driving him around Los Angeles to potential photo sites. From the start, he decided to leave his white cane at home when carrying his camera.

He had learned through a self-defense class at the Braille Institute that blind people are often targeted by thieves, Richard said.

“You can’t run from anybody trying to rob you,” he said. “You can’t chase anybody, either.”

Richard carries a magnifying glass to help him adjust the settings on his Nikon 35-mm camera. A magnified monocular helps him find distant subjects to photograph. He often paces off the distance between them and his camera in order to set the proper focus.

He develops black-and-white film himself and prints his own 20-by-24-inch enlargements at a Burbank photo lab that is open to the public.

“I have to use both my monocular and my magnifier just to see if the negative is in the enlarger’s carrier. I find a sharp edge in the picture and get in real close on the easel with my magnifier to focus the enlarger. Sighted people who use the lab have learned not to walk too close to me in the darkroom,” he said.

His blow-up prints depicting such things as shadows from a window falling across a tile floor, balconies marching in rows across the side of a skyscraper and rain puddles on pavement show Richard’s skills at powerful abstract composition.

During the last two years, his photographs have been shown in nearly a dozen exhibitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Philadelphia.

“He’s learned to adapt to his loss,” said Christine Leahey, director of the Santa Monica-based “The View From Here” organization, which showcases art of the visually impaired. She estimates that 100 such photographers are working in the state.

It was Richard and his photographs that motivated her to start the nonprofit group, Leahey said.

“Michael not only has a beautiful, mature portfolio but he has a sensitivity to the issue of disability,” she said. “He looks at lighting and composition in a much different way than before. The camera has allowed him to reassert his independence.”

Altadena art director Les Sechler purchased one of Richard’s photographs after seeing it in an exhibition. “I was astounded, blown away,” by his pictures, Sechler said.

For his part, Richard acknowledges that his work is “inspired and perhaps even enhanced by my visual disability.”

Several of his images will be on display beginning Jan. 26 at the UC Berkeley Art Museum. His photographs are also scheduled to be included in exhibitions later this year in Los Angeles and Santa Monica.

“To think that a visual impairment could stimulate a photographic career,” he said.

“I’m letting the camera be my eyes.”