The Unseen Eye - Book Review

The Unseen Eye

Photographs from the unconscious

W.M Hunt

The Unseen Eye, by W.M Hunt is an inspiration to the world of photography, portraiture in particular. The book is full of interpretive photographs and portraits by a wide range of photographers, such as, Gary Knight, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, Weegee, Martin Parr, etc.  I really enjoyed the darkness in the images which most of them portrayed and I'm sure we've all heard that ‘eyes are the windows to the soul’, this book is all about hiding these windows and shielding them from the camera.

 The preface reads,

“The eyes are all somehow obscured, veiled, hidden, blocked, averted or closed”. This is just a simple explanation to exactly what is shown in the book.

The front cover image is of a gentleman leaning solemnly against a dark wall, plain t-shirt on, glasses hanging around his neck and of course, his eyes are ever so gently closed. Within this book there are 369 illustrations, mostly black and white. The images throughout have extraordinary range from start to finish, which is what I love most. The preface tells us what is going to be within the book itself, telling the viewers that it is a series of images collected over many years with one thing in common. Some of the images are somewhat disturbing, frightening and even a little bit demonic, whereas others are simple, innocent and easy to intake.

            The strongest points of the book is how Hunt has very cleverly tied all these images together by pin pointing that one special element of hiding the eyes showing how it has been done and keeping it all fluidly relevant to each other. There were times where I just wanted to know what the photographer was feeling or thinking whilst creating that image as there wasn't a lot of explanation but this allowed me to create my own opinions which is always what the photographer should do.

           There was a lack of flow with the order of images with which photographer shot which image, it was quite hard to remember and image that you liked and who it was by so by the time you had read on a few pages and read that many more names and seen that many more images, you had forgotten which photographer did which picture that you may have liked!

Despite the lack of uniformity of the photographers, the book still has that real captivating flow to it. The book by Hunt most easily has more images than words. There is limited text and it’s straight to the point. E.g. this is the photographer, this is the title and this is the year. Simple and all you really need to know, let the image do the talking!
            All in all it was a brilliant and engaging book to view, plenty going on, lots of research to be found in this book and also a great sense of technique to be learnt from it.