The History of the Speed Graphic 4 x 5 Camera

Video Transcript

"My name is Anthony Maddaloni. I'm a professional photographer from Austin, Texas. I'm going to talk about the history of 4x5 Speedgraphic Cameras. This camera was referred to as a press camera, and it still is, and the reason why, was that it was used by the press, and if you look at photographs, movies, you'll see a camera much like this one, in the hands of photographers, sort of the primitive paparazzi, not like today. They had cameras like this. I truly respect those photographers, because look at this. This thing is a monster. Can you imagine photographing starlets, movie stars, with something like this with a big flashbulb attached to it. To me, that's a whole other level of skill, and that is really how this camera, sort of got the reputation that it does. It is a workhorse, meaning that the camera is built to last, which is something I truly admire. Not that you want to take this camera and drop it, but again, it's a working, it's called a working man's camera. This camera is going to produce images that you want. The other thing about the history of this camera, is that a few pretty famous fine art photographers used it. One of the most famous photographers, his name is Weegee, and if you look, you can see photographs made by Weegee, of very interesting crime scene photographs, and he's probably the most famous photographer, that really used a camera like this."