Nicole 117

My photography portrait with "Ladies behind crystal veil" is about recreating images from the past. The best way to achieve this is showing not just a variety vintage frames but also the vintage lenses in the frames. With this in mind I always ask the models to pose in at least a couple of glasses with extreme prescriptions that have long disappeared from the streets. This documentary of the photo shoot with Nicole is all about glasses for long sight. So it made sense to include a couple of extinct cataract glasses and see if any satisfactory portraits could be made.
Arguably cataract glasses are the most difficult category of all. Getting used to these extremely magnifying lenses after undergoing cataract surgery was problematic, for several reasons. First of all there is the extreme centrifugal power in the lenses and a loss of peripheral vision. But the main problem was that there was no gradual way of adaption. Even in my early childhood I clearly noticed the difference between people in cataract glasses and people in myodisc glasses for extreme short sight. The latter category had the relative advantage of gradually growing into their prescription from childhood. Many high myopic people are better capable to function without visual aid than myopic people with an intermediate prescription. This may sound surprising but several models told me that they learned this as small children before getting their first pair of glasses. It's just as if they developed a sort of radar which enabled them to get by without glasses. Half a century ago, some children with strong myopia were not diagnosed as such until they were eight or nine years old. On the other hand, a cataract operation occurs at a much later stage in life and there was no way to develop a sort of radar.
The use of cataract glasses during a photo shoot is a matter of meticulous navigation from both sides of the lenses. Being only mildly longsighted, Nicole had the advantage that she was well able to see me upside down through the lenses.