Christopher Williams
02 Mar - 13 Apr 2013
© Christopher Williams
Fig. 7: Turning the exposure counter knob
Exakta Varex IIa
35 mm film SLR camera
Manufactured by Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen & Co, Dresden, German Democratic Republic
Body serial no. 979625 (Production period: 1960 - 1963)
Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar
50mm f/2.8 lens
Manufactured by VEB Carl Zeiss Jena, Jena,
German Democratic Republic
Serial no. 8034351 (Production period: 1967 - 1970)
Model: Christoph Boland
Studio Thomas Borho, Oberkasseler Str. 39, Düsseldorf, Germany
June 21st, 2012
2012
Framed: 84,7 x 94,8 cm
Fig. 7: Turning the exposure counter knob
Exakta Varex IIa
35 mm film SLR camera
Manufactured by Ihagee Kamerawerk Steenbergen & Co, Dresden, German Democratic Republic
Body serial no. 979625 (Production period: 1960 - 1963)
Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar
50mm f/2.8 lens
Manufactured by VEB Carl Zeiss Jena, Jena,
German Democratic Republic
Serial no. 8034351 (Production period: 1967 - 1970)
Model: Christoph Boland
Studio Thomas Borho, Oberkasseler Str. 39, Düsseldorf, Germany
June 21st, 2012
2012
Framed: 84,7 x 94,8 cm
CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS
Prodction Line of Happiness
2 March – 13 April 2013
People, it’s best to know only the ones who are available at certain pale hours of the night, near a slot machine, with male problems, problems of melancholy. So we have a drink, looking off into the distance, beyond the bar mirror. And we say to ourselves: it's very late.
From this falls the sweet clot of blacks and purples upon your dark flute players.
Radio Danièle.
If ever there was a camera of which it could be said, “They don't build ‘em like they used to,” it is the Exakta VX IIa.
It is the epitome of German fine engineering, a Precision Instrument with capital letters. Those who are accustomed to more modern cameras may however breathe a short prayer of thanks at the fact that they don't make ‘em like this any more. Compared with the vast majority of cameras past or present, many of the controls are upside down or backwards or both. It is not so much a camera with some eccentric features built in, as a collection of eccentric features with a camera hiding somewhere behind them.
We have had our nights like this, me and myself, elbows on the bar in front of a German beer. When I see us here again I sometimes wonder if the gang of the old days were still alive, now and then.
The pool, that contained body of liquid, accepts the swimmer with no qualifications, no excuses, no apologies.
Radio Danièle.
The most unusual feature of Exakta cameras, common to all the models, is undoubtedly the placement of shutter release, aperture dials, and other important components on the left-hand side of the camera body. Ideological significance could be ascribed to this left-handedness for models made after 1945, when Dresden — along with Jena, home to lens manufacturer Carl Zeiss — became part of the Soviet bloc. Even a simple advertisement for apples could, with the right lighting and in proper context, be understood to idealize socialist values, in opposition to values of the bourgeois era that directly preceded it. That era produced more than its fair share of studies of apples and apple trees, thanks to the legions of Exakta- and other camera-wielding enthusiasts.
Like a shark whose intestines still quiver three hours after its slaughter. Radio Danièle.
The weakest link in every chain, I always want to find it. The strongest words in each belief, find out what's behind it. Politics is pride too, vagaries of science, she left because she understood the value of defiance.
Radio Danièle, vibrations designed for the 1non-retinal aperture.
When the government falls, I wish I could tell. When, oh when necessity calls, I never can tell. It's just loving, ooh loving.
The bond between lake swimmers is similar to that of the veterans of the Great War: unbreakable.
The present is terrifying because it is irreversible. Time is the material of which we are made. It is a tiger that tears us apart. Yet, I, too, am a tiger.
Radio Danièle.
Prodction Line of Happiness
2 March – 13 April 2013
People, it’s best to know only the ones who are available at certain pale hours of the night, near a slot machine, with male problems, problems of melancholy. So we have a drink, looking off into the distance, beyond the bar mirror. And we say to ourselves: it's very late.
From this falls the sweet clot of blacks and purples upon your dark flute players.
Radio Danièle.
If ever there was a camera of which it could be said, “They don't build ‘em like they used to,” it is the Exakta VX IIa.
It is the epitome of German fine engineering, a Precision Instrument with capital letters. Those who are accustomed to more modern cameras may however breathe a short prayer of thanks at the fact that they don't make ‘em like this any more. Compared with the vast majority of cameras past or present, many of the controls are upside down or backwards or both. It is not so much a camera with some eccentric features built in, as a collection of eccentric features with a camera hiding somewhere behind them.
We have had our nights like this, me and myself, elbows on the bar in front of a German beer. When I see us here again I sometimes wonder if the gang of the old days were still alive, now and then.
The pool, that contained body of liquid, accepts the swimmer with no qualifications, no excuses, no apologies.
Radio Danièle.
The most unusual feature of Exakta cameras, common to all the models, is undoubtedly the placement of shutter release, aperture dials, and other important components on the left-hand side of the camera body. Ideological significance could be ascribed to this left-handedness for models made after 1945, when Dresden — along with Jena, home to lens manufacturer Carl Zeiss — became part of the Soviet bloc. Even a simple advertisement for apples could, with the right lighting and in proper context, be understood to idealize socialist values, in opposition to values of the bourgeois era that directly preceded it. That era produced more than its fair share of studies of apples and apple trees, thanks to the legions of Exakta- and other camera-wielding enthusiasts.
Like a shark whose intestines still quiver three hours after its slaughter. Radio Danièle.
The weakest link in every chain, I always want to find it. The strongest words in each belief, find out what's behind it. Politics is pride too, vagaries of science, she left because she understood the value of defiance.
Radio Danièle, vibrations designed for the 1non-retinal aperture.
When the government falls, I wish I could tell. When, oh when necessity calls, I never can tell. It's just loving, ooh loving.
The bond between lake swimmers is similar to that of the veterans of the Great War: unbreakable.
The present is terrifying because it is irreversible. Time is the material of which we are made. It is a tiger that tears us apart. Yet, I, too, am a tiger.
Radio Danièle.