A prototype “hunting career’ designed and built by the world’s first professional wildlife photographer is going under the hammer in London this week.
The camera, built just after the end of World War I, was built by Cherry Kearton, and shot medium format film – with an innovative spring-driven advance system that moved the film along after every shot.
The unusual device was built two decades before the famous Leica Rifle Camera released in the 1930s.
The one-off camera goes under the hammer at Chiswick Auctions in London in the UK on Tuesday (10 February).
The camera was design to take images of around 6×9 format and was an improved version of a camera the famous photographer used in the early 1900s and was pictured in his book ‘Wild Nature’s Ways 1903’.
Kearton was a prolific photographer and film maker who travelled across the world capturing observing all manner of wildlife. His early films were a huge influence on naturalist Sir David Attenborough, who saw one when he was a child. The Royal Geographic Society continues to hand out the Cherry Kearton Award, given to any “traveller concerned with the study or practice of natural history, with a preference for those with an interest in nature photography, art or cinematography”.
Chiswick Auctions says in its listing for the camera: “The design of this Gun camera appears to take inspiration from gun cameras of the 19th Century such as the Hunter Sands Photographic Gun. A previous iteration of this camera that takes plates and has bellows, we see Kearton photographing with in ‘Wild Nature Ways’ in 1903. It improves on this mahogany and brass camera which had bellows, by employing a more robust design with automated winding functionality, twenty years before this was popularised with German Robot 35mm cameras.
“The camera predates the famous Leitz NY Rifle 35mm Camera and is a very early, entirely unique, spring driven 120 rifle camera. A unique and important opportunity in terms of British photographic history, Naturalism and the story of camera developments at the turn of the last century.”
Chiswick Auctions’ Head of Fine Photographs and Photographica Austin Farahar told Kosmo Foto he was made aware of the camera last summer by the wife of one of Kearton’s grandchildren. “She had been recommended to contact us and was impressed by how we had dealt with historically significant photographic collections in the past. We arranged to get it all transferred down to London and divided the collection out between specialist departments to catalogue.
“My departments were specifically tasked with the photographs, albums and the rather amazing rifle cameras amongst other bits. Putting the story of the camera together through researching Kearton’s correspondences, patents, press cuttings, books and photographs was incredibly enjoyable.”
Farahar said Cherry Kearton, an accomplished inventor, appeared to have made the device himself. “The rifle stock was reused from the original rifle camera he made and was illustrated in the book ‘Wild Nature’s Ways’. The viewfinder came from a Dallmeyer Naturalist Camera we have a photograph of in another lot, from when Kearton was photographing the last mating ospreys in the United Kingdom, and the rest of the camera is custom machined from sheet aluminium and brass, put together in his workshop.”
He said the camera would have been a major step forward compared to the plate cameras used for outside photography at the time. “I think the difference would have been night and day, compared to the majority of cameras from the period. The Sinclair Una Traveller camera, dating from the late 20s has a similar robust aluminium design for tactility and weight saving, but it is still a plate camera so the combination of portability and functionality afforded from the use of self-advancing roll film and the focussing fore-handle is really groundbreaking.
“You have to remember at the time, there were very few pioneering photographer’s working in such challenging environments (abseiling down cliffs with cameras or up in trees and early airships) so the requirements were quite unique to The Keartons.”
The camera would have been particularly useful on safaris such as the ones the Keartons undertook in Africa, Farahar said. The camera was used to take some of Kearton’s images, but he did not directly say which had been taken by it.
“There was immediate institutional interest here in the UK and from camera museums in Europe. Kearton’s cine camera is at the Science and Media Museum in Bradford so it would be a sensible place for the camera to go, but as it’s a public auction, it is really down to the bidders. The camera is the most watched lot in the auction online with bids already coming in.”
As the listing states, the camera can’t take pictures in its current state because it doesn’t have a lens, but Farahar said it still appears to work as it should more than a century after it was made. “The pioneering film advance mechanism in the camera is still fully functional. It’s incredible to wind the camera up and watch it advance frames for rapid burst shooting of moving subjects.”
The camera’s guide price is between £2,000 and £3,000, with the bidding starting at £1,000.
“For me, as a specialist in photographic history, this collection and specifically this camera is extremely important,” said Farahar. “This item is the first practical rifle camera to ever be built, and it is entirely unique, where as the Leica rifle accessories made 20 years later were manufactured, albeit in small numbers.
“This camera was born from a photographer’s need to solve a problem the vast majority of practitioners at the time couldn’t fathom. The photographer’s ingenuity and practical experience created something that is still at the core of modern wildlife photography; accuracy, speed from distance and the desire to always get the shot!”
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
