Abstracts – Jan Ekin, A Photo Book

Jan has been taking photographs for quite a while now. Although she photographs a variety of subjects she has found her voice in abstract photography. She is more interested in the colors, texture, lines, and shapes than the object she photographs. Some of her work may be minimalist rather than abstract but those she took at the junkyard define what she likes the most. The old International Harvester there was her favorite with many shades of faded colors. Alas, the junkyard is no longer allowing photographers to enter to take photographs, and Roland the manager is no longer there.

Most of our friends know that Jan is legally blind and cannot drive. She has not driven for about 20 years because her doctors found the amount of peripheral vision loss would pose a danger to herself and others. A camera gives her a vision in different ways. The LCD viewfinder on the back of the camera presents a condensed angle that she can grasp all at once unlike her actual vision with a restricted visual field angle. I believe the attraction to abstraction may also be tied to that limitation which probably makes recognizing and photographing full objects more challenging.

Recently, she selected a group of photographs she liked and I put it in a book form for her. In it, we also included the results of her visual field tests to give the viewers a rough idea of what little she can see when she looks at something. The proof copy came out to our liking with only a small typo I had to fix. Now, we are waiting for a bunch we ordered from MagCloud.

The first few copies will go to her doctors who have been taking care of her eyes for many years and to the Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired, a division of the RI Office of Rehabilitation Services, that helped her by providing various kinds of support. More copies are available from MagCloud.

With this article, we share a preview of this effort of which we are both very proud. They look even better in print!