I was born with congenital cataracts, grade II. I was in a special school for visually impaired children until I was 7 years old. Between the ages of seven and eight, I underwent surgery. I remember perfectly that day in the clinic when the bandages were removed and for the first time I saw shapes and colour. Although the operation was not 100% successful, today I can see monocularly.
I enjoy colour, but I learned to develop in black and white as well. At the age of 20 I had a Nikon reflex camera and because of the cheapness of the negatives, I took a lot of photographs. Today, technology is my ally, what I used to do in black and white, today I do in colour and if I want to change it to greyscales, it's just a click away, and for me that's a marvel.
It's not a question of saying that the past was better than the present. The past left its traces and just as human beings evolve, the world evolves with them. Whether we like it or not, we have to adapt.
A bit different, but a long time ago I noticed that a friend of mine's young sister needed glasses. She was about seven. Once she got them, she spent days walking around just looking at normal things, because she had never seen for instance, the hairs on her arm. The world had become magical for her, like seeing the matrix.
Cam you describe the feeling when the bandages were removed?
The first thing I saw was my mother's face, and when she realised that she was seeing, she cried with joy… I felt a slight discomfort in the light of the office, but I gradually adjusted. By then, I was writing and reading Braille, I remember that I started to touch everything and I looked out of the window. All those sounds I heard that day, I could see them. They put sunglasses on me, because I found it hard to stand the light, like a vampire ha, ha, ha, ha. Years later I found out that I didn't have an iris and that's why I couldn't regulate the light coming in through my eye. When I have eye strain, I tend to see rainbows in any light reflection and I have to rest for about 10 minutes in the dark -routine-. It's like being born again and feeling the world from a different perspective…