This photograph of a young man born without eyes is from Stefano De Luigi’s new book “Blanco”. Photographer Stefano De Luigi said that this moment was one of the most difficult in his five-year project. “When you are confronted with blind people there is always the question-shall he/she become sighted some day? In this case the answer was straight and standing in front of me, and this lack of hope was very hard.”

Aiming to raise awareness of the daily battle blind people face, De Luigi started began his project in 2003. With the support of “Vision 2020: The Right to Sight”, an initiative spearheaded by the World Health Organization and a broad coalition of international, non-governmental and private organizations seeking to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020, he photographed blind people in 14 countries – Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Congo, Laos, Liberia, Lithuania, Nigeria, Peru, Rwanda, Thailand, Uganda and Vietnam.

A boy without eyes—birth defect from exposure to Agent Orange—seen at the Nguyen Dinh Chieu school in Hanoi, Vietnam.