On the March-issued Image Issues LP, Brittany Davis explores the reality of navigating a visual world while blind. Sitting down with SPIN at SXSW, the singer-songwriter explains the album’s concept and how blind people can participate in visual art.
“Image Issues, as a title, refers to not only my body dysmorphic type of view of myself,” Davis says. “It’s really difficult for me, as a person who’s never had vision, to envision visual concepts—such as what a woman is supposed to look like, how she’s supposed to present herself each day, why people may look at me different because of my different appearance. Maybe I have a different air about me; I really can’t put my finger on it, but sometimes I just feel alien. I wanted to talk about how it feels to be a non-seeing person, kind of forced and inundated by visual concepts constantly, without any reference to the past, present, or future of visual art.”
Davis recalls struggling with relating to people visually—but also, through the making of Image Issues, being able to share a unique perspective.
“I needed to find a way, through not only the title, but through the actual application of the sounds, to get you to hear what I cannot see,” Davis says. “Image Issues refers to the depths of those walls and some of the ambiguity that comes with just not knowing where you fit visually in a world that you’re born without the very sense that drives all consumerism today.”
