This is what the world looks like when you’re blind

BY: JONATHAN MAY

Bordered by rays of red and violet, narrow bands of visible light are constantly relaying a massive amount of information to our brains. Our entire civilization hangs upon the ability to perceive the rapid vibration of that light; without it, we couldn’t build and shape our world for ourselves, let alone our children. We scarcely understand how much of life is dependent on our eyes—until we imagine life without them. When he was in Kenya, Jonathan May noticed a young girl blindly fumbling from one side of the schoolyard to the other.

“I asked the deputy if Teresa could join for a photograph and I was told it wasn’t possible. Her family couldn’t afford the school fees, and her mother was currently being told by the principal to take her home. The deputy went on and said that, without continued education at her age, Teresa would get left behind and struggle to integrate and engage with her society.”

With each photo in May’s series, named Thika after the school for the blind he visited, you gain a sense of what it feels like to be visually impaired. You become the child in the photo, less able to see clearly what stands in front of you. That day, May paid for Teresa’s entire tuition and started a charity to fund education for the blind called Empowering Blind Youth. As you bear witness to the deterioration of visual meaning in the physical world, you begin to understand the importance of building meaning through education.