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CAMERA REPAIR

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The objects we share our lives with can

have a rich history that echoes our own.

Tracy Calderasked photographers and

repairers about the camera equipment

that tugs at their heartstrings

I

n 1970 Don McCullin was
with a platoon of Cambodian
soldiers in the rice fields of
Prey Veng when the Khmer
Rouge opened fire. McCullin chucked
his camera (a Nikon F) on a nearby
ridge and hurled himself into the
water, his head almost submerged.
When he retrieved his camera
moments later, it bore the imprint
of a bullet from an AK-47. The
photographer found this exhilarating,
as he explains in his autobiography
Unreasonable Behaviour. ‘I thought to
myself, Boy, you’ve done it again,’ he
admits, ‘you’ve managed to get away
with it.’ Almost 50 years later this
battle-scarred Nikon was a key exhibit
in an exhibition of McCullin’s work
at Tate Britain.
I’ve long held the belief that
objects have a biographical history
that can sometimes be read in their
appearance. Just as we are
unavoidably shaped, marked and
transformed by our experiences, so
too are the objects we share our lives
with. ‘Every thing has its history as
every person has its own biography,’
echoes historian Asa Briggs. Two
people who obviously feel the same
are photographer Mark Nixon and
author (and photographer) Matthew
Hranek. Nixon’s book Much Loved is
a favourite of mine. It features

portraits of stuffed toys that have

been snuggled, squeezed and stroked

until they have literally been loved

to bits. Nixon describes these toys as,

‘repositories of hugs, of fears, of

hopes, of tears, of snots and smears’.

They are transitional objects that

ease the path from childhood to

adulthood. The pictures are both

celebratory and bittersweet.

Hranek, on the other hand,

selected watches as his muse. In his

book A Man and His Watch, he

recounts stories behind much-loved

timepieces, from the Omega JFK

wore during his presidential

inauguration to the Rolex Paul

Newman received from his wife,

Joanne Woodward, to mark their

25th wedding anniversary – the case

bears the words ‘Drive slowly’, a

reference to the motorbike accident

he was involved in in 1965. All 76

watches in the book were

photographed by Stephen Lewis who

used his ‘love of objects and life-long

practice of observation’ to reveal the

most essential qualities of each one.

To the author, the photographer

and the people who own these

watches they are more than just

objects, they have been worn on

the body, close to the heart.

If proof were needed thatobjects

have a biographical history

click

The in-house repairer

at the Camera Museum

fixes a Hasselblad

A 12 film back

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