Member's Day: 29th November 2017

Thanks to everyone who came along to the member's day on Wednesday 29th November!
We were pretty much making it up as we went along, not being able to predict how many people would turn up. As it was, we had a nice mix of 'old hands' like Mim and Lucy who both came back to UCA for the day (lovely to see you) and new people, including quite a few from the applicant day which was going on at the same time. If you were one of them and are reading this hello and welcome!

Conversation on the finer points technique and a table full of alt. process images. This is what we're all about!

Special thanks to Alana, who was kind enough not only to bring lots of samples of her work along but also to do some practical darkroom work on her current project: liquid light emulsion printed on photographic waste, pre-coated with gold leaf. The images look great, and it was fascinating to see the images coming out of the darkroom during the afternoon.

We also had a play with the Afghan Box Camera (I'll rig it with an internal webcam so people can see what's going on inside), the Spitfire Lens camera and the Camera Lucida. - using that is almost as hard as reading Barthes for the first time!;-)

We all had a good time, it was nice to have a session with a big social element and I've learned a lot so the next one should be even better.  See you again!

Milk Glass Positive - The Opalotype

Oh the joys of hunting for tutt - sorry, "treasure" in fields! One of my favourite things about summertime..

This latest find has reminded me not to make assumptions and pay full attention when looking at old photographs. - I almost didn't bother to snap up a very rare gem because I wasn't looking properly.

I found this rather odd looking picture on an autojumble stall for (ahem) not very much money. I rather liked the frame: a concoction of very dark red velvet, gold-painted moulding and black outer edge but almost dismissed the image. There is so much hand work and colouring that it barely looks like a photographic image. The background is very white too. Much whiter than one sees on an albumen or carbon print of this vintage. This and the colouring made me wonder if it was a more modern reproduction. The back was loose (a good thing, as you always want to get in and look at it anyway) but here there were no clues, just lots of dust and spider droppings!

Anyway, I decided I liked the frame enough to buy it even if the picture turned out to be rubbish. Here it is:

It's quite large by nineteenth century standards. The actual image is about 6 x 8 inches- (a shade under whole plate size) and the outer frame is around 12 x 15 inches. The  back practically fell off to reveal this:

- Not very pretty! Sadly there are no labels or other written notes but the white area is a thick sheet of glass. The image is directly printed onto the other side. It is a photograph but with a lot of hand-applied colour and other detail work.  What we have here is an Opalotype.

The Opalotype, or Opaltype, sometimes known as a milk glass positive is an 1850s process, patented by Glover and Boyd in 1857 in Liverpool.  The method varies, either a silver gelatin or carbon emulsion being the commonest, but collodion could also be used. They aren't made in camera, but in a darkroom from a conventional negative. Multiple prints are therefore no problem.  Rarer than Ambrotypes , Opalotypes are very often hand coloured, like this one.

What's interesting is the skill and extend of the hand-work. There's some very subtle colouring to the skin tones and the eye is very well done.

While the face is still pretty 'photographic' the body has been over-worked to the point where it appears to be almost entirely a drawing:

This results in a rather odd appearance- neither one thing nor the other, which is what gave me pause originally.  I generally don't like visible hand-work in photographs; the modernist in me regards it as sullying the purity of the lens image but now I've cleaned her up and properly studied her, I'm very fond of this lady. - I just WISH there was a clue as to who she was!

Daguerreotype - the Everest of processes.

"In 1840 virtually everything that I love about photography was already there"..  - Chuck Close

I have joined the ranks of an exclusive group. Apparently more people have stood on the summit of Mount Everest than have made Daguerreotypes.

I've just come back from Mike Robinson's three day workshop at Lacock and I'm flushed with success and giddy with excitement at the wonderful, sparkling, miraculous plates we all made. I've been waiting for over a year to do this; (last summer's scheduled session didn't happen) but it was well worth the wait.  I didn't think I could get more excited than at the 2013 wet plate collodion workshop, but apparently I can!

There were four of us on the course: Myself, Matt Lindsey (very glad I nudged him into coming along) Debi Heath, a photography student from the Midlands and Dr. Hans Gummersbach, a Daguerreotype collector who was back for his second workshop.  Mike only takes a maximum of six people at a time so there's enough time for everyone to do every stage.

Lacock Abbey was the home of William Henry Fox Talbot and now houses the Fox Talbot Museum.  The curator, Roger Watson is very active in hosting workshops and other activities connected with all aspects of photography from children's sun printing sessions right up to advanced workshops on historic processes.  There is an irony in the fact that Daguerre and Talbot were rivals, both announcing and claiming primacy in their inventions of photographic processes in the same year: 1839.  However I hope Talbot wasn't spinning in his grave as we explored the wonders of his rival's process.

There isn't sufficient space here to go into the full details of making a Daguerreotype but I'll give a bit of an overview.  The photographs are made on thin copper plates which have been plated with pure silver. The silver layer is extremely thin and needs to be perfectly smooth and clean to take the image.

Mike Robinson's "Century Darkroom" improved plates are made to very high standards (the same material is used by NASA) with the plating apparently mirror-perfect straight out of the box.  However, close examination shows a number of defects: tiny dings and scratches which would spoil the image. A couple had been roughly handled by customs inspectors when Mike arrived in the UK and bore some nasty gouges but even these were still useable.
Preparation is laborious. The first stage is to polish the surface manually using very fine metal polish on a microfibre cloth. Mike is meticulous in his methods and we all stuck to his recommended practice of rubbing each plate for 50 strokes before revolving it a quarter turn and repeating. Once the plate had been rotated three or four times (a total of 600-800 strokes) it was carefully cleaned of all polish residue, de-greased, buffed on an electric polisher before being ready for coating..

..wrong!  There are still two more polishing stages. After the electric buffer the plate needs a further 200 strokes from a velvet-coated board impregnated with jeweller's rouge. This is then followed by 200 more with a second board covered in lamp black. All this results in a plate which is as close to perfectly smooth and free from marks as possible.

Mike Robinson buffing a plate. It's held on a small wooden block in his left hand

Finally the plate is ready to be sensitised. Firstly it is exposed to the fumes of iodine in a special box which controls the 'dose' precisely. The plate is turned 180 degrees part way through to ensure even coverage. When it emerges, the silver has taken on a yellowish tinge.

The second sensitiser is applied via a similar box which exposes the surface to bromine fumes. Bromine and iodine are both pretty dangerous chemicals but the box design ensures that they don't escape during the process. the bromine treatment turns the plate from yellow to a pinker, almost purple colour.
Finally the plate is re-exposed to iodine under safelighting for a brief time. This erases the effects of previous exposure and makes the plate light-sensitive. It's transferred to the plate holder in the darkroom ready for use.

Putting the plate into the top of the iodine box. Note the sucker-handle: a useful tool.

Unlike wet-plate collodion, the Daguerreotype plate stays sensitive for some time: several hours at least. We therefore didn't need to rush or to have set up the camera in advance. Each of us in turn had the chance to wander the Abbey grounds and find a suitable setup. The sight of a small band of people toting an ancient mahogany half-plate camera and tripod around bemused most of the tourists who had come to this National Trust property.  I think many thought we were just part of the entertainment!

For my first plate I chose a corner of the botanical garden.  Daguerreotypes are superb at rendering fine detail and many early examples pack as much subject matter in as they can to exploit this.  There's also a tradition of early images of agriculture and this seems a suitable picture. The ladder was just as the gardeners had left it but I liked the reference to at least two of Talbot's most famous images:

WHF Talbot: Haystack   probably 1841

WHF Talbot:  The Ladder  1844

P. Renn: The potting shed, Botanical Garden, Lacock Abbey. June 2017

Matt was keen to make a much more direct homage to Talbot's work, re-creating his Open Door picture of 1844.

The door is in the Abbey and the room behind it is currently used as a storeroom. Roger Watson kindly fetched the key and as he handed it to Matt he told us it was the original, as used by Talbot himself...
Whoah... Whenever or not you believe in 'aura' or 'vibes' or whatever you may want to call it, there is something significant about holding and using something which was owned and used by an important historical figure.

Talbot himself used this key.   Matt feels the aura.

Standing in front of the door once it was opened was an equally resonant experience. To be, in effect inside the space of one of the world's most famous photographs and re-creating the framing and viewpoint used was almost eerie.  Did Roger have a broom? - of course he did:

Matt sets up his shot for the open door.

...and the finished plate

Matt's picture, being a Daguerreotype is reversed from Talbot's, and from reality. The real door has its hinge on the left. The camera we used had an optional reversing prism attachment so he could have 'corrected' it to look like the original, but he didn't. Matt's version is true to the reality of the Daguerre process while using the actual subject matter of Talbot. (Discuss...)

On the second day, Matt and I decided we both wanted to make self portraits. Normally I'm not overly keen on pictures of myself but the chance to be immortalised as a Daguerreotype couldn't be passed up. I helped Matt set his up and he mine. Here is Matt's:

I decided to make mine a bit more pretentious, posing with my LSC 10x8" camera in front of some stone pillars in the grounds of the Abbey. I'm holding my Watkins "Infallible" exposure meter from 1893 and trying to look like a serious photographer despite the shirt:

Here's the result:

P. Renn:  Self Portrait, Lacock Abbey. June 2017

Mike had to work especially hard to calculate the exposure for this picture. Daguerreotype plates are not very sensitive to reddish tones such as my sunburnt face and the mahogany camera. They are also poor at rendering greens like foliage. Mike though is a master of his craft and compensated for this with a 40CC yellow filter on the camera and a three stop exposure increase. (Daguerreotype plates are roughly ISO 0.3 or 8.5 stops less than ISO100) This gave us an exposure time of 10 seconds at f/4.

So far I've not mentioned the processing of the exposed plates. This famously involves mercury fumes so great care has to be taken with this highly poisonous metal.  Mike has a purpose-made fuming box with its own heater for the mercury and double seal slides to keep the fumes safely inside. It sits in a portable fume hood with extractor fan just to be doubly safe.  The plate can be inspected through a red window during development. Times were around 4 to 6 minutes depending on temperature.

Mike using the mercury fuming box to develop a plate

Once developed, the image can be removed from the plate holder and fixed in normal light. the fixer is standard 'hypo' - Sodium Thiosulphate solution. This dissolves the unexposed silver halides and the image 'pops' suddenly as it emerges from the fog. All that now remains is to gild the plate.

The gilding stand is set perfectly level so the solution will sit on it without running off. The gilding solution contains gold chloride and sodium thiosulphate plus a couple of others and forms an amalgam of gold and silver iodide on the plate which increases its intensity and permanence. The solution is poured onto the plate, then heated with an alcohol lamp flame for several minutes. It's then washed in distilled water and dried.

Matt adds gold chloride to his self portrait on the gilding stand

The final image is still very fragile. We made 'passepartout' mounts in traditional style to protect them from glass, paper cutouts and card, edged with black tape.  Here is Mike's test/demo plate with the four of us looking like a rock band:

Daguerreotypists:  Peter Renn,  Debi Harry-sorry- Heath,  Hans Gummersbach,   Matt Lindsey.

We all signed the back of the plate which Roger kept for the Lacock collection. I'm not sure if it will be kept for as long as the more famous images in the museum but it's nice to feel part of history.

One of our fellow participants on the workshop was Hand Gummersbach. Hans is a collector of Daguerreotypes, owning around 500 original plates and his knowledge and enthusiasm are apparently boundless.  I learned a lot from him, not just about 19th century Daguerreotypes but also an insight into the world of the specialist collector. I'd love to spend more time learning about this- hopefully we can persuade him to come and talk to us at UCA.  Hans made a very interesting plate on the Sunday: a view of the Pack Horse bridge in Lacock village. This is very old and beautiful and great subject for a Daguerreotype. Hans had in mind a peaceful quiet image of the stonework, reflections and the trees which surround it.
What we'd forgotten was that Sunday morning was the time of the Lacock Road Run. Hundreds of people were running across the bridge as part of their 1km, 5km, 10km or half marathon races! Spectators and marshals were all over the place as this normally quiet spot was part of the course.  Hans made a plate anyway, stopping the lens down to get an exposure time of 60 seconds. At that time the runners weren't in the frame for long enough to register, even as a blur but a child with a small white dog did enter the frame about half way through the exposure, the result was a beautiful picture with a wonderfully motion-blurred but recognisable dog and a pair of human feet.

Hans and Mike set up the camera despite the runners pounding through the frame. I don't have a copy of Hans's finished picture - I'll ask him and add it if I can.

For my final plate I wanted to try for some blue. Heavily overexposed areas on Daguerreotypes become solarised and exhibit a delicate robin's egg blue. This is quite beautiful even though the original Daguerreotypists regarded it as an amateurish technical fault.  Mike usually corrects the tendency for overexposed skies with a yellow filter but he worked out the exposure and processing (over-expose and under-develop) so I could solarise the sky on my picture.

This is the archway from the garden to the side of the Abbey. The tree and stonework have solarised haloes around them and the sky is a delicate blue. The original plate is so beautiful I almost shed a tear when I first saw it:

P. Renn: Lacock Abbey. June 2107

Looking back at the snapshots of the weekend everyone has a great big smile in almost every one:

We all had a truly remarkable time and the power of photography to move and inspire never fails.  Huge thanks to Mike Robinson - now Doctor Mike Robinson (congratulations on your PhD Mike!) whose patience and manifest love of his subject were an inspiration. I hope to do it again!  Roger Watson's apparently infinite enthusiasm and patience are also very much appreciated- Thank you.

Debi Heath and Hans Gummersbach - It was lovely to meet you and I hope I see you again soon.

For more information on Mike and his Century Darkroom see:
http://www.centurydarkroom.com

If you've not been to Lacock Abbey and the Fox Talbot Museum it's highly recommended. See:
https://foxtalbot.co.uk

The Daguerreian Society describes itself as "dedicated to the history, science and art of early photographic processes"
http://www.daguerre.org

The International artist community of the contemporary Daguerreotype is a very interesting site: http://cdags.org

UCA staff - as you've never seen them before.

On May 30th I ran an Ambrotype demo day for the benefit of UCA colleagues who've expressed an interest in the process - or just wanted to know what I was doing when seen wearing a big black apron and smelling vaguely of ether..
Despite being busy with show preparation (there's never a good time to schedule these things and this was the 'least worst' day) eight people showed up and everyone sat for a portrait.

We had a lot of fun and I got to share this magical, alchemical process with some more people. To all those who came, thank you for making it such fun and I'll give you your original plates as soon as I've varnished them for you. In the meantime here you all are:

Anne's healthy outdoor tan has recorded as much darker, due to collodion's relative insensitivity to the red end of the spectrum.

Alana's inspired lace mask suits the patterns of the process artefacts beautifully.

Dylan channeling Johnny Depp in 'Dead Man'

Lisa's hair shines to the point of solarising. Beautiful!

Matt wins the award for Most Terrifying Stare in a Collodion Picture.

Rosie looking cool in another beautiful plate...

Dylan again, more Oscar Wilde this time.  Part of the emulsion came off the plate on this one, thankfully only at the bottom of the image.

Alana on a whole plate (6.5"x8.5") Just superb.

Kelly Marie's plate has taken a little longer to prepare - worth the wait though!

A great day with some interesting conversations: The process throws up fascinating insights into what photography was, and still is. I find it connects me with the fundamentals of photography in a very different way from other methods.

Special thanks to Dylan and Alana for all your hard work, especially the clearing up! - Much appreciated.

                                                                        Peter Renn

Who was Martha Colver?

In the summer of 2016, we found a beautiful ambrotype at a local car boot sale.  Exceptionally bright and very well preserved it shows an extremely elderly lady in all her best mid-Victorian finery.  The most exciting aspect of the photograph is on the back though. On the mount someone has annotated by hand “Martha Colver Aged 80 years” and beneath that, possibly in a different hand “Taken July 14 1859”.

So the little old lady who was seated in front of the camera when that plate was exposed, and whose bright little face still looks out at us today was born in about 1779, probably got married at around the time of the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) and raised her family between then and the Battle of Waterloo (1815) when she would have been about 35.

The back of the frame and mount as found. The information on the back is as precious as the image

So often the people in ‘found’ ambrotypes and cartes de visite are anonymous.  Perhaps if the images are inscribed or annotated they are more likely to be preserved within the family, particularly with the recent intense interest in genealogy, and so less likely to fall into the hands of collectors.  With just those little titbits of information to go on – a name, and a date – I decided to see how much I could find out about Martha Colver.

As well as a date, the ambrotype also gave us a rough geographical location.  The cartouche on the mount is from a photographer called Atkinson’s, of 103 Devonshire Street, Sheffield.

The most useful resource for this kind of research is census data, which I accessed though a subscription to Ancestry.co.uk.   The earliest published census is that for 1841, although the data on it is fairly limited (just name, age, gender, occupation and place of birth).  Later censuses taken every ten years from 1851 onwards include ‘relationship to head of household’ which is the most useful detail for unraveling relationships.

As the annotation on Martha’s photograph indicates it was taken in 1859, and that she was already 80 years old, I decided to look for her on the 1851 census, making the working assumption that she lived somewhere in or around Sheffield.

Bingo!  There she was, on the first set of results, in Grimesthorpe, a village near Sheffield.  The census says that she was aged 70 and a widow, living with her 30 year old son Edward and two servants.  Edward Colver’s occupation is given as “Builder & Farmer of 32 acres employing one indoor labourer”. 

So perhaps Martha was not born in 1779.  If she was 70 in 1851 then she was born in 1781.   It’s likely that she didn’t know how old she was, or exactly when she’d been born.  Registration of births, marriages and deaths was only compulsory from 1837 and despite her photographed finery she may not have been well-to-do, or particularly well educated and she may not even have been literate.

I tried to find out some more about her.

On the 1841 census I found Martha immediately again.  She was living in Grimesthorpe, but this time with Robert Colver whose age is given as 65 years old.  Martha is shown as 55, which would make her date of birth 1786.  I think it is safe to assume that Robert is her husband, although this early census doesn't actually give us that information.  Robert's occupation is recorded as “Indp” which is census-shorthand for “independent” or “of independent means”.  In other words, Robert has a private income from savings or investments.  This doesn't necessarily mean that he is wealthy, but it does mean that he doesn't need to work.

We can probably assume that Robert's private wealth was reasonably substantial though, because in 1861 I found Martha again, still in Grimesthorpe, but now her occupation is given as “Fund Holder”, which again means that she has private wealth.  Mary Holmes, her unmarried grandaughter (29) is living with her, and Martha is now listed as 81 years old (b.1780), which ties in more closely with the inscription on the ambrotype.  Martha’s private wealth was not referred to on the 1851 census because it would have been assumed that she was supported by her son who was treated as Head of the Household.

There is no record of Martha on the 1871 census, which is not very surprising, whichever version of her age you believe.  A search of FreeBMD.org lists the death of a Martha Colver in the Sheffield area in the first quarter of 1862.  She would have been between and 76 and 82 years old.

note the wedding ring picked out by applying gold paint to the plate.

I wondered what happened to Martha's son Edward with whom she was living in 1851.  I found a record of his marriage towards the end of 1851, and in 1861 he was farming 110 acres in Butterthwaite, a small village now almost under the M1 on the outskirts of Sheffield.  Living with him were his wife Elizabeth, their 4 year old daughter Clara, two servants and an 18 year old called Robert Colver, described as Edward's nephew. 

I could now assume that Martha and her husband must have had at least three children – Edward, a daughter who was Mary Holmes's mother, and another son who was Robert Colver (junior)'s father.  I returned to the 1851 census to search for Robert at the age of 8, and found him with his family – father William, a mason and builder, mother Charlotte, five brothers and a servant – living at 10, Nags Head Yard in Sheffield.

I now had a basic family tree for Martha, and using one of the search facilities in Ancestry.co.uk which allow you to match your research with that of other people, I got the most astonishing breakthrough.  On a vast and detailed family tree where some diligent researcher has added copies of photographs, I suddenly found the familiar face of Martha Colver looking out at me again.  At first glance the image was identical to the ambrotype which had been on my desk throughout this search, and I wondered initially whether the other researcher had owned it at some point.  But then I realised that the images are not identical.  Martha's hands are positioned slightly differently, her head is at a very slightly different angle, and her shawl and sleeves are draped slightly differently.  So when she sat in Atkinson's studios in July 1859, at least two plates were made.

The version on Ancestry.co.uk. A grab of a jpg of a scan of a photograph of an ambrotype..

Thanks to that other researcher, what I now know is as follows.  The bright little fierce looking lady in the image was born Martha Swift, probably towards the end of 1779.   She became Robert Colver's second wife in February 1806 (four months after Trafalgar).  Between 1806 and 1813 Robert and Martha had six children – a daughter, Hannah, and five sons, William, Joseph, Robert, James (died in infancy) and Thomas.  Joseph died in 1816 (just 6 years old) and then a further son, Edward was born in 1820.

Both William and Edward seem to have traded as builders and masons, and there was a Colver’s Yard in Grimesthorpe which may have been connected with the family.

Robert Colver – the grandson of Martha who was living with his uncle Edward in 1861 - became a leading figure in Sheffield; head of the Cutlers Company, and a partner of the steel firm Jones & Colver.

Martha Colver is buried in the churchyard of St Mary's, Ecclesfield, just outside Sheffield and her grave seems to be marked, and extant.

The other researcher seems to have traced William Colver's line, so I'd like to think that the image on Ancestry.co.uk is of the ambrotype which he was given as Martha's eldest son.  Perhaps there were more than two plates – perhaps Martha presented one to each of her surviving children in 1859 (Hannah, William, Thomas and Edward).  Without a monumental amount more research, it is impossible to deduce to whom “our” image belonged or how it fetched up in a car-boot sale in Hampshire in 2016, but at least we now know a little more about Martha and her family.

Finally, as a footnote, what about Atkinson's, the photographers?  References to Atkinson's Atelier Photographie (“replete with every convenience”) can found on the internet.  Devonshire Street in Sheffield city centre still exists, but 103 cannot be identified (although it is very likely that the street has been renumbered since 1859). 

An internet source giving a list of Sheffield photographers and the trade directories in which they advertised suggests that Edward Atkinson operated from 103 Devonshire Street in 1864, and the 1861 census shows him living at 54 Cobden View Road with his wife Sarah, and their children.  He is described as a “Photographic Printer and Publisher”. 

American Civil War photography and medicine blog entry

Hi guys,

Please find below an entry I recently did for a travel grant I received last year. I talk a little about my work, but also a broad context of one of my case studies.

http://www.collegeofphysicians.org/histmed/however-human-i-am-allowed-to-be/

Best wishes,

Erin

Kamra-e-Faoree - Building an Afghan Box Camera in Hampshire.

Response to my showing images of the Kabul street photographers and the work of the Afghan Box Camera Project  (see the post on 03/02/2017)  was great: "This guy is a photography god!" was the verdict on Qalam Nabi as we watched the film of him at work.  To have our own Kamra-e-Faoree ("instant camera") at UCA would have lots of possibilities so I set about building one.

I started by making a design drawing before pulling out old bits of plywood from the back of the workshop.  The ABCP website has a set of building instructions as a free download but as all the cameras are different there are no fixed plans as such, just general dimensions and useful advice on how to make  things like light-proofed doors work. If you fancy building one I'll make my plans available.

I'm trying to keep to the spirit of the thing as much a possible, so no fine dovetailed joints or polished cherrywood panels; just simple, sturdy construction from whatever materials are to hand.

Here's the basic box carcass: reclaimed 6mm and 8mm plywood. Strips of wood around the top reinforce the edge and form part of the light-seal for the lid.

Old workshop truism:  You can never have too many clamps..

The biggest expense so far: 50p on a pair of black trousers from the RSPCA shop's sale rail. - Perfect access sleeve material.

still one leg spare...

The access sleeve goes into a hole in the side door. This hinges downwards for loading chemical trays etc.

One of the joys of the Kamra-e-faoree is the embellishment. Every one is an expression of its owner's ideas and tastes. Much of the fun in this project will be finding bits and pieces to add to the overall effect.  This rather fine brass sun shape came from a tea light holder. It will make a distinctive surround for the lens.

The rear door doubles as a red safelight window for the 'darkroom' end of the box. A scrap of red lighting gel and a bit of glass from a waste ambrotype glass plate, plus odd bits of wood framing. Note the strips around the inner edge of the hole and the outer edge of the door. These ensure a lightproof seal when closed.

There is also a drawer for odds and ends. The Afghan photographers work out on the streets so the camera is used as a carrying box for everything. This will take scissors, wrapping paper, negative prints etc. etc.

An important part is the tripod bush. The whole camera is quite heavy so a piece of thick steel plate was used, positioned at the point of balance so as to reduce the strain on fitting and tripod head. It has both 1/4" UNC and 3/8"UNC threads.

Tripod bush plate is screwed and glued into place with epoxy resin

Once the box was constructed, it was time for the clever bit: The sliding focusing plate. This moves back and forth on a pair of rods to adjust focus but also to be accessible. The photographer has to pull the plate back to load the paper negative, but return the plate the the focus point afterwards. This is done with the simplest of devices: a clip attached to the focussing pole:

The focus plate runs on two bits of copper plumbing pipe. the rod on the left is the focus pole..

The focus plate revolves on many models "to allow landscape or portrait formats". I can't see why this complex solution is better than simply using a larger square ground glass but I've made ours revolve in the authentic manner. The focus plate also takes a frame to hold the paper in place.

Lovely image of the workshop on the ground glass.  (I've inverted the picture here)

The cameras are made in every colour and finish imaginable. They are intended to be visible and attractive to potential portrait customers. Red and gold seemed nice and exotic. 

There's a spyhole on the top for viewing the process of development. This is made from a 35mm film canister as an eyepiece with a lightproof slide below.

The lens is an old 5inch Dallmeyer enlarging lens. Not too slow at f/4.5 and easily capable of making an image of 5"x4". Most of the images made with these cameras are passport size but many can make bigger prints if the customer wants them. This lens is probably around 100 years old and just the sort of thing an Afghan camera builder would use.

I thought that brass sun would look good...

Inside the box, the trays for developer and fixer are old ice cream boxes. I seem to be unable to use them without splashing chemistry around so they sit in another tray made of clear acrylic. It saves mopping out the box!  There's a simple cardboard box to hold the paper stock. It has to be opened and closed with one hand so it's held down with velcro to stop it moving about.

Inside the camera. from let to right: The back door with red window,  The dev and fix trays in their splash tray, the ground glass frame, the paper box and the contrast filter just behind the lens.

The copy stand is ingenious. It holds the negative in front of the lens at the right distance for re-photographing it the same size. It hinges out of the way for the first exposure and then is quickly flipped into position. A second hinge on the top side serves as a latch. Some are plain pieces of rough timber  but others are more fancy and decorative.  I had an old barometer carcass which I couldn't quite bear to throw away. This yielded a nice carved focus plate and a good thick support arm.

The Afghan photographers use the natural adhesion of the wet negative to fix it to the copy stand but over here we have to worry the health and safety implications of dripping water on the floor especially if we use it indoors. Therefore I've covered the neg stand in a piece of old biscuit tin with magnets to hold things in place.

The final embellishment might look silly but it's actually quite useful. I noticed a few of the cameras I researched had little 'washing lines' attached. If it's too windy to lay prints out to dry, hanging them on a line is the answer.  When you're working on the street, everything needs to be self-contained.

The finished camera. - blinking in the sunlight with test images attached.

I've done a few basic tests with the camera and it works, though there are still a few odd details to sort out. I'll post again when it's fully signed off and open for business.

Similar cameras are (or were) used in other parts of the world. The "Cuban Polaroid" works on the same principle but the internal arrangement is different. In Brazil the camera is known as a "Lambe-lambe" or "Camera Minutera" and there are variants in other counties too. Here's one in the Las Dallias Hippy Market in Ibiza:

Thanks to Lucy Jarvis for this picture, made in 2016 so the camera is still current. albeit for "retrato portrait" Note the flashgun!

Sadly the rise of digital and the 'selfie' have rendered them all but extinct. - Except for the seemingly dozens(!) being built by people like me who want to explore and pay tribute to a different photographic experience. As Joni Mitchell said "you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone"...