Visual deficiency or blindness may leave anyone at the mercy of somebody else. The biggest sense of them all, that which reigns everything and provokes sometimes synaesthesia, so is its power, commands above all other senses, and most of our understanding in this world is absorbed through it. Its absence is an endless spiral into terror and the almost loss of independence and autonomy, and even identity. Even more dramatic is for those who lose it whilst living. After that, it’s not just the loss. It’s also missing it.

The photographer Louise Narbo takes a part in this experience of loss and missing the ability to see, after her father got almost to the point of blindness. Narbo begins to experiment with new ways of seeing, lending sometimes her gaze and finding in the other senses possible substitutes and simulations, without forgetting, of course, the trauma of such deprivation. Hands suddenly get eyes, the skin too, and the mind redoubles in imagination the images it no longer sees.

Ver com os olhos de um outro [Seeing with someone else’s eyes] is the exhibition that Louise Narbo prepared for the gallery Adorna Corações, at Porto, which ends on 28 February. Don’t miss it.