I Am A Camera

Once upon a time kiddies, the merits of cameras weren't judged on the number of mega pixels it had.

In fact cameras didn't have their own inbuilt storage media.

True story.

So in order to get the photographs you had to put in 'film'.

Photographic film is sheet of plastic (polyester, nitrocellulose or cellulose acetate) coated with an emulsion containing light-sensitive silver halide salts bonded by ... Oh go look it up yourself.

Back in the late 19th Century, someone by the name of Karl Marx came up with a bad idea called 'Communism'.

Marx was a rich man who believed that everyone should be poor by letting other people, 'capitalists', do all the hard work while the proletariate sat on their collectives and...

I digress.

Now where were we? Ah yes,

Some crazy people in the early 20th Century thought that Communism was a good idea and they killed many people to establish the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The leaders in the USSR thought it was such a good idea that other countries should be Communists whether they wanted to be or not.

Like East Germany for instance and that brings us back to subject of our post today.

The first picture is a 1980 Moscow Olympic Souvenir Zenit SLR bought by Nick as a youngster back in the UK. While the leather straps are well worn, the camera itself is in excellent condition.

Nick used it faithfully up until the late 1980s when he bought a Nikon.

The second is an East German manufactured Beirette bought by Nora from an Op Shop just a couple of years back. Nora paid $5 for it. A current UK eBay auction has a bid of GBP3 on an equivalent model.

The camera is in utterly mint condition. It looks like it has had no more than two rolls of film put through it in its life.

The Beirette is likely to be late 1970s early 1980s based on the full upper case font on its silver face. 1960s versions used a script typeface, the early 1970s used an italic lower case font.

Both cameras now simply do duty as curious artifacts.

According to Camerapedia:

Kamera-Fabrik Woldemar Beier was a German camera factory in Freital near Dresden. It was founded by Woldemar Beier in 1923 and began producing wooden plate cameras. In 1932 Beier introduced its first 35mm camera model. After WWII Beier stayed independent until the East German state took over a big share of the company in 1959.

Yeah, that's the way to run a successful company - give it to the government...

"That Underground Place"

As everyone knows, Nick and I enjoy a good mystery and we hope you can help us on this one.

Below is a postcard we acquired quite a few years ago.

The image on the front isn't too exciting, it's of Gorleston Harbour. As postcards go, this isn't a terribly good example. The photographic composition seems to lopsided in favour of the pier for instance.

Not as famous as the great British sea-side resorts of Brighton and Blackpool, Gorelston at Norfolk nonetheless still was a popular holiday spot in the late Victorian era.

We assume this postcard was printed and written prior to the World War One.

We base this on:
-- the side-wheel paddlesteamer in shot
-- the pagoda-like structure at the end of the pier which in fact was a lighthouse built in 1887
-- the postage prices (1/2d (halfpenny) for Inland, 1d for foreign postage).
-- the dynamic of the ink on the hand written message, which suggests a pen dip technique rather than fountain pen.

But that is not where the real mystery lies. It is in the message on the back of the card.


It's a hastily hand written affair, not of the 'having a lovely time, wish you were here' holiday boast, but instead hints of something more dark, less pleasant, an eclipse on a sunny seascape.

The writing is difficult to read but Nick and I have managed to glean the following, the sections in brackets are either illegible or we've taken a guess:

Dear Mother,
Dottie is better the others are alright. Have (I) heard from Fred (illegible) is out of the question will send you a 1/- next week and after that Alex doing very little now just our luck. Sorry about Nellie I told you what it would be going back there to that underground place have send you 6 (illegible) if won (?) love from all to all
Loving dau(ghter)
May

We'd love to hear from anyone who can help us shed some light on the rest of the text or has memories of Gorleston to share.