John Dugdale lost his sight while gaining artistic vision. The world-renowned photographer first proved his talent shooting for Ralph Lauren, Bergdorf Goodman and Martha Stewart.
His $30,000-a-week salary ended abruptly in 1993 when an HIV-related stroke paralyzed him for months and CMB retinitis robbed him of all but a sliver of fiery sight in the bottom portion of one eye.
“Most people think blindness is dark, but it looks like flashes of fireworks or snow on the TV through a scrim of orange, blue and violet,” Dugdale explained. “It never seemed wrong to me to lose my sight, which sounds idealistic and fruity. It got me past the distraction of commercial money and to do what I went to art school for.”
Dugdale will speak to Baltimore audiences today about his career and exhibit, “Transit of Venus,” on view at Maryland Institute College of Art.
From his hospital bed in 1993, Dugdale prepared what became a sell-out exhibition ? while relearning how to walk.
“Gallerists pushed me to finish because they thought I was going to die or go completely blind,” he said. “I was so out of step with [modern] photography, but I followed my heart and put up mythological pictures.”
“Four hundred people came,” he continued. “I was in the center of this centrifugal force of love. It was the height of the AIDS crisis, people checked themselves out of the hospital to come in their gowns.”
Sir Elton John, Maurice Sendak, the Royal Photographic Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and numerous other collectors own Dugdale?s works, primarily ethereal still-lifes, nudes and portraits.
Dugdale?s “extremely arcane and simple” cameras, the size of Volkswagens, are working artifacts from 1905 and 1880, he said.
“When [Dugdale] began losing his eyesight, he turned to 19th-century techniques that would free him up from the dark room,” said Jack Wilgus, MICA?s chair of photography for 40 years. “He?s very different than most people working today. His work is refreshing.”
Of his visit to MICA, Dugdale said, “I adore speaking to students. … My message is to embrace the worst thing that can happen to you and think of what to do with it.”
IF YOU GO
Transit of Venus:
Photographs from 1993?2003
» Venue: Brown Center?s Rosenberg Gallery; Maryland Institute College of Art; 1301 Mount Royal Ave., Baltimore
» When: Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Through Oct. 28
» Info: 410-225-2300
