“Color is just a word to those who cannot see it.”
Sanne De Wilde uses different photographic materials to metaphorically explore the experience of Achromatopsia, or complete colorblindness in her series “The Island of the Colorblind” now an online exhibition over on the East Wing portal at Artsy
De Wilde’s images were made working with a small community living on a tiny atoll Pingelap and neighbouring island Pohnpei in the South Pacific Ocean. In the late eighteenth century a catastrophic typhoon swept over Pingelap. One of the survivors, the king, carried the rare achromatopsia gene that causes complete colorblindness. The king went on to have many children and as time passed the hereditary condition affected the isolated community and most islanders started seeing the world in black and white.
