Me And Photography (Part 1) - How it Began

 

Agfa Box B-2

The shortwave-radio
nerd

Photography? Me?
Sometimes I wonder how I got involved with photography. The dominating passion of my early youth was radio and electronics (besides plane and ship modelling, stamp collecting, football, table tennis, books...). That didn't leave much room for other pastimes, but photography had a little niche neverthless.



Agfa Box: I didn't take this picture,
but I carry the camera's leather case!
That suggests that I took some
pictures that day!

The first camera I came in contact with was a Agfa Box B-2 from the late 1930's. Throughout the fifties it was the only camera in the family. As a child I was encouraged - now and then - to take a shot. Winding the film was exciting: in a small circular red window on the backside, arrows and pointing fingers passed by, and when the new frame number finally appeared you had to stop. Winding too far - or not far enough - meant that the shots could partially overlap each other.



One of the many variants of
the Kodak Brownie

In 1960 another camera appeared, a Kodak Brownie for the 127 rollfilm. I'm almost certain that my mom brought it home from her first trip to her sister in Canada. I remember the strong smell of the stack of 127 film in the living room cabinet. I loved the odor of this film so much that I often opened the cabinet just to catch a whiff! Sometimes I took this camera along on ventures, like the 1962 school trip to the North Sea island of Sylt with its enormous sanddunes and steep cliffs. I took a shine to Birgit there, a girl from another Hamburg school class. But apparently that didn't stimulate me enough to take some pictures of her, or any other people for that matter. Beaches, dunes, waves was the somewhat drab pictorial harvest from an otherwise so emotionally eventful week on the seashore.


Brownie shots from the North Sea shore at Sylt Island

Sometime during the early 60's the Agfa Silette appeared in the family. My memory is vague here, but it certainly was a used camera - in good condition. Maybe my dad bought it from a relative who experienced occasional "financial impasses". This relative was knowledgable and a really good photographer. He owned a Leica at times (at other times the pawnbrokers owned it). He explained some key concepts to me: the Silette's depth-of-field scale, the use of a yellow filter and the small selenium light meter we owned.


Agfa Silette, sometimes known as
"Volks-Leica"

The Silette impressed with crispy shots, provided you guessed the distance right and could set f-stop and shutter speed to appropriate values. Sure, I had  the external light meter, but I did not always have it along. Each film pack contained a little paper telling you what settings to use in sunlight, with scattered clouds and on overcast days.




On a hike in the Sauerland. That's Ruth right in front of me!

The Silette came up big on a family holiday in the Sauerland (near Cologne), where I took many pictures. A few times I shyly tried to capture Ruth, a young girl from Berlin. She was part of a group of "Berliner Ferienkinder", a government sponsored program for schoolkids to spend the summer holidays away from West Berlin, at that time completely encircled by communist East Germany.

The drowned village of Listernohl. At very low waterlevels the tip of the church tower has been seen to stick out like a buoy

Building the Bigge-Dam, not far from Dortmund

A year later I got a little more ambitious, photographically, on another trip to the same area, this time with my school class. I took on the assignment to document hydro-electrical plants and power dams, both those in operation and one under construction. The site of the future Bigge-Dam was impressive. This by European standards huge project was about to be completed, but the flooding had not started yet. Most people in Listernohl, the village we visited, had not been evacuated at the time and even the railway ran as usual. But it felt strange to sit there in a train station, having a beer, knowing that in a few months this place would be at the bottom of a lake. About 2500 people had to leave their homes on account of the power- and water-hungry Ruhr industial area. Later on that trip I fell ill and had to stay in bed, with the pleasant side effect that classmate Marianne took care of me with food and drink. I took a picture of her entering my sick-station with a tablet, but it was so blurry that I ripped it apart in frustration. Upon recovery I tried my luck at covering sports in Soest, where the Canadian Army held trials in track and field on a turf just outside our youth hostel.



Canadians from the Soest Garrison



Another highlite for the Agfa Silette came in 1964 at a holiday with my friend Rainer in Austria. I saw the Alps for the first time: Gross Glockner with the Pasterzen Glacier, the Gross Venediger area in the Tauern-Range,
Kaprun, the Krimml waterfalls and the Seisenberg Gorge stand out in memory, apart from the lovely towns of Saalfelden and Zell am See.
After that it seems that I lost interest in photography for a long time. Occasionally I used the Silette. But it took almost ten years before my interest ignited fully...



Gross Venediger area, Tauern Range, Austria

Making use of the Silette's self timer:

Rainer and I in Saalfelden, Austria



Krimml Waterfalls: The lower part

Seisenberg Klamm: Regulatory weir and mill

 In the years that followed it was mostly my Mom who used the Agfa Silette. And without ever gaining much recognition for her efforts she developed a fine sense for "defining moments", like this candid shot of Rainer and me listening to the Top Twenty on BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting System).