One of the biggest problems that macular degeneration sufferers confronts is trying to explain to the people around them just what they are suffering from. While simple blindness is easily understood, the degenerative nature and partial blindness of MD makes it less clear. What does it mean to lose central vision and only have peripheral view? How does the world look like through the eyes of an MD sufferer?
To help answer these questions, a young artist in Scotland has painted portraits of macular degeneration patients, to show how MD sufferers see the themselves. Mr Adam Hahn (below), whose late grandmother suffered from AMD, photographed each sitter and manipulated the image to represent how they would see it.
To help answer these questions, a young artist in Scotland has painted portraits of macular degeneration patients, to show how MD sufferers see the themselves. Mr Adam Hahn (below), whose late grandmother suffered from AMD, photographed each sitter and manipulated the image to represent how they would see it.
He then showed it to them and, by using their remaining peripheral vision, they suggested adjustments.
One of the sitters was Mr Don Curran, the past chairman of the charity AMD Alliance International. He called the portraits (below) "outstanding".
“One of the biggest difficulties we have lies in explaining its (macular degeneration's) impact to others. I spend a lot of time trying to show how difficult it is living with central-vision blindness, and how the condition varies between each individual,” he says.
“I am about to speak at an international congress in Hong Kong and I am going to use some of Adam's portraits on PowerPoint. Even clinicians and pharmaceutical companies don't understand how it can cause such depression. Simple blindness is far easier to comprehend than this kind of partial-sightedness.”
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