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Conceptual

Sanne De Wilde

Photographer

Sanne De Wilde

The Island of the Colorblind.

In the late 18th century a catastrophic typhoon swept over Pingelap, a tiny atoll in the Pacific. One of the survivors, the king, carried the rare achromatopsia-gen that causes complete colorblindness. As time passed by, the hereditary condition affected the isolated community and the islanders started seeing the world in black and white.
Color is just a word to those who cannot see it. Flames light up in black and white, trees turn pink, a thousand shades of grey, a rainbow revisited. Portraying the islanders that by their fellow Micronesians are referred to as ‘blind’ resulted in a conceptual selection of images that mask their eyes, their face, or their ‘vision’ and invite the viewer to enter a dreamful world of colorful possibilities.
The project consists of two series; ‘normal’ digital images converted to B&W with PS (shot with Nikon D810) and infrared images (shot with a Nikon D700 to IR converted body).

Sanne De Wilde

Sanne De Wilde in her photography explores the role genetics play in peoples lives and how this shapes and affects communities. Picturing people suffering from a condition making them vulnerable in the eye of society. She graduated with a Master in the Fine Arts at KASK in Ghent (BE) with great honours in 2012. Her photo series 'The Dwarf Empire' was rewarded with the Photo Academy Award 2012 as well as the International Photography Award Emergentes DST in 2013. Her serie ‘Snow White’ was awarded 16ème Prix National Photographie Ouverte and NuWork Award for Photographic Excellence. She was awarded the Nikon Press Award in 2014 and 2016 for most promising young photographer. 
The British Journal of Photography selected De Wilde as one of 'the best emerging talents from around the world' in 2014 and recently received the Firecracker Grant 2016, PHmuseum Women's Grant and de Zilveren Camera award for 'The Island of the Colorblind' and most recently won a World Press Photo for her collaborative project with NOOR Photographer Benedicte Kurzen for "Land of Ibeji" in 2019. She has been internationally published (Guardian, New Yorker, Le Monde, CNN, Vogue) and exhibited (Voies OFF, Tribeca Film Festival, Circulations, Lagos Photo, Lodz Fotofestiwal, IDFA, STAM and EYE).
Since 2013, De Wilde works with the Dutch newspaper and magazine De Volkskrant, in Amsterdam the Netherlands and joined NOOR in 2017.