SHUTTERBUDS Eckert, dog Clancey

So begins what might be a tremendously off-color joke, and so began photographer Pete Eckert's show at the Leo Kesting Gallery in Manhattan Thursday night. Eckert went completely blind 25 years ago. Now he's transmitting his eerie, multi-exposure shots on the walls and streets of Chelsea, Dumbo, and Williamsburg, as the winner of an open-call for emerging photographers hosted by "Artists Wanted", the Brooklyn-based arts organization. (Believe it or not, three blind photographers submitted their work for consideration.)

How exactly does a blind man take a photograph? With a lot of outside input. While for many artists the need for validation and outside affirmation may be unspoken, or even an embarrassment, Eckert relies on his viewers to tell him what his prints look like, and the feelings they evoke. ("Do you like the black and whites or the colors?" he asked Radar, and several others.) More pointedly, he explained: "I'm in the dark, in a room. And youre' in another room. I'm slipping photos under the door to you and asking, 'What do you think? What do you think?'"

Eckert's black and white images are ghostly, gauzy glimpses, often into familiar spaces. (One shot in this show is of Eckert's own church in Sacramento. He spent five hours the night before feeling the walls to inspect the space. Another is a San Francisco bar he used to frequent when he was young, had his sight, and was, in his own words, a drinker, a dancer, and a general "hell raiser.") His color prints are less nostalgic, if only because the subjects—often involved in something as simple as cooking dinner or lingering in a hallway—seem to be engulfed in electric hellfire.

"Not all blindness is happy," Eckert told Radar, perhaps as an explanation for the darkness of his work, which seems in opposition to the artist's jovial party personality. Clutching a Stella he engaged in lighthearted banter with curious gallery-goers. "I once walked into my local bank and told the people working there, 'Oh, I think you've already met my wife—the lovely Italian woman.' The tellers were just stunned. Silence." (Eckert's wife is Asian.)

The small gallery got to do a little hell-raising of its own when, around 7 p.m., the Hungry March(ing) band arrived to provide attendees with a little Williamsburg-style entertainment (picture below). A woman—who earlier in the evening had asked the audience lingering outside the gallery, "Does anyone know where I can find a liquor store? Can anyone even afford to live here?"—came out in full purple cabaret make-up, including a hula hoop and a baton. Flanked by a 10-piece band and another dancer (in a silver sparkly bustier, naturally), the band crossed Washington Street, doing kicks and twirls into the small gallery.

Before entering the space, the ensemble's saxophonist knelt in the street and directed his song squarely into the face of Clancey, Eckert's long-suffering seeing eye dog. Neither Eckert, nor the German Shepherd seemed to mind.

(Photo: http://www.artistswanted.org/pete_eckert.html)

(Photo: http://www.artistswanted.org/pete_eckert.html)

(Photo: http://www.artistswanted.org/pete_eckert.html)