In the 1997 book The Island of the Colorblind and the accompanying documentary, late neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks visits the small Micronesian atoll of Pingelap, where an unusually large portion of the population is affected by complete achromatopsia, or total color blindness. The story was brought to attention of Belgian photographer Sanne De Wilde who visited the island and produce work that meshes a social-documentary approach with a sort of experiment in point-of-view photography. She shot traditional black-and-white photographs, and also digital-infrared images, which she used to challenge her own understanding of color. After she returned to Amsterdam, in a workshop with a Dutch organization for achromats, she asked color-blind collaborators to paint over some of the black-and-white pictures. The resulting book will be released this month.

[The Island of the Colorblind @ The New Yorker]