"I didn’t take photography seriously until I went totally blind."

At first it sounds like a metaphor or hoax, then totally ironic, and finally downright impressive. But Peter Eckert's body of photographic work transcends the obvious story of the art behind his blindness and stands independently on its own artistic merit. Eckert's inability to see the visual world ironically improves his photography; it frees him from many of the constraints facing the rest of us. For Eckert, the act of taking the photo is the art. It is an event for which he has a vision, but his vision and what is produced finally come together through conversation and discussion of his work with sighted people.

"What I get out of taking photos is the event not the picture. I do the large prints to get sighted people thinking. Talking with people in galleries builds a bridge between my mind’s eye and their vision of my work."

"Women talk about a glass ceiling. Blind folks face a glass front door. We can look into the workplace but aren’t allowed to enter. I do something else. I slip photos under the door from the world of the blind to be viewed in the light of the sighted. I view my work during the event of taking the shot in my minds eye. I “see“ each shot very clearly, only I use sound, touch, and memory. I am more of a conceptual artist than a photographer."  —Peter Eckert

"I am not bound by the assumptions of the sighted or their assumed limits."