Large format camera origin story

I don’t have any notes or emails to jog my memory, but here’s my best recollection of how I came to work with a large format camera. In the fall of 1995, I participated in an exhibition at the New Arts Salon on Arch Street in Philadelphia alongside Rebecca Brame, Laura F. Cohn, Henry Dean, Jackie McAdams, and Ron Schira. During the opening reception, I met Don Springer, and we struck up a conversation about alternative photographic processes. 

At the time, I was making gum prints (contact printing Kodalith negatives to make cyanotypes before layering them with multiple applications of ammonium bichromate, gum arabic, and watercolor), while Springer was producing platinum prints with negatives from a large format camera. He invited me to see his setup, and I believe I gave him a tutorial on the alternative printing methods I was using. He ended up taking a few somewhat awkward portraits of me and the friend who accompanied me, under the mistaken impression that we were a couple. 

 

For the exhibition, I had at least one piece on display—a pinhole gum print titled Goodnight—which had been selected for the exhibition postcard. I may have traded that print with Don Springer in exchange for one of his platinum prints, Frankie Dowd, Jr.

In the category of “it’s a small world”

It turns out Don Springer owned (or perhaps still owns) a floor refinishing company and had worked on the dining room floor in my parents’ house years before! Our rowhouse was in the middle of the street and the refinishing of the dining room effectively divided the house in half. I have a fond memory of having to semi-circumnavigate the drying polyurethane: my father and I exiting through the basement door, walking down the concrete driveway, around the corner, and halfway down the block. My dad chuckling, shrugging his shoulders, and me—in my Catholic school uniform—carrying a hot kettle at arm’s length so we could get into the front of the house and deliver dinner supplies, without disturbing the freshly coated floor.

Don Springer’s demonstration of his large format camera instantly won me over. There was something compelling about the ceremony of the process—leveling the camera, placing the black cloth over my head and focusing the inverted image on the groundglass, calculating exposure, very carefully loading the film holder and slowly pulling out the dark slide.

Many photographers are drawn to large format cameras because their lensboards and film planes can be adjusted independently, unlike 35mm cameras where the lens and film remain fixed and parallel. But camera movements weren’t what attracted me. At the time, I was enlarging 35mm negatives onto 8×10 or 11×14 sheets of Kodalith ortho film, and the thought of starting with so much more information was irresistible. A 4×5 negative has thirteen times the area of 35mm film—an enormous leap in detail. Combined with the deliberate, almost meditative pace of making an image, the whole experience convinced me to acquire a large format camera of my own.

My first online purchase! 

I have no recollection of how I found this camera or the website, but I did purchase my camera on AOL (America Online) Marketplace. As I recall, the seller described the camera as being made of teak, called a Princedorff (from the Deardorff brand), and said they had used it while backpacking through Peru. The camera was shipped to my office C.O.D.—cash on delivery—and I still remember opening the box with my curious coworkers gathered around. After inspecting it, I handed over my check.

Shortly after I purchased a copy of Steve Simmons's Using the View Camera: A creative guide to large format photography.