Teju Cole is a brilliant writer, and these lyrical essays on the mysteries of the ordinary is no exception. I loved this book and recommend it highly.

I adore Teju Cole's essays. In the case of this book, I admit to flipping through the images without reading all the text. I just wasn't in the mood. It is a striking book and I look forward to revisiting when I have the time to read thoroughly.

This is a genre-less book done well, as you'd expect from Cole. The photos themselves are occasionally very obscure (as in, I found myself wondering why one would take this photo from this angle) and isolated from the text (to my eyes) but Cole allows his text to meander and connect across the book. As one could expect from the title, blindness and what we see are chief preoccupations (fueled by an eye surgery) and it felt quite intimate. My surprise was the proliferation of Christian references but since the paragraphs are short, it's not like it's overwhelming.

As with any art, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beyond doing a personal analysis of Cole's work, I liked that the artist supplied descriptions of the work. These were pieces of art themselves. Blind Spot was like reading a poetry book with pictures.

I've been following Teju Cole's writing ever since I read "Every Day is for the Thief" several years ago. This book does not disappoint, with its very unique and beautiful book of photographs and writings by the talented Cole. Took me a while to read because I kept highlighting and saving the passages and staring in awe at the photographs. Love this book!

Teju Cole is a true master at mixing media and creating something that is far more than the sum of its parts. His mind, his voice, and his eye are all razor-sharp and unflinching in their honesty and their humanity.

Teju Cole, a Nigerian-American novelist and New York Times photography columnist, has published four books. Whether a short novel of Sebaldesque wanderings in the Big Apple (“Open City”), or a collection of essays on literature, art and travel (“Known and Strange Things”), his works all share a dedication to seeing clearly.

All the more ironic, then, that Mr. Cole has had major vision problems — starting in 2011, when he temporarily went blind in one eye due to papillophlebitis: a perforated retina whose holes were cauterized by a laser. The experience only amplified what he refers to in the postscript as a “long-term concern with the limits of vision.”

Of course, as Siri Hustvedt points out in a perceptive foreword, it’s not only the vision-impaired who fail to see what’s in front of them; we all have a blind spot in our peripheral vision that the brain compensates for. Extending the metaphor, Ms. Hustvedt suggests that the connections in “Blind Spot” may go unnoticed unless the reader commits to looking deeper.

The book is composed of about 160 one- and two-page spreads in which images are matched with commentary — sometimes as little as one or two lines; other times more of a mini-essay in multiple paragraphs. Each piece is headed with its location, with Lagos, Berlin, Brooklyn and various towns in Switzerland showing up frequently.

The first image, “Tivoli,” is a lesson in how to read the rest. It seems like an ordinary suburban scene: shadows of trees fall across a road lined by budding shrubs, with a motor home behind. But the lyrical description evokes the melancholy turn of seasons — “at times in spring, even the emotional granaries are depleted” — and likens the branches to neurons.

That philosophical approach elevates a few slightly undistinguished photographs. The recurring imagery of shrouds — car covers, scaffolding and curtains — acquires religious significance. In “Wannsee” a rip in a plastic sheet stands for the hole in Jesus’ side, while a man asleep outside a Lagos church brings to mind the deposition of the body of Christ.

Several of these images are in conversation with earlier works of art, whether sacred or secular. For example, in Tripoli a caged bird is a reminder of Fabritius’ “The Goldfinch.” Yet the camera also captures the art in everyday scenes: globes for sale in a Zurich shop window, the backs of pedestrians’ heads, or Gucci purses arrayed on a Venice sidewalk.

“Photography is good at showing neither political detail nor political sweep,” Mr. Cole insists; even when his travels take him to historically charged locations such as Beirut, Ubud (Indonesia) and Selma, he chooses to feature a tree, car or telephone pole and use the text to ponder the place’s significance rather than strain to find an image freighted with meaning.

It is, at times, difficult to spot the relevance of certain photographs that cannot stand alone without captions. Others, though, are striking enough to require no clarifying prose, with tricks of scale or tricks of the light, reflections, shadows and layers providing visual interest.

However, there are also fascinating stories hinted at here, such as a neck tattoo spotted in a Zurich tram. Afterward Mr. Cole looks up the name and date branded onto the woman’s flesh and discovers a tribute to a car crash victim from Phoenix, Ariz., in 2007; the tattoo bearer is presumably one of the two survivors.

This serves as a prime example of memory taking on visual permanence, which is precisely the aim of this hybrid text — no mere collection of tourist snaps, but a poetic reflection on the confines of vision and knowledge.

This is a unique book filled with unusual photographs that are paired with poetic essays. Often the essays seem to have nothing to do with the pictures but that doesn't detract from their impact. Perhaps a picture sparked a memory for the author and that's what he put into words that accompany the photo. It all comes together in a thought-provoking and beautiful book.

Hardcover, 352 pages Expected publication: June 13th 2017 by Random House ISBN13: 9780399591075

This book of photographs paired with short essays is due out in the next two weeks. I want to give you ample time to order one for delivery on publication. Teju Cole’s art is exceptional at the same time it is accessible. In my experience, the confluence of these two things happens only rarely, which is how Cole has come to occupy an exalted place in my pantheon of artists. If I say his photography can stop us in our tracks, it says nothing of his writing, which always adds something to my understanding. Today I discovered his website has soundtracks which open doors. And there it is, his specialness: Cole’s observations enlarge our conversation.

This may be the most excellent travel book I have read in recent years, the result of years of near-constant travel by the author. Scrolling through the Table of Contents is a tease, each destination intriguing, irresistible, stoking our curiosity. Each entry is accompanied by a photograph, or is it the other way around?
“I want to make the kinds of pictures editors of the travel section will dislike or find unusable. I want to see the things the people who live there see, or at least what they would see after all the performance of tourism has been stripped away.”
Yes, this is my favored way of travel, for “the shock of familiarity, the impossibility of exact repetition.” It is the reason most photographs of locales seemed unable to capture even a piece of my experience. But Cole manages it. In the entry for “Palm Beach,” his picture is of a construction site, a pile of substratum—in this case, sand—piled high before an elaborate pinkish villa. His written entry is one of his shortest, only three sentences, one of them the Latin phrase Et in Arcadia ego, washing the scene with knowledge of what we are viewing, and what is to come.

Cole calls this work a lyric essay, a “singing line” connecting the places. There is some of that. What connects all these places for me are Cole’s eyes…and his teacherly quality of showing us what he is thinking. It is remarkable, and totally engrossing.
“Human experience varies greatly in its externals, but on the emotional and psychological level, we have a great deal of similarity with one another.”
Yes, this insight, so obvious written down, is something I have been struggling with for such a long time, going back and forth over the idea that we are the same, we are different. Cole tells us that this book stands alone, or can be seen as fourth in a quartet addressing his “concern with the limits of vision.” I want to sink into that thought, in the context of what he has given us, because outside the frame of a photograph, outside of our observation, outside of us, is everything else.

My favorite among the essays, if we can call them such, filled as much with what Cole did not say as with what he did, is the piece called “Black River.” Cole evokes the open sea, Derek Walcott, crocodiles, and white egrets. A tropical coastal swamp filled with crocodiles also had white egrets decorating the bushy green of overhanging mangroves, the large white splashes almost equidistant from one another, the closest they can be for maximum happiness, I like to think, t hough it could also be minimum happiness, I guess. Any closer and there will be discord, like the rest of us live.

The arrival in bookstores of a book by Teju Cole is an event. His pictures makes us look, and his words are like the egrets, spaced for maximum pleasure. Whether or not you read this as a series or alone, make sure you pick it up, just to gaze. You need have no agenda. His magic does not make much of itself. He takes us along for the ride. Bravo!

Such an interesting concept for a book! Not my typical read but I was intrigued by the author and found it enjoyable. Some stunning photographs accompanied by insightful commentary!

I was not very impressed with the photography for the most part. The information accompanying the photographs was interesting and thought provoking but I failed to see the hype over this book. I am always appreciative for the opportunity to read for a fair unbiased review.