THE ISLAND OF THE COLORBLIND

THE ISLAND OF THE COLORBLIND

In the late eighteenth century a catastrophic typhoon swept over Pingelap, a tiny atoll in the Pacific Ocean. One of the survivors, the king, carried the rare achromatopsia-gen that causes complete colorblindness. The king went on to have many children and as time passed by, the hereditary condition affected the isolated community and the islanders started seeing the world in black and white.

Achromatopsia is characterized by extreme light sensitivity, poor vision, and the complete inability to distinguish colors. In Micronesia achromats adapt to their reduced level of visual functioning (due lack of recourses like sunglasses and tinted lenses) by using visual strategies such as blinking, squinting, shielding their eyes, or positioning themselves in relation to light sources.

Portraying the islanders (that by their fellow Micronesians are referred to as ‘blind’) and their island resulted in a conceptual selection of images that mask or emphasize the eyes, face, or their ‘vision’ and invite the viewer to enter a dreamful world of colorful possibilities.

Color is just a word to those who cannot see it. If the colorblind people paint with their mind, how would they color the world, the trees, themselves? Initiating my visual research in FSM I tried to find ways to envision how people with achromatopsia see the world. I tried to see the island through their eyes. Daylight is to bright to bear, moonlight turns night into day. I learned that the color the islanders say to ‘see’, or can distinguish most, is red. I photographed with a camera converted to infrared, programmed to read the light and the colors different. After I returned I initiated blind ‘coloring’ sessions where I asked achromats in the Netherlands to paint color back in to my black & white images. Flames light up in black and white, trees turn pink, a thousand shades of grey, a rainbow revisited.

(‘The Island of the Colorblind’ consists of ‘normal’ digital images converted to black and white with Photoshop (shot with Nikon D810) and infrared images (shot with Nikon D700, to IR converted body) shot in Pohnpei & Pingelap in november 2015. The third series within the project are the achromatic picture-paintings.)

many children and as time passed by, the hereditary condition affected the isolated community and the islanders started seeing the world in black and white.

Achromatopsia is characterized by extreme light sensitivity, poor vision, and the complete inability to distinguish colors. In Micronesia achromats adapt to their reduced level of visual functioning (due lack of recourses like sunglasses and tinted lenses) by using visual strategies such as blinking, squinting, shielding their eyes, or positioning themselves in relation to light sources.

Portraying the islanders (that by their fellow Micronesians are referred to as ‘blind’) and their island resulted in a conceptual selection of images that mask or emphasize the eyes, face, or their ‘vision’ and invite the viewer to enter a dreamful world of colorful possibilities.

Color is just a word to those who cannot see it. If the colorblind people paint with their mind, how would they color the world, the trees, themselves? Initiating my visual research in FSM I tried to find ways to envision how people with achromatopsia see the world. I tried to see the island through their eyes. Daylight is to bright to bear, moonlight turns night into day. I learned that the color the islanders say to ‘see’, or can distinguish most, is red. I photographed with a camera converted to infrared, programmed to read the light and the colors different. After I returned I initiated blind ‘coloring’ sessions where I asked achromats in the Netherlands to paint color back in to my black & white images. Flames light up in black and white, trees turn pink, a thousand shades of grey, a rainbow revisited.

(‘The Island of the Colorblind’ consists of ‘normal’ digital images converted to black and white with Photoshop (shot with Nikon D810) and infrared images (shot with Nikon D700, to IR converted body) shot in Pohnpei & Pingelap in november 2015. The third series within the project are the achromatic picture-paintings.)