Vintage Kodaks from the early part of the twentieth century usable for fine art photography will most commonly come equipped with either an Anastigmat or a Rapid Rectilinear lens. Although the Rapid Rectilinear is the older design, when stopped down to f/16 or higher it is extremely sharp and, surprisingly, has excellent color rendition.
The Rapid Rectilinear, a famous lens, has great historical significance and represents a landmark advance in photographic technology. This has been described by Dr. John Loomis at the University of Dayton (original source Rudolf Kingslake):
“One of the most important photographic objectives ever made was the famous Rapid Rectilinear or Aplanat of 1866. This design came midway between the invention of photography in 1840 and the introduction of the Anastigmat in 1890, and lenses of this type were fitted to all the better cameras for nearly sixty years, a record scarcely surpassed by any others.
By 1865 photographers had three types of lenses available to them: the simple landscape meniscus, the Petzval Portrait lens, and the wide-angle Globe lens or the Ross Doublet. What they needed was an intermediate lens covering about ±24° at f/6 or f/8, which, of course, had to be free from distortion.
The Rapid Rectilinear lens was introduced by J. H. Dallmeyer in 1866. We do not know what led him to this highly successful design, but it may have been an assembly of two Grubb-type landscape aplanats about a central stop. Dallmeyer’s patent showed a lens that was manufactured and sold under the name of Wide-angle Rectilinear (Brit. Pat. 2,502/66; U.S. Pat. 79,323.) The front and rear components were similar but not identical, the front being larger than the rear, as shown in Figure (a). Very soon Dallmeyer found that it was better to make the two halves identical (Fig. (b), and this arrangement became the well-known Rapid Rectilinear. Most previous rectilinear (i.e., distortion less) lenses had been of low aperture, and Dallmeyer was therefore justified in calling his lens rapid, although the aperture was only f/8 or f/6 at the most.
Simultaneously and independently an almost identical design appeared in Germany called the Aplanat. This was designed and manufactured by Dr. H. A. Steinheil (1832 – 1893). As Steinheil and von Seidel (the mathematician who had recently established the theory of lens aberrations) were good friends, it is probable that the Aplanat had been designed on proper scientific principles, and Steinheil naturally supposed that Dallmeyer had pirated his invention. The argument became heated, and letters from both parties appeared in the scientific journals. When the smoke cleared it appeared that Steinheil had priority but by only a few weeks. Simultaneous inventions are actually quite common. The need is there, the necessary technology has been developed, and we must expect to find several inventors in various countries all working along similar lines.
1910 Bausch and Lomb Lens Catalog Cover
The real clue to the construction of the Rapid Rectilinear lay in the choice of glass. The two glass types should differ as much as possible in refractive index yet be close in dispersive powers. The lower-index positive elements were inside, close to the stop, while the higher-index negative elements were outside. Among the glasses available in 1866 there were only flint glasses that met the requirements, and both Dallmeyer and Steinheil selected two flints, one light and one dense, to make their lenses. If the two glasses were widely different in properties the lens became long and worked at a higher aperture, while if the glasses were closely similar the lens became more compact, the components more meniscus-shaped, and the angular field became larger, though at a smaller aperture. Several series of these lenses differing in aperture and field therefore became possible. Thus, Steinheil’s Landscape Aplanat covered ±30° at f/10; his Wide-angle Aplanat covered ±45° at f/18; and he later developed a Portrait Aplanat, which covered ±12° at f/3.5.
After the development of barium glasses, other combinations of glass types became possible that still met the requirements of a low V-difference and a high n-difference. For example, the Universal Aplanat of Steinheil used a common crown glass with a dense barium flint, and most of the later Rapid Rectilinear lenses also employed this type of glass combination.
Actually, the Rapid Rectilinear is a fairly expensive lens to manufacture. The internal cemented interface is strongly curved and has to be polished one on a block for both elements. The lens did have one outstanding virtue, in that the aberrations were well maintained over a wide range of object distances, so that the same lens could be used equally well on a camera or an enlarger, or for copying full-size without distortion”.
References:
Kingslake, R. A History of the Photographic Lens, Academic Press, 1989. ISBN 0-12-408640-3. p. 59-62.
Zahorcak, M. “Evolution of the Photographic Lens in the 19th Century – Working constraints in lens design, Early adaptations and designs, The landscape lens, The portrait lens.” http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/1015/Evolution-of-the-Photographic-Lens-in-the-19th-Century.html.
I love to travel, and I love to take pictures. If I can do both and get paid for it, I’m in heaven. I have spent much of the last few years working as a traveling pathologist. In 2006, I was fortunate enough to be offered an assignment in Hazard, Kentucky, the little town in Appalachia that inspired the “Dukes of Hazzard” series.
Southeastern Kentucky lives on coal; when the rest of America buys coal, the mines run 24 hours, and families eat well. When coal is out of favor, people go hungry. Poverty and hardship are part of life in the mountains. Often Appalachian towns aren’t pretty; old buildings are abandoned and crumbling, paint peels from ramshackle houses, and Wal-Mart is the premier place to shop. Yet never have I met people who have a stronger sense of their roots, their family, and their faith.
Many Appalachian towns are tiny- a collection of ten or twenty houses, a gas station and maybe a store, tucked into the bend of the river or a corner of a “Holler” between the mountains. They have names like “Viper” or “Scuddy” or “Fourseam”. Many houses are old, often representing old coal company housing, and people are obviously poor. Yet in the middle of each of these little towns is a church with fresh paint, a parking lot without a blade of grass in the asphalt, and a neatly painted sign. In a year in the mountains, I saw only one church that wasn’t impeccably kept. Most mountain people have deep religious faith, and “family values” has real meaning. Friendship and hospitality to strangers are an integral part of Appalachian culture.
The Old Blue Diamond Mine: My Place to Watch the Sunset
As a photographer, my experiences were rich in both imagery and spirit. On my time off, I would spend evenings and weekends hiking the many mining roads that crisscrossed the mountaintops near Hazard. I would prowl abandoned processing plants, climbing ladders and catwalks and photographing cables and conveyor belts. At the end of the day, I would sit on the mountainside on the steps of an abandoned coal processing plant, watch the sun go down, then hike down the mountain listening to the cacophony of frogs, watching the fireflies and searching for glowworms among the fallen leaves. It was there that I heard my first whippoorwill. I collected fossils, which are plentiful in coal country, and learned about Kentucky’s native plants.
The Old Blue Diamond Mine at Twilight
Occasionally, I am fortunate enough to find both a memorable image and an adventure. Shortly after arriving in Hazard, I and my camera were out one night exploring Combs, a little town that climbs up the side of a mountain to an old cemetery at the top. I paused to take a time exposure of one street that went up the mountainside between huge maples, their bare branches stark in the illumination of the streetlights. I noticed people peering out of the windows of the house next to me.
Main Street at Midnight, Combs, KY
I could see someone making a phone call, then neighbors arrived, and soon there was a group at the widow watching me. Finishing my exposure and not wanting to alarm anyone, I went to the gate and began to explain my peculiar behavior to an elderly woman who was just leaving the house. She snapped “I don’t hold with that kind of stuff” and stomped off. I was perplexed. This wasn’t the friendly Kentucky I was used to.
The Drug Dealers' Shack
I walked up to the top of the hill, finding an old shack beneath an enormous maple tree, illuminated by the light of a single lamp- a wonderful picture. By this time, I had acquired a pack of neighborhood dogs, who surrounding me, barking vigorously. As I was setting up my picture, a man and a woman came out of a nearby house. The woman held back, while the man approached, asking me what I was doing. I explained, showing him some of my pictures. He grunted and walked off. Once more I was puzzled, not being used to this kind of reception.
The next morning, I mentioned to the lab manager that I had been in Combs, and asked if it was safe to wander around there after dark. She replied, “Oh, you’ll be fine. People are good to strangers. They just shoot their relatives.” Then she added, “But you know, there used to be an old shack up on the top of the mountain by the cemetery, and a drug dealer used to sell his stuff out of there”. Apparently, this was where I had been taking my photographs. In my Doc Martens and Eddie Bauer vest, I clearly wasn’t a local. Obviously, I was either another dealer looking to set up shop, or a government agent. Neither was popular in that town.
I later learned that shooting your relatives is still not an uncommon way of settling family disagreements in Appalachia. Fortunately, I was not related to anyone in Combs.
Note: This posting is an excerpt from the full article “A Pathologist in Appalachia”, published in the 2008 edition of the King County Medical Journal. Please refer to the page “A Pathologist in Appalachia: At Home with the Dukes of Hazzard” for the full article.
Lurk (intransitive verb): to move furtively or inconspicuously. Middle English, akin to Middle High German luren, to lie in wait.
I do a lot of this. Lurking, that is. At night. And I have the images to prove it.
I honestly don’t think most people SEE at night. Otherwise, there would be crowds wandering deserted streets at night, exclaiming over the neon of an isolated roadhouse, or trekking mountain paths in the moonlight, marveling at the interplay of light and shadow in a moonlit glade.
Night brings out magical effects that most of us miss. Recently, I went for a walk at midnight in an aspen grove in Colorado. By day, this path wove through a pleasant but not particularly remarkable stand of trees bordering a wetland south of Denver. By night, as I walked along with the moon at my back, each tree glowed with a silver luminosity as if lit from within. Returning, the shadowed back of each trunk thrust darkly upward against the moonlit meadows. Each grove became its own composition of light and shadow, line and shape.
Night, however, is also the time of furtive assignations, secretive errands, and night stalkers. Photographing after dark, one becomes part of this world, with its sense of threat and mystery – and I love it. I feel at one with a long line of dark-coated, camera-toting figures lurking in corners, waiting for the mist to veil street lamps and car headlights. Peering through my viewfinder at an abandoned warehouse, I feel Brassai standing behind me, with his Voigtlander Bergheil slung over his shoulder and the sounds of 1930s Paris filtering through the fog.
Night photography requires dedicated, sophisticated, and well-planned lurking. One must haunt lonely alleys in the bad parts of town, street lamps in lonely alleys, the “Old Town” areas of many cities, and small towns in Kentucky at midnight. Being questioned by policemen is an occupational hazard, though most will dismiss you as a harmless eccentric when they see your camera and tripod– art is a socially acceptable form of lunacy.
The rewards are worth it, however. With my 1928 Kodak, I captured two bored pizza jockeys at an all-night pizza stand late one night in Seattle’s Pioneer Square.
Pizza
Wandering Denver’s LoDo district on the 16th Street Mall, I caught this shot of my wife looking contemplatively into the windows of one of our favorite haunts, the Tattered Cover bookstore:
Janie at the Tattered Cover
If you really want to do good lurking, however, the best place is a graveyard. Not only can you carry on the tradition of the legions of fine skulkers in the shadows of film and fiction, if there is any source of illumination, you may scuttle away into the darkness with some striking images.
St Mary’s historic Anglican Church in Metchosin, B.C. not only has a churchyard fill with pioneer headstones, it also has a perfectly situated spotlight illuminating the tombstones. Meant to discourage vandals and beer-swilling teens, it casts a dramatic light over headstones, trees, and a quaint wrought iron bench.
Crosses in the Churchyard
The Bench in the Churchyard
My favorite image came when I noticed my shadow falling in the stone. I initially struggled to maneuver around so that I could shoot the headstones without a shadow from either myself or my camera and tripod. This was almost impossible at many of the best angles. Suddenly, I saw my shadow fall outward between the stones, and that image capture circuit in my brain flashed on – make the shadow the image! I stood over my tripod, superimposing my shadow over it, opened the shutter, and stood rigid for four minutes while the film recorded the tombstones disappearing into the darkness, my sinister shadow creeping between them.
The Shadow in the Churchyard
Of course, safety is important. Remember that there may be more efficient lurkers than yourself, and don’t take unnecessary risks. Some of the best images are found in dark alleys and less-traveled parts of the city. Explore these areas, but use common sense. Don’t dress expensively, and don’t be obvious about fancy equipment. Pepper spray is a good photographic accessory. Know where your car is and how to get back to it. Carry a cell phone and small flashlight. In some areas, consider staying in your car.
I love these images. Next time it’s dark, don’t just head off to the grocery store- stop and look around, and maybe wander a bit. And if you notice a dark figure skulking about, check to see if it’s carrying an old Kodak before you whack it with your umbrella.
This a blog about fine art photography with vintage cameras. So why am I still talking about digital? Because digital helps me think. And, although “artistic process” is a hackneyed term, artistic composition is just that- a process. And it can’t be hurried. As a result, my little digital camera often helps me to work my way through the maze of images that might somewhere hold a great picture.
This week, we visited our two children, Justin and Shannon, and their families in Denver, and of course I packed my four favorite cameras and a bag of film with me. Shannon and Pete, her wonderful and steadfast husband and companion, took me for a day in the high country in their off-road modified Jeep. We set out early in the morning, and the Jeep was soon clawing its way up boulder-strewn tracks amidst twisted pines and fields of Indian Paintbrush and alpine anemomes. After nosing down a seemingly impossible slope into a rushing creek, the Jeep clambered up the bank and deposited us in front of a wonderful abandoned turn-of-the century mining camp.
The Mine at Mosquito Pass
The main building was a fascinating, dilapidated complex of weathered siding, collapsing floors, graying vertical beams, and vistas of encircling jagged peaks seen through gaping window frames. It was a truly amazing subject– and totally overwhelming.
It is at times like this that I have the fantasy of a truly great photographer like Galen Rowell or Henri Cartier-Bresson walking in and snapping images that float directly onto the pages of Life or Aperture, while I wander aimlessly, totally unable to make any sense out of this visual cacophony. I hope that I am wrong, and I hope that the great ones also struggled to extract succinct and definitive images from the world’s disorder.
I wandered through the ruins, framing image after image on the screen of my little Canon digital point-and-shoot, and gradually a few patterns began to emerge. The collapsed wall siding of the overseer’s house formed a swirl of faded boards around a window framing trees and alpine meadow. An enormous, eroded pulley lay amidst a welter of beams and boards scattered like matchsticks across the hillside.
The Window
We needed to cross the pass before dark, so before I had time to set up my Baby Graphic, it was time to leave. The Jeep climbed higher into an alpine bowl surrounded by a ring of jagged ridges and crags like knife edges thrusting into the sky. The meadow was scattered with the detritus of old mining operations- the roof of a collapsed cabin, pieces of wood, and a cable that ran from a ring at my feet up the side of a nearby crag. Nearby, a field of rocks spilled across a flower-strewn meadow. Once again, the images were scattered and fragmented. What could I see that had line, form and color that would flow across a page and carry the eye with it?
Again, it was only with time that the images and the landscape began to soak into me. As I sat on a rock munching my egg and olive sandwiches (a Barrett family favorite) my mind began to slow and absorb the vista around me. I noticed the rocky track curving back down the valley and leading my eye up and over the pass behind the mine. I saw the afternoon sun briefly painting a craggy peak near the end of the valley. I snapped a few quick images– nothing to show to a gallery, but enough to remind me of the elements of the scene.
It was soon time to leave once again, and I still hadn’t opened my Baby Graphic– but I had a sense of the valley. And I knew that when I returned next year, it all might come together for me through my lens. I took away some snapshots, and I will mull over these and my memories of the valley. The lesson is to try to keep from getting frustrated when great images fail to come together. Sometimes even the most spectacular and unique setting lacks the lines and shapes that will flow through your lens onto an 8×10 sheet of photographic paper, and sometimes the elements of the most dynamic and striking image just need to wait until you can calm your mind and be ready to receive them.
Whenever I restore a camera, I wonder about its history- who owned it, where it traveled, the parties it attended, the photographs it made of birthdays and christenings of children who are now old men and women. Occasionally, a camera leads me on a strange and wonderful journey through photographic history.
Recently, I sent a photo to the local paper, and two weeks later, a reporter was photographing me at my kitchen table as I explained how to focus a 1928 Kodak. The day after the article appeared a reader named Nell Wright called and invited me to see her antique camera. Nell turned out to be a pleasant lady in her 70s, who explained that the camera had belonged to her late husband, an avid photographer. It was dusty and dangled a broken strut, but it was beautifully made and of a unique design. Most importantly, it was small, folding up into a wallet-sized package that fit into the palm of my hand- not much larger than many of today’s digital point-and-shoots. A brass plate proclaimed “Kamerawerkstatten Dresden” with the Logo “KW”. Puzzled and fascinated, I offered to restore it for Nell, as it clearly held special memories. I did not realize that my detective work would lead me from the elegance of turn of the century Dresden to a prison cell in Siberia. I began looking up the KW’s history, and was soon losing sleep as its story unfolded.
Dresden Camera Works
Kamera-Werkstätten Guthe & Thorsch (1919 – 1939)
Kamera-Werkstätten Charles A. Noble (1939 – 1946)
VEB Kamera-Werkstätten Niedersedlitz (1946 – 1953)
VEB Kamera-Werk Niedersedlitz (1953 – 1959)
VEB Kamera- und Kinowerke Dresden (1959 – 1964)
VEB Pentacon Dresden (1964 – 1990)
In the 1900s, Dresden was known for chocolate, china, and fine optics. By the early part of the twentieth century, Dresden had become the photo-optical capital of eastern Germany, with a multiplicity of companies producing photographic and optical equipment.
The KW Logo
In 1919, two Dresdenites, Paul Guthe and Benno Thorsch, teamed up to build a camera factory in the suburb of Niedersedlitz. They named their company Kamera Werkstätten Guthe & Thorsch and chose the logo KW. The Patent Etui, their first camera (‘Etui is German for “small box or case”), turned out to be a great commercial success, with an extremely compact and innovative folding design that is unique even by today’s standards. KW and its successor companies carried on this tradition of innovation for many years, and were to be responsible for the design and production of some of the most popular and influential cameras of the twentieth century.
Patent Etui Advertisement 1920s
By 1928, the company needed more space and moved to Baerensteiner Strasse 30 in Dresden Striesen, near the Ica-Werk of the Zeiss Ikon optical company. In the new factory, 150 workers produced more than 100 cameras per day.
The Patent Etui was followed in 1931 by one of the earliest small reflex cameras, the twin lens folding “Pilot”, which produced a 3x4cm image, followed by the “KW-Reflexbox” 6x9cm and the single lens “Pilot 6”. In the late thirties, the “Pilot Super” was introduced. An enlarger, the “Praxidos”, was introduced at the Leipzig Fair in 1933.
Guthe and Thorsch’s ownership of the company ended with World War II. Being Jewish, both partners were alarmed by the persecution of Jews as the Nazi regime gained power in the 1930s, and both fled the country before the outbreak of World War II. Paul Guthe emigrated to Switzerland in 1937, and Benno Thorsch went to the United States in 1938, where he was to connect with the American businessman Charles A. Noble.
Charles Noble, originally born in Germany, came to the US as a Seventh Day Adventist missionary in 1922. Soon after his arrival, his son, John Helmuth Noble, was born in Detroit in 1923. Disturbed by contradictions in its teachings, Charles eventually left the church. His wife, a photographer, worked in a failing photo-finishing company in Detroit. When the owners abandoned the factory, the bank asked Charles to take over the company, whose sole employee at that time was his wife. The Nobles eventually grew the business to become one of the top ten photo finishing companies in the United States.
However, Charles developed liver and gall bladder problems, and was ordered to avoid chemicals for two years. He visited health spas in the US, Czechoslovakia and Germany. On one of these trips, he made the acquaintance of Benno Thorsch, who offered to trade his camera factory for the Nobles’ company.
Noble and Thorsch negotiated a mutually advantageous arrangement in which Benno Thorsch purchased Noble’s photofinishing company in Detroit, while Noble bought KW. However, the transfer occurred under a cloud, as the news of Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia was flashing over Times Square as the Noble family arrived to take the boat to Germany. Benno Thorsch’s anxiety was so great that the Noble family decided to hold to their agreement despite considerable misgivings. Soon after Charles Noble took over KW, John joined him in managing the company.
Recognizing that 35mm represented the future of camera design, Charles hired Alois Hoheisel to design the first 35mm single lens reflex camera, the Praktiflex. KW launched the new camera at the Leipzig fair in 1939. In order to handle increased production, KW moved to the building of a former candy factory at Bismarckstrasse 56 in Niedersedlitz and christened the new facility Kamera-Werkstaetten Charles A. Noble.
The Praktiflex
The Nobles attempted to escape from Germany at the outbreak of World War II, receiving permission from the Nazi government to leave with a large group of other refugees. However, on arriving at the train station, they were inexplicably detained and returned to Dresden, where they were restricted to the city. They spent the remainder of the war in Dresden and continued to operate the factory.
While the Nobles were enduring the war in Germany, Benno Thorsch resurfaced in 1944, when, on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, a part of the North
Studio City Camera Exchange
Hollywood region, Thorsch and his family founded the Studio City Camera Exchange. This shop was run by the Thorsch family (most recently by Benno’s son, Bernie Thorsch, and his grandson, Ronald Thorsch) for 62 years until it closed in 2006. Benno lived in a retirement home in Laguna Woods, California, reaching the age of 105 before passing away on Sept 2, 2003. Bernie celebrated his 90th birthday on April 27, 2010 (Oscar Fricke, personal communication). Unlike the Thorsch family, little is known of Paul Guthe’s life during and after World War II.
Like all other companies in Germany, KW was forced to produce more and more military items. From 1939 until the end of World War II in 1945, KW produced 11,000 Praktiflex cameras despite severe shortages of raw materials.
On the night of February 14, Dresden was immersed in a firestorm of bombs dropped by Allied forces. During this night, 1299 bombers dropped 3,900 tons of bombs on the central area of the city. Allied post-strike reports estimated that the old part of the city was largely wiped out, the majority of buildings in the inner suburbs were gutted, and virtually all major civic structures were destroyed. Thousands were killed and 30,000 wounded. Approximately 80% of the factories of the camera industry were destroyed. Fortunately, KW was spared and emerged from the night undamaged.
Dresden After the Firebombing
From the end of the war in 1945 onward, the Kamera-Werkstaetten Charles A. Noble Company was occupied in developing quality cameras. Charles and John Noble were busy staying alive.
Situated in the Eastern half of Germany, Dresden was to fall behind the Iron Curtain. The factory was confiscated by the administration of the Russian zone in 1945 and renamed VEB Kamera-Werkstaetten Niedersedlitz. VEB, “Volkseigener Betrieb”, translates as “Peoples Own Enterprise”. The administration set a production quota of 25.000 Praktiflex cameras. Since Jena was at the time occupied by American forces, it was only with considerable difficulty that Charles and John Noble were able to travel there to negotiate with Carl Zeiss for the manufacture of the necessary lenses.
On returning to Dresden, they were arrested, charged with spying, and imprisoned. John Noble was 22 years old at the time. Conditions were abysmal, and starvation and executions were common. It was during his struggle to survive starvation that John developed the deep religious faith that was to sustain him and shape the rest of his life. Charles and John were kept in nearby cells until John was sent to the Soviet Special Prison, formerly the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald, and the two were separated. Fortunately, John’s mother and brother had been released by the Soviets after their arrest.
Charles & John Noble
One account later claimed that a local commissar wanted the family’s factory reserve of Praktica cameras. According to this story, the commissar did not pay off his superiors adequately and later became a fellow prisoner.
In early 1950, John Noble was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment and transferred to the Soviet Gulag system of Siberian prison camps when the Special Prison was closed. After passing through a number of prisons, he was sent to the coal mining complex of Vorkuta, situated at the northernmost terminus of the railway through the Ural Mountains and one of the coldest places in Russia. Vorkuta, a vast complex with 40 pitheads, was at that time home to 105,000 political prisoners, most mining coal in the permanently frozen ground. For many years, John mined coal and performed menial labor under primitive conditions, often weighing less than 100 pounds. Prisoners held prayer meetings in the pits, and John’s faith allowed him to keep from giving up hope.
Vorkuta Camp Inmate
1952 was marked by two significant events. Charles was freed from prison, and KW launched its next commercial success, the Praktina, the world’s first true 35mm camera system. The Praktina, a professional 35mm single lens reflex camera with bayonet mounted, interchangeable lenses, also featured interchangeable viewfinders, a motor drive and a 17 meter film magazine. At this point, KW was renamed VEB Kamera-Werkstatten Niedersedlitz.
By 1953, the company had more than 1,000 employees and was renamed VEB Kamera-Werk Niedersedlitz. In sharp contrast to the success of his company, John Noble was struggling to survive in the gulag and had essentially disappeared by this time, with his family’s many inquiries proving fruitless. In July of 1953, he took part in an uprising sparked by Stalin’s death in which Vorkuta and neighboring camps were taken over by the prisoners. According to Noble’s account, at the time of the rebellion, 400 ex-military prisoners staged an escape, trekking hundreds of miles westward toward Finland before being overtaken and executed. The uprising was crushed in August 1953.
Gulag Inmates’ Graves near Vorkuta (Courtesy John Edwards, Mamiya RZ67 shooting Ekta 100 rated at ISO 50)
Word of his whereabouts finally reached his family when John glued a message to the back of a postcard card from a prisoner with mailing privileges, and the message was relayed to a relative in West Germany. The message was sent to the U.S. State Department, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally requested John’s return. He was released in 1955 along with several American military captives
The same year, the Praktica FX2 was introduced in Germany.
In 1956, VEB Kamera-Werkstatten Niedersedlitz launched the Praktisix 6x6cm single lens reflex camera at the Photokina in Cologne. In the mid-fifties it was merged with the East German part of the photo-optical company Zeiss Ikon to become VEB Kamera-und Kinowerke, and took over the production of the Contax F, a development of the Contax S. Contax was likewise one of the landmark cameras of the twentieth century. In 1964, VEB Kamera-und Kinowerke became VEB Pentacon, and continued production of Praktica models.
On returning to the United States, John Noble worked as a policy consultant. Much of his efforts went into writing and lecturing.
Faith and Freedom Forum Poster for Lecture, 1957
Noble spent decades on the lecture circuit, usually hosted by evangelical, conservative and human rights organizations. He worked to publicize his belief that countless American GIs were held as ghost prisoners in communist prisons. He was founder and
Radio Bremen Interview October 1996
director of the Christian Faith and Freedom Forum, which sold recordings of his books and other educational tools. John later published two books about his ordeal: I Found God in Soviet Russia (John Noble and Glenn D Everett, 1959) and I Was a Slave in Russia (John Noble, Cicero Bible Press, 1961). He was knighted by
Meeting with the Clintons and Helmut Kohl, 1994
the French Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem – Knights of Malta, for his efforts in locating and obtaining freedom for Americans and other nationals held in captivity in concentrations camps in several countries.
Charles Noble died in 1983 after many years as an advisor to the photography department of General Motors.
The Noblex 150
After the reunification of Germany in 1990, John Noble attempted to recover the factory and his father’s camera brand. He was successful in regaining the old factory in the Bismarckstrasse, now called Kamera Werk Dresden, and began production of Noblex panoramic cameras.
The Praktica brand, which stayed in the hands of Pentacon, was used for the last Praktica single lens reflex cameras until 2000.
The KW Factory Today
By 1997, John Noble had encountered severe financial difficulties, and was forced to sell the family estate, Villa San Remo. The company teetered on the edge of bankruptcy for some time, and was finally sold to its employees. In 2004, Noble published Banished and Denied about his experiences. On November 10, 2007, he died of a heart attack in Dresden. He is survived by his ex-wife, Ruth Hedstrom Noble, a companion, Katherin Forster of Dresden, five children from his marriage, a brother, and nine grandchildren.
John H.Noble, from an Article Appearing After his Death
The factory, which still exists at the same address, continues to produce Noblex panoramic cameras. The camera is named in memory of Charles A. Noble.
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Postscript:
Nell Wright called me one day after I finished my research on the Etui and asked me if I could sell it for her, as she was moving and none in her family wanted it. I took it with me to Denver when we went to see visit our family in the spring, and largely forgot about it in my camera bag.
One day, my wife, who is an avid knitter, found Strings, a very nice knitting shop in Highland Ranch south of Denver. One morning, I dropped her off for a morning of knitting with the other ladies. She introduced me to one fellow knitter whom she had met the day before, Anya York, a senator in the Australian government, who lives half the year in Denver. Anya is an underwater photographer who has a contract with National Geographic and has a large, production-grade darkroom in Sydney. She is also contracted with the Australian government to do underwater forensic photography.
I showed Anya some of my pictures and my 1914 Kodak. Discovering the Etui in my bag, I pulled it out on impulse to show her. She was delighted with it, and, when I mentioned that I was selling it, she asked how much it was worth. I quoted a figure of $100. She immediately said, “I’ll give you $150 for it!”
We exchanged camera and money, and the Patent Etui was on its way to Australia. Anya planned to have a new ground glass screen made for it, and intends to use in her work. I have a feeling that this little camera’s adventures are only beginning.
Updates:
Recent articles on KW have appeared in Wiki Articles under the title “Patent Etui” and in Wikepedia under the title “KW“. The Patent Etui article has some nice images of colored versions of the Patent Etui, as well as some copies of Japanese advertisements for this camera.
It should be noted that there were several lens and shutter combinations available for the Etui, as noted in the Wiki article:
“The 6.5×9 cameras were usually fitted with an f/4.5 105mm Zeiss Tessar, again in a dial-set Compur, and later in the new rim-set Compur. They were also available with an f/4.5 120mm Tessar. Two budget triplet lenses, the f/4.5 & f/6.3 105mm Meyer Gorlitz Anastigmatic Trioplans, were also available, the f/4.5 in a Compur shutter and the f/6.3 in a 3 speed Vario shutter.”
This paticular Etui, in traditional black leather, was fitted with the budget triplet in the three speed Vario shutter.
References:
“1953: The Gulag Uprising at Vorkuta.” Libcom.org extract from News and Letters. http://libcom.org/library/1953-gulag-uprising-vorkuta.
“Foreign News: Vorkuta (Release of John H. Noble).” Time Magazine, June 24, 1955. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,861142,00.html.
Latkovskis, L. “Baltic prisoners in the Gulag revolts of 1953.” LITUANUS (LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES). Volume 51, No.3 – Fall 2005. http://www.lituanus.org/2005/05_3_1Latkovskis.htm
Michaels, Dan. “The Gulag: Russia’s Penal Colonies Revisited.” Institue for Historical Review On Line Posting. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v21/v21n1p39_michaels.html.
Obituary, John H. Noble. http://www.john-noble.de/index_2.php?sprache=englisch.
Reiss, klaus-Eckard. “The History of KW.” http://www.kl-riess.dk/kw.html.
“Vorkuta.” Wikipedia Article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkuta.
‘Vorkuta Uprising.” Wikipedia Article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkuta_uprising.
Lurk (intransitive verb): to move furtively or inconspicuously. Middle English, akin to Middle High German luren, to lie in wait.
