A PHOTOGRAPHER and teacher has said it is becoming more difficult to order chemicals and photography paper to use with vintage cameras – with fewer shops shipping to Jersey, and some charging high delivery fees.
Jooj Duquemin said Silver Print, in Poole, had closed down, leaving just First Call as the main supplier to Jersey – a company that delivers mostly to educational groups.
Cameras, on the other hand, have become cheaper, she said – and she has found some on eBay and even at a Shabby Chic event.
“What’s interesting is how the cost has gone up,” she said.
“I used to teach [at Beaulieu and Highlands] and at that point, you could bring in chemicals not too badly.
“Now there aren’t so many companies that sell the chemicals – you have to pay more.”
Alternative methods exist, she said – though difficulties finding washing soda make these difficult too.
Jooj is the proud owner of “numerous” old cameras, made between the mid-1800s to now.
She started collecting cameras after having seen her dad collect them. Her grandfather was a pharmacist in the 1940s and 1950s, taking pictures for families to send to their sons and husbands at the front.
“Photography and pharmacy always went together back then,” she explained.
Her father, also a camera collector, passed his passion on to Jooj. She said she was given her first “proper” 35mm camera when she was 12 or 13, an old Praktica with changeable lenses.
Later, in boarding school in Somerset, a “forward-thinking” headmistress allowed Jooj to create a dark room and help herself to chemicals – creating a pathway for her to go to art college.
Her impressive collection now includes stereophotography cameras – Victorian cameras with two lenses, “positioned in about the position that your eyes would be”, which create 3D images to view through a stereoscopic viewer. Victorians, Jooj explained, would use them to look at pictures of monuments around the world.
“Very, very old” bellows cameras, from the late 1800s, and a “very art-deco” box camera are also on display. To use some of them, photographers have to manually take the lens cap off and put them back on to create an exposure, Jooj explained. Sitters would be given special chairs that supported their heads.
And Jooj has previously converted a van into a camera obscura – an experience she is hoping to recreate, this time using a tent.
Having previously taught students and Beaulieu and Highlands colleges, Jooj explained that she would teach students to build a camera from a Pringles can.
“You just need a container, and you need a way for the light to get into the container – the pinhole – and a way to record the image,” she said.
