I was helping my friend Lynne move house today. Cleaning out the garage I came across a camera in a leather case. A 620 Roll Film device with a fixed lens and inbuilt filters operated by slides on the body of the camera. If that sounds like a rather sophisticated Medium Format device let me disabuse you. I used to own one of these cameras, and if you are over 40 years of age, you probably did, too. There was one in your family, anyway.
The Kodak Box Brownie, in various guises, was with us for nearly 100 years, the first cardboard bodied camera hitting the market in 1900. Mine was a Brownie Flash II, an Australian model with a built-in close-up filter, fixed aperture of f/14 and flash contacts (hence the name). I was never able to afford the flash gun, but the possibility was there.
It was my ninth birthday, and the camera was a gift from my dad and mum. I don't think they had any idea how much it was going to cost them to keep me in film! On the other hand, as they shifted the burden of film and processing to me, they may have wished they had gone on bearing the financial burden, because, of course, I decided to develop my own photos. But to be fair, they never once complained about the chemical smells that permeated the house, the loss of the bathroom for hours at a time (it was the only room with running water that could be blacked out), or having to fight their way through coils of drying negatives to get to the loo.
I learned a great deal from that simple box camera. I leaned to process and enlarge film; I learned to compose in the classic rectangular format; I learned what features I wanted in a camera, and how to take the photographs I wanted even though the Brownie had none of them.
I have owned many cameras since, every one of them far, far better. But only the Kodak Box Brownie set me on a path that I have followed now for more than half a century.
Lynne offered me her old camera: I accepted it with a gratitude she will never quite understand..
No comments:
Post a Comment