Pingelap is a small island in the South Pacific but is unique in a way that nobody would ever expect. It is not your typical holiday destination or even a tourist attraction, but if you visit you will be one of the few who experienced this very strange place.
Photo Credit: creatorsvice.com
Pingelap is a place where the inhabitants see different in comparison to the rest of the world population. This place has a weird and sad record: the most cases of achromatopsia can be found there, in case you are wondering achromatopsia is a rare case of colorblindness that normally affects only one of 30.000 people, in Pingelap the statistic is somewhat different 1 out of 10 people have the abnormality.
Photo Credit: creators.vice.com
Since decennia, scientists are trying to figure out what is the reason. Geneticists think there is a relation with a natural disaster that happened on the island in 1775: a typhoon decimated the island and only left twenty survivors.
Photo Credit: creators.vice.com
Of course, the medical condition is not the cause of the typhoon but it did cause a fact called the population bottleneck. Because of the reduction of the population to twenty, the gene pool was so small that it is possible that de carrier of the rare gen was the patriarch father of a great percentage of the current population. It is a fact that in 1775 the king: Nanmwarki Mwanenihsed was a carrier of the achromatopsia gene and he did survive the typhoon.
Photo Credit: [creators.vice.com]
Pingelap not only caught the attention of the scientific world, photographers are also fascinated by this island. The Flemish Photographer Sanne De Wilde is a talented photographer who had a different approach to Pingelap. She tried to reproduce the island through the eyes of the inhabitants of the island. Some of the inhabitants only see in black and white some of them have other color notions. Their vision is blurry by sunlight and their vision is limited in the daytime. With this knowledge, she decolorized her pictures. This is a good indication how the inhabitants perceive their environment.
Photo Credit: Tumblr
It is a little bit like ultraviolet photography and in some cases, it is charmingly peaceful and even beautiful.
Photo Credit: nationalgeographic.com
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