the idiot camera
I got my first camera when I was 10 years old. It wasn’t a birthday present, it wasn’t a present at all. It was just that my dad was into photography and somehow I became the “owner” of a camera. My father collected cameras and lenses and sometimes I had to sit and pose for him, it was boring and I remember the lights were hot... and my older brothers were always teasing me. Somewhere there must be lots of photos of me looking grumpy.
Dad had a wooden box with coloured lens filters inside. Each one in its own little cardboard box protected by a tiny square of tissue paper. Occasionally he’d let me play with them, if I was very careful. I liked the orange and blues ones the best. I used to like looking through them and making the world turn a different colour. He also did his own developing... in the bathroom. He made special blockout panels to block the light from the windows. And I can remember watching him position the negatives in the enlarger and exposing the paper, by swiveling a little disk of red plastic at the base of the enlarger. I liked the red glow it made in the room and I liked watching the images come to life in the developing trays suspended precariously over the bath. It was pure magic. But sometimes it got hot in the bathroom and I was stuck there because I wasn’t allowed to open the door.
The year was 1966 when I got my first camera. I know the year because something very significant happened to me that year. It was the real reason I was given the camera, I suppose. My family embarked on a 14-month around the world trip. My dad was a professor of Engineering and he packed up mum and us three kids and took us off on an adventure of a lifetime. I left school in Australia in December 1966 and didn’t return until February 1968. The year of 1967 shaped my life. And it wasn’t an “around the world trip” that you’d picture these days with airports and hotels. The journey began on ship, across endless oceans via the Panama Canal and across the wild Atlantic. For part of the year I attended school in London, while my parents visited countries in Eastern Europe, behind the “Iron Curtain” and I was flown over to Stockholm, unaccompanied, to meet up with my parents for a tour of Northern Europe. I spent part of the year sleeping in a camper van and visiting people I didn't know.
My dad used to run slide nights when we returned home to Australia. I know it sounds boring, but they were so good that people actually used to ask for an invitation, even my teachers, much to my embarrassment at the time. Mum used to serve freshly ground coffee in special individual glass dripolators she’d bought in Brussels. And dad would bring out the Slivovitz he’d been given in (then) Czechoslovakia and serve it beautiful glasses they’d bought there. They would bring out the Gusle, a one-string instrument from somewhere in Eastern Europe and the Samovar from Russia. Our house was full of odd things from strange lands. Dad was a good photographer and he and mum had visited places that most people would only dream of going to, even now. I can still recite the anecdotes from their travels through Russia, as if they were my own.
...I thought I was very sophisticated having my own camera. It had it’s own leather case and strap and I used to have it hanging around my neck like a professional. I knew how to change the film and how to check that it loaded properly on the sprockets and to double check it was transporting properly.
My dad used to call my camera affectionately “the idiot camera”. Because any idiot could take a photo with it, he’d laugh... and I knew he didn’t mean me. It had Agfa’s magic eye technology. When you pressed the shutter lever halfway down a mechanical system set the correct aperture value and speed. A red dot in a viewfinder turned green when the if there was light enough to take a picture. You couldn’t really fail, it always took great pictures and if there wasn’t enough light, you couldn’t take the shot. I thought the red and green lights looked like Cadbury Rowntree’s Fruit Pastels. Strawberry and the Lime.
I don’t know whatever happened to the idiot camera. I just bought this one on Ebay... just to have.
*Postscript for Arcadia.
When I returned to Australia, naturally I was keen to catch up with my friends and teachers. I remember I bounded up to my favourite school teacher in the playground. She looked at me and said ”Hello Alison, I haven't seen you around lately, have you been sick?" It was like a slap in the face. I realised in an instant that although I had seen the world, the preceding year for her had stayed the same. That my absence was so insignificant to her. I had been on a magic carpet ride and for her time had stood still. I learned at an early age that other people's lives are about "them”, not about ”you”. And I also learned to keep my mouth shut about my travels. Some of my friends and even some of my teachers didn't believe that I had been overseas and accused me of lying. Some of my friends thought we were rich and resented me for it. We weren't. We saved for years before we went away and we lived with my Grandparents when we were in England. In Europe we camped and we never ate a restaurant. And it wasn't all fun. I had to walk to school by myself through the snow and sleet, slipping on black icy puddles, and make new friends. My brothers were older, so they made their own fun. At school I was plunged back into the Imperial system, when I had only just begun to master the decimal system in Australia. My parents left me for months at a time with my Grandparents, who were strangers to me.
It seems funny to me now, that my parents were happy to let me traipse off to school in a "foreign" country at the age of ten, when they weren't even living on the same land mass at the time. My parents sent my brothers off to Europe by themselves, with a map and bundle of cash. They were 15 and 17 at the time. Before the days of mobile phones and skype, but somehow they found their way around and returned home. We all grew up that year, it was the best year of my education.
the idiot camera
I got my first camera when I was 10 years old. It wasn’t a birthday present, it wasn’t a present at all. It was just that my dad was into photography and somehow I became the “owner” of a camera. My father collected cameras and lenses and sometimes I had to sit and pose for him, it was boring and I remember the lights were hot... and my older brothers were always teasing me. Somewhere there must be lots of photos of me looking grumpy.
Dad had a wooden box with coloured lens filters inside. Each one in its own little cardboard box protected by a tiny square of tissue paper. Occasionally he’d let me play with them, if I was very careful. I liked the orange and blues ones the best. I used to like looking through them and making the world turn a different colour. He also did his own developing... in the bathroom. He made special blockout panels to block the light from the windows. And I can remember watching him position the negatives in the enlarger and exposing the paper, by swiveling a little disk of red plastic at the base of the enlarger. I liked the red glow it made in the room and I liked watching the images come to life in the developing trays suspended precariously over the bath. It was pure magic. But sometimes it got hot in the bathroom and I was stuck there because I wasn’t allowed to open the door.
The year was 1966 when I got my first camera. I know the year because something very significant happened to me that year. It was the real reason I was given the camera, I suppose. My family embarked on a 14-month around the world trip. My dad was a professor of Engineering and he packed up mum and us three kids and took us off on an adventure of a lifetime. I left school in Australia in December 1966 and didn’t return until February 1968. The year of 1967 shaped my life. And it wasn’t an “around the world trip” that you’d picture these days with airports and hotels. The journey began on ship, across endless oceans via the Panama Canal and across the wild Atlantic. For part of the year I attended school in London, while my parents visited countries in Eastern Europe, behind the “Iron Curtain” and I was flown over to Stockholm, unaccompanied, to meet up with my parents for a tour of Northern Europe. I spent part of the year sleeping in a camper van and visiting people I didn't know.
My dad used to run slide nights when we returned home to Australia. I know it sounds boring, but they were so good that people actually used to ask for an invitation, even my teachers, much to my embarrassment at the time. Mum used to serve freshly ground coffee in special individual glass dripolators she’d bought in Brussels. And dad would bring out the Slivovitz he’d been given in (then) Czechoslovakia and serve it beautiful glasses they’d bought there. They would bring out the Gusle, a one-string instrument from somewhere in Eastern Europe and the Samovar from Russia. Our house was full of odd things from strange lands. Dad was a good photographer and he and mum had visited places that most people would only dream of going to, even now. I can still recite the anecdotes from their travels through Russia, as if they were my own.
...I thought I was very sophisticated having my own camera. It had it’s own leather case and strap and I used to have it hanging around my neck like a professional. I knew how to change the film and how to check that it loaded properly on the sprockets and to double check it was transporting properly.
My dad used to call my camera affectionately “the idiot camera”. Because any idiot could take a photo with it, he’d laugh... and I knew he didn’t mean me. It had Agfa’s magic eye technology. When you pressed the shutter lever halfway down a mechanical system set the correct aperture value and speed. A red dot in a viewfinder turned green when the if there was light enough to take a picture. You couldn’t really fail, it always took great pictures and if there wasn’t enough light, you couldn’t take the shot. I thought the red and green lights looked like Cadbury Rowntree’s Fruit Pastels. Strawberry and the Lime.
I don’t know whatever happened to the idiot camera. I just bought this one on Ebay... just to have.
*Postscript for Arcadia.
When I returned to Australia, naturally I was keen to catch up with my friends and teachers. I remember I bounded up to my favourite school teacher in the playground. She looked at me and said ”Hello Alison, I haven't seen you around lately, have you been sick?" It was like a slap in the face. I realised in an instant that although I had seen the world, the preceding year for her had stayed the same. That my absence was so insignificant to her. I had been on a magic carpet ride and for her time had stood still. I learned at an early age that other people's lives are about "them”, not about ”you”. And I also learned to keep my mouth shut about my travels. Some of my friends and even some of my teachers didn't believe that I had been overseas and accused me of lying. Some of my friends thought we were rich and resented me for it. We weren't. We saved for years before we went away and we lived with my Grandparents when we were in England. In Europe we camped and we never ate a restaurant. And it wasn't all fun. I had to walk to school by myself through the snow and sleet, slipping on black icy puddles, and make new friends. My brothers were older, so they made their own fun. At school I was plunged back into the Imperial system, when I had only just begun to master the decimal system in Australia. My parents left me for months at a time with my Grandparents, who were strangers to me.
It seems funny to me now, that my parents were happy to let me traipse off to school in a "foreign" country at the age of ten, when they weren't even living on the same land mass at the time. My parents sent my brothers off to Europe by themselves, with a map and bundle of cash. They were 15 and 17 at the time. Before the days of mobile phones and skype, but somehow they found their way around and returned home. We all grew up that year, it was the best year of my education.