whogivesabook's review against another edition
3.0
Teju Cole's book is an interesting one. It has this detached air to it. This strange sense of presence and absence.
However, it was things missing that cost this one a decent rating.
I wanted more of a concrete tone and narrative. It was all over the place. And that was charming, to an extent. But I think it lacked enough of a cohesive style to endear it to me. Too many pages dropped like ephemera. I needed more of the pages that really hit the heart. And many did. Just not enough of them.
However, it was things missing that cost this one a decent rating.
I wanted more of a concrete tone and narrative. It was all over the place. And that was charming, to an extent. But I think it lacked enough of a cohesive style to endear it to me. Too many pages dropped like ephemera. I needed more of the pages that really hit the heart. And many did. Just not enough of them.
kiramke's review against another edition
4.0
I enjoyed these essays and photos, what they spoke around and what they elided. I find Cole so interesting in our intersections and the moments he surprises me by wandering a different way; I always learn something, or at least I always think something.
a___broad's review against another edition
5.0
Truly remarkable. It is a genre-bending masterpiece that everyone should experience.
thebroadsheets's review against another edition
5.0
Truly remarkable. It is a genre-bending masterpiece that everyone should experience.
rbrtsorrell's review against another edition
4.0
Teju Cole's Blind Spot is an uncommon book: a combination of writing and photography that try to meet each other on equal footing. This is rare because, while many people think of themselves as photographers and writers, few people are good enough at both to combine the two without some sort of imbalance. The usual compromise is to include an introduction or interlude in a photobook, or to include a series of photos before or after a text. Blind Spot is neither a photobook nor an extended essay. In its 300-odd pages there are enough images, series, and ideas to fill multiple photobooks, and while the essays in this book dance around recurring themes (seeing and lightness/darkness, Christ and stories from the New Testament, Greek and Roman Myth, interaction between the senses, and of course, photography) they do not by themselves add up to a complete work. The photographs (which often use symbols, mirrors, paintings, and signs as well as obstructions and distortions of scale and distance) also rely on the text and in certain ways the two prop each other up. But the real through-line that holds the work together is simply Teju Cole, and this is where part of my confusion regarding Blind Spot begins. Blind Spot is a personal work. All the places (Cole features photographs taken in 6 continents), disparate images, and short texts are held together by Cole. And yet, Blind Spot is not a particularly personal book. There is much about Cole's work habits, his travels, and, somewhat annoyingly, his own interpretations of his writing (both inside Blind Spot and in his other work) and his photography. But there are few clues to who he is as a person. And while I'm not sure that more of a personal view into Teju's life would've saved Blind Spot for me, I wish that he'd spent a little less time explaining his work to me and a little bit more making me feel something. In the end I felt like Blind Spot was a good idea for five or six different photobooks, a novel, and a few essays all combined into the space of 300 glossy pages. But I wasn't sure that I "got" it.
samypants35's review against another edition
4.0
Great photographs, the text added a lot to some pictures and I didn't get why it was there for others.
failedimitator's review against another edition
4.0
Not something to read in one sitting -- even though you could. It's best to take is small bites. Sometimes, the language is beautiful. Sometimes the connections he makes are thought provoking. But always, Teju Cole is never not interesting.
zuhrsss's review against another edition
5.0
“To look is to see only a fraction of what one is looking at. Even in the most vigilant eye, there is a blind spot. What is missing?”