Dugdale, John

American 1960 - 

Born in Connecticut in 1960, John Dugdale lives and works in New York City's Greenwich Village and a nineteenth century farmhouse in upstate New York. A successful commercial photographer, Dugdale suffered an AIDS-related stroke in 1993 that rendered him blind. The work Dugdale has created since then is the result of a distinct internal vision, one that relies on remembered sight and feelings of beauty.

"The mind is the essence of your sight," Dugdale says. "It is really your mind that sees."

Dugdale's pictures are largely still lifes and portraits. Using an 8 x 10 inch camera and relying on his assistant to focus the lens, Dugdale creates cyanotype, platinum and albumen prints by removing and replacing the lens cap. "The quietude that people respond to in my pictures is, in part, because of the way the pictures are made: no flash; no harsh electric light; not even the sound of the shutter," Dugdale says.

COLLECTIONS

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama; Miami Art Museum; Berkeley Art Museum, University of California; Collection of Sir Elton John; Collection of Maurice Sendak