STATEMENT: This work is a tribute to my mother. As a visual artist, I am dependent on sight for my work. When I was 18, she was diagnosed as being legally blind, and her condition worsened over time. According to her descriptions, she could see shapes and bright colors, but nothing in focus, no details. Yet she lived a full life, alone in her own home and fully participating in her community till the last few weeks of her life.

For this series, I purposely used my camera in a manner to replicate the experience of blurred, out of focus sight.

When I began this project during in mid-August 2013, my mother was alive. I had not told my mother about this project as I wanted to surprise her when it was further along. On March 30, 2014, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She passed five weeks later. As events unfolded, I never got to do so. I will never know for certain if this was her personal experience or not. However, people who have been or are legally blind tell me this work replicates their vision.

My hope is that this work will touch others who know or are themselves legally blind, and that is will increase awareness amongst others that people who are legally blind still have sight and can live full lives despite this condition.

PROCESS: When I work on imagery for the Legally Blind series, I modify my camera to make it less accurate. I shoot through semi-translucent materials that blur what the lens will capture.

MATERIALS: This work is fabricated for me by a provider located in Germany. Each work is an original photograph, wet laser-printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, cut to full bleed then sandwiched between .8 inch acrylic glass and Dibond. Hanging rails are fastened on the verso. The work is slimline framed flush to the edges in silver-colored metal. Alternatively, it can be requested as a print on paper.

DIMENSIONS: Each work is available in two sizes, large: 45”h x 30”w; small: 36”h x 24”w. Depth is 1” for all sizes.

EDITION: each work is an EV edition of 5 total, 2 large and 3 small, with one artist proof of each image. Work is signed on the verso.

EXHIBITIONS: Eights works from this series have been exhibited during 2018 in Diana Nicholette Jeon: Altered Visions at the Honolulu Museum of Art, installation views can be seen here.

ACQUIRE: Works are priced on a tiered structure based upon image sales for each work in the edition. Investment begins at $1000 for the smaller size as a print on paper, and $1500 for the larger size as a print on paper. Acrylic Prints begin at $1500 for the smaller size and $1950 for the larger size.

“Diana Nicholette Jeon’s digital photographic series featuring colorful, out-of-focus images is an attempt to visualize what the Hawai‘i shoreline might have looked like to her late mother, who was legally blind. These rough, dreamlike images subtlety capture the imperfection and ambiguous nature of our visual memories.”
–Katherine Love, Assistant Curator Contemporary Art, Honolulu Museum of Art