Albert Watson has always been defined by the way he looks at the world. When I photographed him in Santa Fe in 2016, I found him not behind a camera but in front of a glowing laptop screen, his hand lifting his glasses as he leaned closer to study one of his own images.

Watson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1942. From the beginning, photography seemed unlikely: he was born blind in one eye, a condition that left him without depth perception. Yet this limitation became the foundation of his strength. Where others saw in three dimensions, he trained himself to see light, texture, and form with uncommon precision. Over the decades that followed, Watson’s images appeared in more than a hundred covers of Vogue and countless advertising campaigns, shaping the visual language of fashion, celebrity, and art. His portraits of figures such as Alfred Hitchcock, Steve Jobs, and Kate Moss have entered the cultural bloodstream. The Hitchcock portrait, with the director holding a plucked goose, was his first major assignment in 1973 and remains one of the most enduring photographs of the twentieth century. His photograph of Jobs, shot against a black background with Jobs’ hand pressed against his chin, became the defining image of Apple’s founder.

Looking at him that day, I thought about the paradox of his life. A photographer who cannot see fully with both eyes, yet who has given us some of the most enduring images of our era.