This body of work is part of a five-year project documenting the condition of blindness throughout the world. Aimed to raise awareness of the daily battle an estimated 45 million people worldwide face, the photographer Stefano de Luigi, in collaboration with CMB Italy (Christian Blind Mission), started the project – and his long journey – in 2003. Over the course of the next five years, he photographed blind people in Liberia, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Congo, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Thailand, China, Laos, Vietnam, Bulgaria and Lithuania.
Blindness, which is now due to become a book, has received the patronage of Vision 2020: The Right to Sight, a global initiative being spearheaded by the World Health Organization and a broad coalition of international, non-governmental and private organizations aimed at eliminating avoidable blindness by the year 2020.