ABSTRACT Curved space–time geometric-optics maps derived from a deep photometric survey should contain information about the 3D matter distribution and thus about cosmic voids in the survey, despite projection effects. We explore to what degree sky-plane geometric-optics maps can reveal the presence of intrinsic 3D voids. We carry out a cosmological N-body simulation and place it further than a gigaparsec from the observer, at redshift 0.5. We infer 3D void structures using the watershed algorithm. Independently, we calculate a surface overdensity map and maps of weak gravitational lensing and geometric-optics scalars. We propose and implement a heuristic algorithm for detecting (projected) radial void profiles from these maps. We find in our simulation that given the sky-plane centres of the 3D watershed-detected voids, there is significant evidence of finding corresponding void centres in the surface overdensity Σ, the averaged weak-lensing tangential shear $\overline{{\gamma }_{\perp }}$, the Sachs expansion θ, and the Sachs shear modulus |σ|. Recovering the centres of the 3D voids from the sky-plane information alone is significant given the Sachs expansion θ, or the Sachs shear |σ|, mildly significant given the weak-lensing shear $\overline{{\gamma }_{\perp }}$, and not significant for the surface overdensity Σ. Void radii are uncorrelated between 3D and 2D voids; our algorithm is not designed to distinguish voids that are nearly concentric in projection. This investigation shows preliminary evidence encouraging observational studies of gravitational lensing through individual voids, either blind or with spectroscopic/photometric redshifts. The former case – blind searches – should generate falsifiable predictions of intrinsic 3D void centres.