These images are from a project using a Deardorff 8×10 large-format view camera and light-sensitive paper for the negative. The roots of this process date back to Talbot's Salt Print of 1835, where light-sensitive paper was used to make a negative, then contact printed to make a positive print. Photographing with a large format camera is quite slow. Not only does the setup for the portrait and the recording of the images take time, but the sensitized paper is about 1/16 as sensitive as the 100 iso setting on modern cameras. The extra time I gain with my subject creates a space for us, photographer and subject, to make images with a different depth than when using modern equipment. The process also reveals the impact of the unseen "third actor," the camera, in the portrait-making process and its effect on
This 8x10 Deardorff view camera was manufactured in Chicago in the late 60's. I came to this camera while helping to take apart a very old commercial photo studio located in a building just north of the Merchandise Mart. The studio was an absolute museum, complete with an 11x14 horizontal wooden copy camera and a darkroom that had an 8x10 enlarger that looked like Robby the Robot. This camera was the last of the usable cameras in the studio and I used it many time for work before the digital revolution took hold. The kit came with two lenses, 12 and 14 inch Kodak Commercial, which I still use today. The shutters have long since stopped working. So I use my homemade "Armstrong Shutter" to make the exposures and a velvet-covered ping pong paddle to block the front of the lens when the dark slide is removed.
I was so fortunate to have been introduced to Jack Deardorff, the last member of the camera-making family. In the late 90s, Jack refurbished this camera for me and gave my big baby new bellows. It was a fantastic experience to walk with him through his storerooms while he told me fascinating stories about each item we encountered. He had a lot of neat stuff, and I wished we had more time.
