I submit a photo that, technically, isn't LF. I also, respectfully, maintain that it
is a LF photo--via spirit, intent & instinct. Some context.
In 1973 I graduated from art school, having studied painting. Tho the school had a photography course and many of my friends were photographers, photography made zero impact on me. It went in one ear and didn't even come out the other.
A degree in painting qualifies one for nothing. There are no job listings for painters in the want ads. I know--I looked and there weren't any.
Good Oil person needed. Must be skilled in impasto. Salary commensurate with brushwork. Watercolor a plus. Benefits and overtime. Great Opportunity for the right dauber.
So I found work at a firm which did typography, commercial photography and reproduction photography. There I learned a bit of this and a bit of that but mainly I spent 2 years inside of a camera with it's own built-in darkroom, about as ULF as one can get. Before modern copiers, documents were copied via repro camera copying. I operated a Statmaster camera (and other Process Cameras). Huge 4-foot-extension bellows, huge & razor-sharp lenses, huge ground glass--like 24" x 36".
The 'subject' was held in vertical copy frames. It was all manual.
The inside was a self-contained B&W darkroom. Steel sinks. Red light. Paper and film. Imagine being 2" tall and working inside the back of a Speed Graphic 40 hours a week. It was kinda like that.
I spent two years with my hands in the soup. There are still flecks of silver under the skin on my fingers.
I still thought nothing about photography as a medium. Tho sometimes when things were slow, I'd take pictures of co-workers with the big cameras. Litho film, paper negs or PMT (photo-mechanical transfer). Wish I'd saved some. Faces larger than life-size, right from the camera. Like immense mug shots, the poor subject standing bathed in glaring 1000 watt buzzing lamps from both sides.
Then I moved to NYC to play in punk-rock bands, tho 'punk' was only a tag. It was just real simple, basic rock n' roll noise. Lots of fun. Many of the band kids were 'also's.' They played guitar... but ALSO photographed/painted/made movies/wrote prose/sculpted...etc.
One day at a yard sale there was a little camera. I knew nothing about cameras except for the ones I'd operated at my job. But it was $3 so I bought it. It looked cool & ancient. Something about it fascinated me--probably the three dollar pricetag!. Argus Model A.
I shot one roll and had it drugstore-developed. Every light in my noggin went on. Photography had finally hit my brain, all-at-once & bigtime. I realized I'd already learned everything necessary to develop & print my own photos. I became instantly, totally obessed. Soon I found a 5th-hand enlarger and had turned a perfectly good closet into a pretty awful phonebooth of a darkroom.
NYC was one vast photo waiting to be made. It was like a drug, 24/7. Pretty soon I forgot about bands and just wanted to photograph the world.
The thing is, though, right from the start I thought of my Argus as--and used it as--a view camera. I didn't know any better. But soon I did 'know better' and acquired tons of gear, read every scrap of info about LF & view cameras.
Looking today at the few pix left from my Argus, I like 'em better than many taken later, after I'd come to KNOW STUFF and own the serious gear. I even like the vignetting. Dollar store Eugene Atget. If Atget owned an Argus he'd have taken 36 times more photos than he did. Just imagine!
Eventually my Argus A vanished into wherever.
But! Recently I found anther Argus A at a yard sale. Argus A's are inflation-proof!! They still cost $3!!! You can bet your last gold Three Dollar Bill that I'll use my new-ancient Argus A pretty soon. Few cameras vignette as consistently. No other view camera is as affordable or vague.
End of context.
NEW YORK WINDOW, 1980 Extra-ultra-compact-mini LF negative.
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