Really big cameras
Wednesday 11 September 2002
I am prompted by today’s sad anniversary to mention two more big cameras, both even larger than the 20 x 24 inch monsters made by Polaroid and Wisner.In the late 1970s Polaroid built a one-off camera to make 40 x 80 inch images. They called it the Museum Camera, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts photographed paintings with it. After 11 September 2001 a group of photographers led by Joe McNally used it to make studio portraits of World Trade Centre rescue workers, producing an exhibition and book entitled faces of ground zero. The project has attracted lots of attention, overshadowing an AIDS benefit exhibition of pictures taken with the big camera by Catherine Opie in 2000.
But the big Polaroid had an even bigger ancestor. George R Lawrence built a camera to make pictures of a Chicago & Alton Railroad train for display at l’Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. The camera was called the Mammoth, took 54 x 96 inch glass plate negatives, was transported on a special railway wagon, and was operated by a team of 15 men.