Photographers and their Cameras

For a vintage camera enthusiast it is always fun to come across a picture of one of the old cameras being put to use at around the time it was being actively produced and marketed. It isn't hard to find pictures of famous photographers posing with their Leica and Rolleiflex cameras. Some of the others, though, are hard to find in the photographic record. When I picked up a copy recently of the book, the camera i, I was pleased to discover there are two pictures in the collection assembled by Audrey and Sydney Irmas of well-known photographers from the classic age using compact folding plate cameras.



The picture of Brassai standing behind a plate camera on a tripod is a bit surprising as he is most famous for his gritty shots of Paris night life. His accomplishment is all that more impressive when you realize that he made many of the photos with equipment that more modern photographers would consider impossibly awkward. I can't tell which model Brassai's camera is in the picture, but I thought it interesting that it is equipped with a rollfilm back which looks just like the Rada that I use with both my Kodak Recomar 18 and my Zeiss Ikon Maximar A.

I'm not sure of the model that is being wielded by Morris Engel either; it may be one of the pre-Kodak Nagel plate cameras, given the Compur shutter and the Schneider-Kreuznach lens. Like many other pros of the era, Engel would move on to using more easily-managed Twin-Lens Reflex cameras. Judging by the rectangular format and good resolution of many of his images, though, he seems to have used the plate camera quite a lot. Like Brassai, Engel made a lot of his exposures on the street, many of the early ones in Coney Island and other parts of Brooklyn.



While reading Engel's biography, I was reminded to look at the fine work done by his equally famous photographer wife, Ruth Orkin. She did a lot of shots of New York streets too, but since she grew up in Hollywood she often veered toward more glamorous subjects including film and TV stars. Among the pictures of Orkin herself, I found a very rare shot which included a Kodak Retina IIa in the portrait. That was a camera probably not often used by classic documentary photographers like Orkin, but it was nevertheless very well made and the Xenon lens was as good as any of the time.



I've displayed only small thumbnail images for Engel and Orkin here in order to stay within a generally accepted standard of fair use. Clicking on the thumbnails will take you to the web sites of the two photographers' work where larger images may be viewed.