Where it all began

The first camera I recall using was my Mother’s 1930s Kodak Six-20 Junior. 

This was the camera that held the first film I ever developed in around 1963. I still have the camera. It is starting to show its age (well it is old now) and apart from Time and Bulb only the 1/25th second works reliably. The 1/50th and 1/100th either give 1/25th or stay open.

One of my older brothers, as part of an MA poetry project a few years ago, asked me to develop an old 620 film for him and so I  had access to a spare 620 spool and backing paper.  In 2018 I rewound a roll of Ilford FP4+ 120 film onto the spool that would fit and set out to photograph some locations with linked memories.

The following picture has only been lightly edited but did require some retouching as the old backing paper shredded at the edge in areas and deposited fibres and particles on to the film and stopped light leading to black marks.

This is the house where I was born, in the front bedroom. Above that are the attic rooms and in the rear box room was where I developed my first film. We did not have a developing tank for 620 film at that point so I see-saw developed it in 3 pudding basins (developer, stop and fix) while my brother told me when to swap baths through the closed door. 

My Mother always joked that whenever we took photographs of our house there was always washing on the line. The current owners helped maintain that tradition.