The Box Brownie

Old cameras & a kind gesture.

Since I’ve been on substack, my passion for photography and film cameras has really sprung back to life. I’ve shot more rolls of film and written more on my film journal website (littletinhouses.com, if you’re wondering) than I have in years. I’ve flicked back through my old hard drive (some scary stuff on there mind… some terrible selfies), thinking about my journey with cameras and wondering if there’s anything I’d like to share with you all. I feel like I have all these new friends and a whole new audience to bore to death with my stories and photos. It’s great.

One story that jumped out to me was the time I started meddling with Kodak Brownies. If you’re unfamiliar, they’re an old style of camera, super basic, basically just a box and a lens. Fun to use, if you can get your hands on the right film or doctor a roll of 120 to fit.

Here’s what I wrote in 2018…

‘I'm really terrible for going on and on about cameras and film and photography to anyone that will listen. One of the perks of this is that when people find an old camera in their loft the first person they think of is me. I've got quite a good collection of old cameras now in various states of disrepair, and to be honest I never usually try and put any film through them. They're just nice to have. However, when somebody gave me this old Brownie a few weeks ago I thought I'd just go for it. I knew that you can put 120 film through as long as you have a 620 spool to collect the film on. Luckily, when I opened the camera up, there was a 620 spool sitting right there waiting for me. So I loaded it up and took it with me to the coast.’

At the time I was working in a speciality tea shop, and it was very very quiet, which meant I had a lot of time to chat with people. I can’t remember exactly, but I think the person I’m referring to here was somebody who worked across from me in the market (the tea shop was in an old indoor victorian market… the shops were more like permanent stalls), who had brought in the camera for me. The day they gave it to me I had it sitting on the back bench while I served customers, ready to come home with me. An old fella who always had a camera around his neck struck up a conversation with me and asked if he could take a picture of me with the Brownie. I told him about my big RZ67 (which I still use to this day) and we had a good chat about all things photography. A few weeks later, this came to my work in the post…

I will always regret those eyebrows.

This always stuck with me…. it was such a nice gesture. To go through the effort of printing the photo, and sending it to me with a handwritten letter. I saw the man a few more times after that over the next year or so until I eventually left the shop. Over the years, there have been a few times when I’ve photographed a building or an interior that I thought the owner might quite like a print of and told myself I’d post one out to them as a surprise, but I’ve always forgotten. Writing this post has reminded me just how much a small gesture like that can mean to someone, and that I should probably make a point to get around to doing that. In fact, I’m writing a reminder in my diary as we speak.

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You can find my website here - Amy & Fox, and my film photography journal here - Little Tin Houses.