Louie Harvey

The OPTO toolkit is a custom designed photography and perception kit that explores and celebrates the lived experiences of colour blindness. Housed in a laser cut box, it contains four interchangeable lens filters – Protanopia, Deuteranopia, Tritanopia and Achromatopsia – each designed to simulate a different type of colour vision deficiency. Below are curated photography concertinas revealing how the world might look through each filter, challenging the idea of “normal” colour perception.

The toolkit allows colour blind photographers to capture images in a way that reflects how they see the world, giving them a tool to express their own visual perspective. At the same time, it invites non colour blind individuals to experiment with a new way of seeing and image-making, encouraging empathy, creative play, and conversation around the subjectivity of vision.

These are the four OPTO lens filters, each designed to simulate a different type of colour blindness: Protanopia (red-deficient), Deuteranopia (green-deficient), Tritanopia (blue-deficient), and Achromatopsia (total colour blindness). Colour blind photographers can use the lenses to represent how they see the world through their own camera, while non-colourblind individuals can use them to explore alternative ways of seeing and experiment with new creative approaches to photography.