An Old Portable Camera

I didn’t stage this. The camera was already set up for a workshop in the park, a portable wooden box on a tripod, complete with focusing cloth and a ground glass screen. What drew me wasn’t the device itself—it was the reaction it triggered. The boy shielding his eyes, squinting into the past through a lens designed long before smartphones flattened photography into a gesture.

The composition is dense in its centre, almost chaotic with overlapping limbs and sneakers. But the tripod anchors it. The machine, primitive and precise, holds its ground in a circle of discovery. I kept the perspective low and frontal to emphasise its presence as a subject, not just a prop. Exposure was tricky—the midday light threw harsh shadows and unpredictable highlights off the brass and lacquer. I let it overexpose slightly on the reflective surfaces, preferring to keep the faces and hands correctly lit.

Technically, it’s not perfect. There’s some loss of detail in the background trees, and the contrast pushes against clipping in spots. But none of that matters much here. What mattered was documenting a moment of encounter—analogue wonder in a digital age, unfiltered and genuine.

This is the kind of image that doesn’t ask to be explained. It just shows what happens when the past is made visible again.