Last spring, after scoring my first hit of Moderna’s COVID vaccine (and the ubiquitous 48 hours of soreness, aches, and malaise that follows), I was right as rain… until four days later, when a blast of chest pain jarred me bolt upright in the middle of the night. Although the pain and accompanying jolts remained my ever-present companion for the next week, I wasn’t overly concerned. I’d experienced this with previous illnesses, and chalked it up to my highly inflammatory immune response doing what it sometimes does. As expected, the inflammation subsided, and the pains ended a week after they began.
Not long after, reports emerged that a small percentage of mRNA recipients experienced bouts of myocarditis approximately a week after getting vaccinated — the vast majority of whom were men in their late teens and early twenties. Naturally, I took this as a sign that I had the heart of a 20 year-old, and immediately signed up for a TikTok account, hung a Billie Eilish poster on my bedroom wall, and took to openly mocking boomers.
With that newly minted modicum of antibodies, I booked an appointment with my optometrist — hoping to get some badly needed new contact lenses. I settled into the chair, ready for the doctor’s usual “which is better, A or B” routine, when he abruptly stopped the examination, pushed his swivel chair back toward the desk, turned on the lights, and informed me that my vision issues weren’t because of my prescription, but because of cataracts. Not only that, but they weren’t the usual Stage 3 type that plague a third of the people a half-decade older than me. Nope, mine were Stage 4 — the type more associated with someone who’s 90.
To prove his point, he continued with the exam, dialled in the best possible correction, then asked me to look at the chart on the wall. “What wall?” I asked. “Exactly,” replied the doctor.
I was thoroughly confused. Within one month’s time, I learned I had the heart of a 20 year-old and the eyes of a 90 year-old. Is there nothing about me that’s my actual age?
I’m sure this news comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone who’s viewed my photography all these years — after all, I haven’t exactly been a proponent of photographic fidelity. None the less, I was surprised.
Because a perpetual tide of COVID waves has decimated the scheduling of “elective” surgeries, I’ve now been stumbling around for 8 months since the diagnosis, waiting for my new plastic eyes. During this time, I’ve stopped driving; avoided going outside at dark, dusk or even on overcast days; and ceased watching anything with subtitles — that’s right, no Nordic Noirs for me. I’ve become a master of the Macintosh’s accessibility settings, and can often be seen wearing two or even three pairs of glasses simultaneously — some upside down — in order to function.
Surprisingly, this hasn’t had as demonstrable an effect on my photography as one might think. Sure, it affects when I can photograph (mid-day only) and where (I avoid crowded city sidewalks, since I can’t tell people from lamp posts, nor cars from the streets they drive on). But my photos have always had a rather lo-fi aesthetic — even when I could see.
Then again, maybe the photos have always had a lo-fi aesthetic because I’ve never really been able to see? You don’t just get Stage 4 cataracts without going through the previous three stages — which would obviously have been affecting my vision for many years.
So I’m actually a bit worried — not that the surgeries won’t work (though complications concern me), but that they will work so well I’ll see just how bad my own photography is. Then what will I do? I’ve grown so accustom to taking and editing photographs without actually being able to see them, that any continuing visual degradation would probably just add to the arc of my photographic oeuvre. But should the surgery succeed, and I suddenly realize that trees have leaves; people have faces; and placards placed on the sidewalk in front of restaurants are for informational purposes, and not for me to trip over — well, that could likely result in a seismic shift in my photography. Do I have enough self-discipline to not become a ‘pixel peeper’ should I gain the ability to actually SEE a pixel?
I was originally scheduled to have surgery on both eyes in January, but it appears COVID’s latest surge may postpone the joy for at least another few weeks. Once it finally occurs, I’ll still require a couple months of healing before I can be fit for new glasses. So I’m guessing it’ll be spring before I’m all fixed up and functioning like a properly sighted human.
Fortunately, I can type by touch, and my photography has always been more about intuiting a situation than seeing it. So I expect I’ll continue to post unabated during these next few months of compromised vision — just as I’ve done for the past few. And what happens come spring — once it’s finally over and my vision has stabilized? Who can say? Maybe I’ll buy a 100 megapixel medium format digital camera, and become a colour landscape photographer. Or maybe I’ll be so disheartened by the photos I’ve been publishing that I’ll return to writing music full time (at least until the inevitable battle with deafness pushes me back into photography).
But first, I need to come to grips with the whole idea of someone slicing up my eyeballs. As a devotee of 70’s and 80’s Italian genre cinema, I’ve seen at least 50 highly stylized close-up depictions of every type of eye trauma imaginable — and not once did the recipient seem even remotely OK with it. I don’t know if it’s some kind of cosmic retribution for my viewing habits, but if it is, I really wish I hadn’t found rom-coms so repugnant. Enduring the karmic punishment of my own personal “meet cute” sounds infinitely more appealing than a knife to the eye.
©2022 grEGORy simpson
ABOUT THE PHOTOS: This month’s photo selections are representative of those only a blind man could love. Although “Cataract” could pass for a photo of an actual cataract surgery, it might just be a snapshot of my washing machine’s spin cycle, or maybe it’s a spinning tire. Whatever it is, it’s an apt metaphor for the article, which was shot with an Olympus OM-D E-M1 MKIII and an M-Zuiko 12mm f/2 lens.“Mixed Metaphors” and “November” were both shot at ISO 400 on HP5+ with a Leitz Minolta CL, fronted with a Minolta 40mm f/2 Rokkor lens, and developed in Blazinal 1:50. “COVID-22” infected a Konica C35, which was stuffed with Tri-X, exposed at ISO 400, and developed in Blazinal 1:50. And while “The Window of Abundant Obstructions” sounds like the title of a giallo I inexplicably haven’t seen, it’s really just the title of another photo of metaphorically fuzzy purpose. It comes courtesy of a Contax G1, fronted with a Zeiss Biogon 28mm f/2.8 lens, through which it rendered a latent image on Tri-X at ISO 400, which I then developed in Blazinal 1:50.
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In my admittedly small sample to evaluate, your musings on photography/photographing are the most evocative: you lay out your everyday circumstances with a deep metaphoric foundation; your humour shows you’re in on The Joke we’re all playing out; you have a truly accessible and sharable wisdom. Your photos are pretty fucking good, too.
Fred
Thanks, Fred. Wanna write my authorized biography? With such enthusiasm, coupled with a bit of savvy and an aggressive marketing campaign, our sales figures might just reach the low double-digits.
Don’t you have to be past your prime to have a biography written? You’ve got a ways to go, no? As for “aggressive marketing”, I’ve no relationship to either word outside of the occasional snide, passive aggressive verbal attack on the next politician. Double digits? I’ve got more than that many in-laws who’ll buy one. Formidable challenges aside, success is written all over this project. I’m keeping all options open at this time.
,,,, I guess the good Doctor knows best however after surgery pretty sure this will not make you ‘skip’ a beat….. hoping for full recovery! Luv the Blog and will donate. Please keep us posted. Dave
Thanks, Dave. I’m going with the “plan for the worst, and hope for the best” model of psychological preparation.
Good to have the spoken content function, EGOR!
Now I know why my photos do not hold your class – I underwent myopia surgery a few years ago. Maybe I should ask to get back my very severe visual defect …
However, I can assure you that it was a completely painless thing, if you still want to do it.
Thanks for a very entertaining post, and for great pics.
Ahhh… another photographer with vision problems! It’s not as uncommon as one might think. I remember the late Canadian photojournalist, Ted Grant, telling me that he basically had only one functioning eye since childhood. One of life’s cruel little tricks is to test a person’s passion by afflicting them with a biological malfunction of their most needed body part. Look no further than Beethoven, who began going deaf at age 26, yet whose music only improved with each decibel lost. Comparing Beethoven’s ability to compose while deaf to my ability to photograph with “bokeh vision” is a ridiculous stretch, I know… but I think the mechanism is the same. By compromising the very sense you need to experience your own creative output, you have no ‘checks and balances’ — which means you have to rely entirely on what’s inside you. Without being able to perform a ‘reality check’ on your output, you’re free to create whatever you want without being held back by that pesky missing sense telling you not to. Obviously, this can result in greatness (a la Beethoven), or it can just result in whatever the heck my photos are.
Thanks for the encouragement! I’m not worried about any pain… but I am worried about hearing the surgeon say “oops.”
All the best to you and wishing for a speedy (and successful) recovery!
I LIKE your photography…I guess I need to get my eyes checked, too.
Thanks, Hank!
Perhaps I finally found my true calling as a photographer. It’s neither gallery shows nor websites nor license plates — rather it’s to replace the Snellen Chart on every optometrist’s wall.
Egor,
Good luck with the surgery, when you can get it.
Looking forward to your future writing (which shouldn’t be impacted by better eyesight) and future photography (which you can probably fake, despite the improved eyesight).
Don
I am now recovering from the surgery inflicted on each eye, and early indications are I’m entirely capable of taking photos just as grungy as before.
That is a great relief! Thanks for letting us know. Also, I hope that you have a speedy recovery.
I have fairly strong protanopia. To put it another way, my red cones are strongly skewed towards the green. I was diagnosed as a young child and informed that becoming an electrician, or a number of other professions, would be off limits to me. All my life colour coded maps have befuddled me. Anything with a colour key in fact. During one art lesson at secondary school, the teacher asked me why I’d painted the sky green..
It’s not like I don’t see colour, but instead of the usual 20bit colour map that regular folks have, my colour perception is perhaps more in the 16bit range? A flawed analogy, I know, but you get the idea. My colour vision is all over the place. I often have difficulty differentiating a bright red LED from a green one..
Mostly this is a very mild handicap which I am able to completely ignore, but of course when it comes to photography and photo editing, well the issues that might arise are obvious.
Perhaps this is why I find myself leaning toward a very lo-fi impressionistic and intuitive kind of photography where the wacked out colours are a feature, rather than a big?
At any rate, my issues pale compared to yours, but I can fully appreciate where you’re coming from. I hope you get your eyes fixed up at least enough that you are able to function again. That sounds like no fun at all.
Since penning this article, I’ve now had successful cataract surgery in both eyes, and all is well. The oddest thing after the surgery (aside from actually being able to see) was to get used to the way you experience colours… Because cataracts are dark brown, you go for years looking at the world through thick brown filters. It was several weeks before I could look at something perfectly white and not identify it as blue. It drove me crazy that grass was now “teal”, brick buildings were all magenta, and humans had a sickly purplish/cyan hue. Obviously, this colour shift is positively insignificant compared to your situation, but I have a slight sense of what it must be like to have one definition of colour that does not match society’s. Fortunately, I’ve already adapted. And even if I hadn’t, 99.9% of my photography is black & white, so I’m good.
I habitually wear blue blockers when in front of a screen, so that skews my colour vision further still, in addition to the sketchy colour rendering of cheap LCD panels and their vaguely sickening blue backlighting.
I do enjoy the starkness and simplicity of black and white images, and I am a great fan of Daido Moriyama’s work. I have most of the makings of a black and white darkroom now, and used to tinker with that in my youth, but I am so disorganised and have little space, and so many other projects competing for my attention. Excuses, I know.
As far as colour goes, I have found it helpful to read up on colour theory, and paying close attention to the histogram for each colour channel, as well as colour temperature/hue when manipulating RAW images, and being extra mindful of what is on the screen in front my eyes, that has helped somewhat by way of a workaround.
But processing colour will always be fraught with my condition, and so I have given up chasing technically good, and natural colour rendition.
It’s all very interesting really, this business of light, and the EM spectrum in general, radio waves, IR, UV and all that.