“Retro” is a personal project that I’m rather fond of – it’s open-ended, I’ve been working slowly on it for a few years, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s also a lot of work. To take these photos, I use a Sabre 620 camera – a plastic box camera manufactured in the 50’s and 60’s. As Kodak hasn’t manufactured 620 since the 1990’s, I have salvaged 620 reels from garage sales and other 620 cameras in my collection. In a light-tight changing bag, I take 120 film off of the 120 reel and re-roll it onto the 620 reel. The film, a paper-backed roll film, is the same film, it’s just that a 120 reel is slightly larger than a 620 reel, rendering it near impossible to use it in an old 620 camera.
So why all of this trouble? Well, I noticed that when I took pictures of classic cars with the Sabre 620, the resulting photographs reminded me of the pictures of my family and their cars from my grandparent’s photos that I saw when I was a kid. My uncles were car nuts and one uncle started racing on dirt tracks when he was 16 or 17. In short, sentimentality. And I think it looks cool. Do you like Instagram? This is the real deal. (For the record, I started this series before Instagram existed.) I decided to continue shooting and create this series with this old camera – record the retro people that love the classic cars and rockabilly culture that goes along with it. Enjoy!
