Hall’s work has been published in textbooks, magazines including National Geographic, as well as shown in juried art exhibitions internationally including: the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian, UCR/California Museum of Photography, Riverside, CA, Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City, The Kennedy Center, Washington D.C., Photo San Francisco, Photo L.A., Insights, San Francisco, and the San Diego Natural History Museum. The Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division recently acquired three photographs from Hall’s Face to Face with Autism series for their permanent collection.  Bruce was recently featured in a short documentary, Dark Light: The Art of Blind Photographers.  Produced by Corinne Marrinan and directed by Neil Leifer, the film will air on HBO2 November 17, 2010.  

Bruce lives in Irvine, CA with his wife and three children.  He left teaching in 2003, and devotes his time to advocating for autism awareness, and issues related to the blind.  He continues to study photography, collaborating with a small group of friends and artists to pursue future projects.  Current projects include work with the Blind Photographers Guild, Sacramento, CA, continued study of the underwater landscape of southern California, and collaborating with his wife on a long term project dealing with his twin sons profound autism.  B.H.

***** 

Bruce Hall's night sky was devoid of stars, a vast sheet of darkness. Hall was born with a word salad of eye conditions: nystagmus, myopia, astigmatism, amblyopia, macular degeneration and exotropia.  "I grew up hearing about stars, but I'd never seen them. When I was nine or ten, a neighbor kid down the street let me look through his telescope. We pointed it at the North Star. It was like an opening into another world." Hall saw not just stars, but possibilities. The childhood glimpse became a turning point, directing Hall into a lifelong engagement with seeing devices: cameras, lenses, magnifiers, telescopes, computer screens. 

Since then, Bruce Hall has constructed his world from photographs. When he looks into your eyes, it'll be on his forty-inch Sony high definition monitor. Most photographers see in order to photograph. Bruce Hall photographs in order to see. 

Hall is one of four artists in the exhibition who, while legally blind, retain some limited, highly attenuated sight. "I think all photographers take pictures in order to see, but for me it's a necessity. I can't see without optical devices, cameras. Therefore, it's become an obsession. It's beyond being in love with cameras; I need cameras." Susan Sontag called photographs objects "that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern." By this logic, Hall leads a hypermodern life, employing an ever-present camera to build his visual world one photograph at a time. 

Hall calls his device-enabled interface with the world "intensified seeing." The devices are extensions, amplifications of his body. "Without cameras, my life would be bleak. With cameras, I can see." The result is a strange form of double vision. "I always see things twice. First, I see an impression. I take what I think I see, later I can see what I saw. I have certain aims, guesses, impressions, but the photographs are always a surprise."  

by Douglas McCulloh, Curator, sight unseen, International Photography by Blind Artists.  UCR California Museum of Photography.  www.cmp.ucr.edu/exhibitions/sightunseen/