Blind by Paul Strand

Paul Strand. Blind. 1916. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

"This image by Paul Strand has haunted me ever since I first confronted it. It has haunted me for several reasons. The first and most obvious reason is the sign that hangs around the woman’s neck. This is a photograph of a blind beggar taken on the street in New York City. As a cultural artifact, there are a number of interesting things about it. Just above the sign that pronounces the woman to be blind is a small pin with a number on it. That is her license number for begging. At the time, in the heyday of the Progressive Era, New York City required beggars to be licensed. It was an approach to managing society’s marginalized people by controlling them. If you wanted to beg on the street, you had to be certified. It’s not clear from the image’s historical documentation whether the city or the beggar herself hung the stigmatizing placard around her neck.

It signals society’s distrust and its need to verify claims made upon its pity. It hearkens back to the myth of the Court of Miracles in 17th-century Paris, which we know best from Victor Hugo’s novel, Notre Dame de Paris. It reflects a deeply held cultural attitude about blindness and blind people that goes back much farther than that."

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