Though I assumed "A Portrait of the Artist by his Blind Daughter" would centrally feature a relationship affected by blindness, as obviously indicated by the title, I was surprised by the emphasis on audio. Often, blindness and deafness are thought of as inherently contradictory, yet, for Georgina Kleege, the lack of auditory exchange between herself and her father strikingly affected the relationship she chronicles. Kleege's father is described as being naturally concise, but one would assume that the loss of his daughter's vision would result in a change. I wonder if the absence of this change reflects an immobility in Kleege's father, or merely a commitment to not disabling her, as Kleege herself notes.

After reading the title of the piece I did not know what to expect. Even when I was halfway through the reading I kept thinking that the writer was describing her father and explaining their relationship as a build up to describing a portrait I thought she had made of him. However, the writer opted to use her writing skills instead of her drawing ones, which I found to be an amazing idea. I think that by making a written portrait of her father she was trying to make a point about how even blind or visually impaired people can appreciate and understand visual art, the same way that the reader can get a really good idea of what her father was like through her writing. She may also be trying to argue that our mind will always interfere with what we see, hear or read.

The act of vieweing artwork is subjective and fluid. When I was a child, my grandparent's dragged me and my brother to countless museums across the city. I enjoyed none of these excusions with the exception of the interactive science museum where you created life-size bubbles. Looking at painting and scuptures was just not my thing. My brain lacked the attention to focus in on any piece of art and I would always find myself bored. At age 18, I have trained myself to appreciate works of art. When I travel to museums, I spend time with pieces of art. I stand in front of paintings for minutes noticing colors, backgrounds, styles, and brushstrokes. I wonder about the artist' intentions and the significance.

The TEDx talk by Riva Lehrer indeed triggered a series of thoughts in me. In my opinion, the empathy that we are all born with as human beings is essential to the creation and appreciation of arts. However, as viewers, when we encounter situations where our empathy can’t work so well (such as in the occasion of disabilities because not many of us have truly experienced it), we would automatically search for stereotypes in our mind to fulfill the blank space. Just as Riva said, we would always picture people with disabilities as unhappy and sad but it is not always the case.

I found the topic that Riva spoke about is very true to the world today. So often our society, and even I in the past a couple of times, see a disability as a negative and feel bad for the subject, whether it be a portrait or in real life. I believe that there is such a set image as to what beautiful and "perfect" is that anything that strays from it is seen negatively even though it shouldn't in all cases. Referring back to the reading from Tuesday, a portrait serves the purpose of "portraying something" and shows characteristics of one's identities. And this subject should not be perfect. A portrait tells a story about the subject and as a viewer we have the ability to interpret that story in any form that we wish.

As I looked through all the selected pieces I found some to be more interesting than others. It was much easier to understand the meaning of the work when it came as part of a collection. For instance, Nina Berman and Laura Swansons works resonated much more clearly with me than did the single piece by Riva Lehrer. However, the collectinos by Doug Auld and Beverly McIver did not exactly pique my interest either. Doug Auld's work simply did not speak to me because I do not understand it. The title "State of Grace" does not seem to exactly reflect the paintings. In fact several of the subjects appear to be in some sort of discomfort. I can understand however that the way they are portrayed is quite graceful.

After watching the talk "Valuable Bodies" by Riva Lehrer and browsing through her artworks, I can feel that her portraits, especially her self-portraits, conceals a strong voice inside every of them, saying that disability does not means the person need any sympathy from anyone, for they are like any other people, just a little different. Most artworks are basically a part of the artist's life and soul, thus what is shown on each of them signifies the value of those who create them. In this case, Lehrer emphasizes on breaking the traditions of portraiture, by working on subjects that do not usually appear on most artwork.

Riva discusses the relationship between the artist and the subject of the portrait in her Ted Talk. She explains how artists tend to be motivated by their commission and therefore depict their subjects as figures of perfection. The subjects of portraits often appears strong, capable, and able bodied and rarely appear sad and weak. Riva describes how the artists tend to leave out the “messiness of life”, instead painting an unrealistic representation of life. Furthermore, Riva discusses how the viewer of the portraits should be able to imagine themselves as the subject of the portrait. This is where portraits of people with disability breaks the mold of conventional portraiture.

When I looked at the thumbnails for “Anti-Self Portraits”, I did not immediately realize why Laura Swanson’s work was included in the suggested viewing for this assignment. Her use of untraditional portrait styles (such as having the body and/or face covered or obscured) and her subtlety in the inclusion of any subject (many of the pieces are not immediately obvious in their connection to a person or body) makes her work quite unlike that of the other artists we had discussed in class. In this collection and in “Hope, NY”, Swanson illustrates herself through her relationships with and interactions to objects, which are often – though not always – impacted by her short stature.