Lomo Kikuyu, It's good to see (again)

The book provides a lomo-photographic essay of the work of one eye clinic south of Nairobi, known as ‘Kikuyu,’ interspersed with some unashamedly depressing facts on the scope of the problem, necessarily educating us about the very small things that can be done to prevent and cure blindness. (It often costs only US$30 to give a blind person their eyesight back, and the operation to fix cataracts takes only 15 minutes!) In order to make sure Lomography achieves their goal (help save eyesight), the $30 cost of the book goes directly to the Kikuyu eye-clinic, raising enough to conduct one operation to save one person’s eyesight.

Two leading causes of blindness, trachoma and vitamin A deficiency, are caused by poor hygiene and malnutrition. Due to poor education, many sufferers do not know their eyesight can be repaired. The importance and impact of the work is reinforced by the realisation of the vicious cycle that accompanies blindness; sufferers are often relegated the fringes of society, unable to work and dependant on family and loved ones (if they are lucky). In contrast to that stark and depressing reality, the images (all shot on film in lomo cameras, of course) meaningfully and intimately convey the optimism of this particular Kenyan community.

The specific appeal of Lomo photos can be very personal; I like them for their unpredictability and the general lack of rules that comes with taking pictures on a Lomo camera (i.e. focus not always required, and in fact sometimes not desirable!), for others, perhaps it just offers a new way of seeing in the digital age. Applied to photo-essay format, the saturated and stylised form somehow facilitates a kind of implicit meaning - a reduction of detail that actually helps us see the purpose of an image with more clarity. 

Apparently, as cataracts worsen it becomes like looking through a glass which was first full of water but to which milk is slowly added, making vision more and more cloudy. It’s a nice irony then that we can help reverse the process by picking up Lomo Kikuyu.

Key Facts

• Globally, there are 180 million people with severely impaired vision, 90% of whom live in developing countries. In 75% of these cases, the illnesses leading to blindness can be avoided. Blindness remains one of the most debilitating and tragically preventable diseases in the developing world.
• Trachoma – an infection, which damages eyesight.
• Vitamin A deficiency – 30% of blindness in Kenya is due to malnutrition – at its end stage this deficiency can leads to irreversible blindness.
• Kikuyu (the name of the clinic) is also the largest ethnic group in Kenya.
• Blindness can be caused by malnutrition, poverty, bad hygiene conditions. 75% of illnesses leading to blindness can be avoided.
• Poor education means not many know their eyesight can be repaired.
• Those that are blind regularly find themselves on the fringe of society.
• Lomo Kikuyu, It’s good to see (again) will make you wish you were an Opthalmologist (eye surgeon) so that you can fly to Kenya and help the over worked medical team at Kikuyu, or alternately buy a second copy of this book to give away to raise more money!