Collectors and others

There are two types of people who retain old technology.

Our photographer, as you may have gathered from these pages, has quite a collection of old film cameras.  But “collection” is not quite the right word; it implies an organization, a theme, an intention that in his case is absent.  Some of his cameras are old workhorses; some were acquired for specific projects; some just happened; and some are gifts from people who do not use film any more, and found out that he did.

All of his function, or are at least repairable in principle.  He uses them.  He would see little point in acquiring a camera (or any other piece of gear) that didn’t work.

But his attitude is not universal.  Consider a friend of ours, a professor of Physics at a four-year college of respectable age.  His office is crowded with examples of old technology: Kodak Graphic press cameras, fountain pens, old electrical equipment.  We think he may have started with the superseded electrical demonstrations one always finds in old Physics Department storerooms, polished wood and fine metalwork, and went on from there.  He does not use any of it.

To highlight this difference in attitude, consider the idea of a reproduction.  Suppose someone were to offer a reproduction of a Contax rangefinder of days of yore, the competitor of the Leica our photographer has.  It would be built to the original specifications and be fully functional, but constructed here a couple of decades into the twenty-first century.  Our photographer would be very interested; the Leica shows aspects and behavior he never suspected before buying it, and the Contax would in all probability do the same.  (The cost would have to be reasonable, of course.)

A true collector would dismiss the idea.  It would not be a true Contax, and he would be tempted to use the word “fake.”  Serious collectors check to see that all the serial numbers match, and seek if possible a continuous history of ownership from leaving the factory.  At best a reproduction could be put on display in a place where it might be damaged or stolen, allowing the (much more valuable) real object to be kept safe.

Which attitude is better?  Well, our photographer’s has a certain practicality about it, and it does seem proper that an object built to take pictures be used to do so.  On the other hand, we admit to a certain feeling when someone points out, “This is the very camera used by Henri Cartier-Bresson in Spain in 1939.”  There’s something about the actual object.

(Not everyone feels that way.  One of our older friends went on a cruise in the Mediterranean several years ago, the first time he’d been there.  He liked much of it, but finally came to the conclusion that it would be better to clear away most of the Greek and Roman rubble and put the land to better use.)

We can think of a sort of historical-practical reason to keep old things around, not used but in a museum or some protected place.  There could arise questions of just how something worked, or looked, or handled, or what it was made of, that aren’t answered by existing documentation.  Science is always coming up with new ways of examining the past, and it pays to have objects of known provenence to look at.  After all, we can now use the DNA in prehistoric bones to reconstruct social relations of humans and Neanderthals.  It would be foolish to rule out further marriages of science and history.