John Dugdale ... John Dugdale (born 1960 in Connecticut) is an American art photographer. Internationally renowned he creates poignant and stirringly intimate imagery using 19th century photographic processes and a 19th century aesthetic. At the age of 33, Dugdale had a transformative experience of nearly total blindness due to a stroke and CMV retinitis, an HIV-related illness. Completely blind in his right eye, Dugdale found himself seeing with less than twenty percent visibility in his left eye. While blindness ended his successful commercial photography career, he found himself free to explore his fine art, using friends and family members as studio assistants.