Unseen: Listening to Visually Impaired South Africans by Joanne Bloch

In Unseen, Joanne Bloch offers a deeply personal and illuminating exploration of visual impairment in South Africa. Drawing from her own experience of sight loss and conversations with twenty other visually impaired individuals, Bloch weaves together a tapestry of diverse voices and experiences. This groundbreaking work challenges common misconceptions about blindness and partial sight, revealing the complex realities faced by those living with visual impairments. From navigating daily life and relationships to confronting societal barriers and discrimination, Bloch’s narrative brings attention to an often-overlooked community. Unseen is not just about loss and struggle; it’s a testament to resilience, adaptation, and the human spirit. Through intimate portraits and thoughtful analysis, Bloch invites readers to reconsider their understanding of sight, disability, and what it means to truly perceive one another in a world that often disregards the visually impaired. This book is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the diverse experiences of disability and the power of human connection. Author:  Joanne Bloch Title:  Unseen Subtitle:  Listening to Visually Impaired South Africans ISBN: 978-1-991240-27-9 Price:  R380 No of Pages: 220 pages Genre: Non-fiction, research, interviews and memoir Format:  A5 Soft cover Publication date:  May 2025   Description of the book After artist Joanne Bloch experienced serious sight loss, she felt called to explore what it means to be visually impaired in our society. Unseen gives both her own reflections and those of 20 other South Africans, each told in the unique voice of its contributor. The conversations and stories in Unseen reveal many hidden complexities. They describe sensory and bodily adaptations, as well as the systemic barriers to basic rights that are built into our society. They show the constant need to counter ignorance and hostility and describe the social discomfort and isolation that often comes with visual impairment. Yet these are not narratives of passive victims. Instead, they are idiosyncratic, compelling expressions of courage, humour, solidarity and resilience. Most of all, they reflect a determination to live a rich and fulfilling life despite every difficulty. Praise “Unseen is a valuable and timely contribution to the understanding of visual impairment in South Africa. But it is also so much more. In her moving personal account of sight loss, combined with interviews with a range of partially sighted and non-sighted South Africans, Joanne Bloch presents a devastating indictment of the systemic barriers to access and accomplishment that confront people living with disabilities in our society.” Kobus Moolman (award-winning writer and academic) “Unseen offers an expansive and poignant perspective on blindness and coming to terms with the loss of vision. The book sensitively explores what it means to live with blindness across varying domains of life, and for people with different historical backgrounds in South Africa, and kinds of and degrees of visual impairment. This complex treatment shows readers the multiplicity of living with visual impairment and in so doing, breaks down stereotypes of disability that are often reductive. It is a valuable addition to making visible the lives of people with visual impairment who often go unseen.” Kharnita Mohamed (author of the novel, Called to Song and academic at UCT in anthropology department)   About the author For most of her adult life, Joanne was an exhibiting visual artist. Her work was shown on both solo and group exhibitions, including the 2013 Venice Biennale. In parallel with her art practice, Joanne worked as a freelance writer, specialising in human rights-related and educational materials. In 2011, six months into her PhD in Fine Art, Joanne was faced with irreversible sight loss. After she completed her PhD, her deteriorating vision forced her to abandon art- making and concentrate entirely on writing. Joanne has always been especially interested in life writing, and worked as interviewer, photographer and writer on several interview-based books for young adults and children. Her new book Unseen emerged as a response to her own experience of visual impairment, a growing awareness of the ignorance, stigma and discrimination confronting visually impaired South Africans and a strong desire for marginalized voices to be more widely heard. She lives in Cape Town.