Brittany Davis on New Album Image Issues and Navigating a Visual World
On the March-issued Image Issues LP, Brittany Davis explores the reality of navigating a visual world while blind. Sitting down with SPIN at SXSW, the singer-songwriter explains the album’s concept and how blind people can participate in visual art.
“Image Issues, as a title, refers to not only my body dysmorphic type of view of myself,” Davis says. “It’s really difficult for me, as a person who’s never had vision, to envision visual concepts—such as what a woman is supposed to look like, how she’s supposed to present herself each day, why people may look at me different because of my different appearance. Maybe I have a different air about me; I really can’t put my finger on it, but sometimes I just feel alien. I wanted to talk about how it feels to be a non-seeing person, kind of forced and inundated by visual concepts constantly, without any reference to the past, present, or future of visual art.”
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Davis recalls struggling with relating to people visually—but also, through the making of Image Issues, being able to share a unique perspective.
“I needed to find a way, through not only the title, but through the actual application of the sounds, to get you to hear what I cannot see,” Davis says. “Image Issues refers to the depths of those walls and some of the ambiguity that comes with just not knowing where you fit visually in a world that you’re born without the very sense that drives all consumerism today.”
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