The Unseen Eye

"The Unseen Eye" presents a wonderfully idiosyncratic and compelling collection of photographs assembled around a particular theme: in each image, the gaze of the subject is averted, the face obscured or the eyes firmly closed. The pictures present a catalog of anti-portraiture, characterized at first glance by what its subjects conceal, not by what the camera reveals. Amassed over the course of 30 years by New York collector W.M. Hunt, the collection includes works by masters such as Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Imogen Cunningham, William Klein, Robert Mapplethorpe and Robert Frank, as well as works by lesser-known artists and vernacular images. Hunt's instinctive pursuit of striking images has resulted in a collection that manages to evoke a picture of humanity from birth to death, with all the associated nuances of memory, wit, eroticism, fear, grief and horror. More than 350 intensely evocative and frequently surreal images are brilliantly sequenced in this volume; the cumulative effect is unnerving and riveting. Most critically, the images are drawn together by the narrative of the collector himself, in a highly personal monologue that weaves throughout the book, in which Hunt offers his own perceptive responses to the images he has gathered over many years. The result is a series of surprising epiphanies about how and why one collects.