Bill Hunt’s Unseen Eye

3 minute read

W.M.—called Bill by friends—Hunt’s life has revolved around photographs. As a collector, curator and consultant, Hunt uses his photographic eye daily, so it might seem surprising that obscured vision is the theme of his new book, out this month from Aperture. The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious, includes 370 images from Hunt’s personal trove, which he has been collecting for nearly four decades. While the book features pictures by famous artists such as Richard Avedon and Robert Mapplethorpe alongside press prints and snaphots that Hunt picked up at flea markets and art fairs, each image in the collection shows a subject whose gaze has been turned away. Sometimes the eyes are covered completely.

“I looked for and found a photograph at an auction house 40 years ago that had a veiled, romantic presence, and it was an intense and unexpected experience,” Hunt says. “So I looked for another one. And then I found a couple more, and I thought, ‘What an odd thing to be doing.'”

Odd at first, perhaps, but it wasn’t long before Hunt’s home was filled with photographs in which the subject’s eye was somehow unseen. The collector, though, insists that he always “sees” the pictures. “The images run through my mind like a Rolodex,” Hunt says. “I don’t have to take them out physically to see them. They play on this strange lightbox in my head.”

The book’s publication coincides with an accompanying exhibition of nearly 550 photos called “The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection,” which will be on view at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, in Rochester, New York, through Feb. 19. For the exhibition, the museum has taken a selection of the vernacular photos on view and made hundreds of copies on photo paper with serrated edges so that visitors can handle them and take a memento home from the show. “I really like the idea that people can touch pictures and hold them in their hands and take them away,” Hunt says. “I subscribe to the notion of astonishing people—that whatever their conceptions of photographs might be, this exhibition really raises the bar on that.”

Bill Hunt is based in New York and co-founded Hasted Hunt gallery in 2005. The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious is available from Aperture Books. The accompanying exhibition, The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection is on view at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film through Feb. 19.

Veiled Woman, by Imogen Cunningham "This is the very first picture I ever acquired. It was always known to me as The Dream, which I think is a wonderful title. It's romantic, it's mysterious and very enigmatic." Caption commentary throughout this slideshow is provided by Bill Hunt.Courtesy Imogen Cunningham Trust/ Aperture Foudation
Untitled, by Adam Fuss, 1999. "A photograph that just bursts with life, vitality. It's this vibrant yellow, and I think it's one of the best photograms in this series. Fuss did a bunch of baby pictures—he found them over the years—but this is the most thrilling one I've ever encountered."Courtesy Cheim & Read, New York/ Aperture Foundation
Wonder Bread, Dorchester, Massachusetts, by Eugene Richards, 1975/1997. "A great street picture that has some political overtones. It speaks of youth and the potential of life—I love the way his arms are criss-crossed in this funny little matrix. This is a picture full of wonder, and at the same time, dread of what the future is."Courtesy of the artist/ Aperture Foundation
Nancy Wells, Danville, Virginia (Young Girl Holding Eggs), by Emmet Gowin, 1969. "I love the notion that she's in this contorted pose that has a kind of bliss to it that I respond to."Courtesy Pace MacGill Gallery, New York/ Aperture Foundation
Hooded Witness, by unknown photographer. "This is a great, goofy picture. The collection has high and low elements, and this is a great example of a news image I know nothing about, but in the context of this collection, it's peculiar. I love the idea that someone's actually testifying at some mafia trial, and it seems like a throwback to some strange era."Courtesy Aperture Foundation
Untitled, from ‘Domestic Stages,’ by Carrie Levy, 2004. "This is the cover of the book. There's a great riddle at the heart of this—why is the boy bent over at the couch? It looks like me, and I think that so many of these photographs remind me of me, and that's an element in this collection that's always been the strange thread of continuity."Courtesy of the artist and Aperture Foundation
Terrorist Attack (The Falling Man), by Richard Drew, September 11, 2011. "Terribly powerful. An image that I would never show in my house but it's an important item in the collection—a perfect photograph, chilling in the way it's been seen by the photographer."AP/Wide World Photos
Guest, 25,000 solar images 3:13 pm, Christopher Bucklow, November 19, 1993. "So many images in this collection are about transcendence, and this one particularly with the silhouette with a thousand points of light."Courtesy of Danziger Gallery/ Aperture Foundation
I/V - Case Stories, by Henrik Brahe, 2000."A unique piece because it's been painted on and you can read it however you want. It changes with each viewing. Sometimes he's terrified, sometimes he's just taking a shower with his mouth open. You're able to react to it however you want."Courtesy Aperture Foundation
Olympics (Munich, Germany), by Kurt Strumpf, September 5, 1972. "It speaks for itself. It's an iconic moment that people of a certain age [recognize]. Even young people have seen this, and it has a historic resonance. It offers many responses."Courtesy Associated Press/ Aperture Foundation
New York, by Helen Levitt, 1940. "I love it. Sometimes the images have a really graphic handsomeness that seems to be a representation about the person, when you don't have a lot of information about them."Courtesy the Estate of Helen Levitt/ Aperture Foundation
When Being Expressed this Package Contains One or More Human Eyes, by unknown photographer. "The idea that is a still life that says contains "Human Eyes" for a collection based on eyes not being seen—that is kind of genius. It's a terribly strange and funny picture to me."Courtesy Aperture Foundation
Kurlash, by unknown photographer. "Another goofy image used for advertising. It's a funny picture—the length that women go to make themselves attractive."Courtesy Aperture Foundation
NASA Wives at Gemini 3 Launch, by unknown photographer, March 23, 1965. "These [this and the following image] are, for all intents and purposes, generic news pictures. But in the context of this collection, they take on a much more epic quality—what is the moment being distilled in these images?"Courtesy Aperture Foundation
Duck and Cover, St Petersburg, Florida, by unknown photographer, 1960s"These [this and the previous image] are, for all intents and purposes, generic news pictures. But in the context of this collection, they take on a much more epic quality—what is the moment being distilled in these images?"Courtesy Aperture Foundation
Untitled No., by Cindy Sherman, 1982. "A wonderful image by Cindy Sherman but relatively unknown. One of the things that's so surprising about it is [how] out of disguise she seems to be."Courtesy of the Artist and Metro Pictures
Shahima, from the series 'Modest: Women in the Middle East', by Alexandra Boulat, 2004. "A great photojournalist who died untimely in her 40s. This is a woman in Afghanistan who was burned. I love the way the kind of circle of fabric goes up the photo so graphically. It is also a horrible moment on the brink of death, but it has a transcendence to it."Courtesy of the artist’s estate/ Aperture Foundation
The House of the Past, by Clarence John Laughlin, 1947. "It's about history. It's about time. It's about presence."Courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection/ Aperture Foundation
Cirque de Moscow, by Paul de Cordon. "This is the only animal in the collection, and it's got to be one of the most difficult day jobs someone can have—I think it speaks to larger issues." Courtesy Aperture Foundation

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