Collection Project

Zane Vieira

Art 318 - 01

Collection Project

My Camera Collection When I think about past collections I’ve had, it has never truly been anything

specific it's actually mostly been junk. Like most children, I collected rocks that I thought were

interesting, but they were even more interesting to me due to the fact that my grandfather was sort

of an archaeologist. We would go on “rock hunts” and search for whatever was supposed to be

prominent in the area, then he would polish and shape what we found for literal “rock shows” where

other people would present their findings as in a competition like fashion. Although, most of the stuff

that I wound up collecting as a kid was mainly garbage or things I thought were interesting. Most of

these items were often electrical parts, old mother boards from computers, and various types of

wiring. I wanted to use these elements to make props for short films I made when I was a

preteen, but most of these items went unused. It wasn’t until I was gifted the same grandfather’s

old film camera, the Nikon EM, that I truly began to be interested in old cameras.

It was amazing to me that it still worked, and it produced images that were even better than any
digital camera I’ve seen. From there, I began to slowly amass a small collection of cameras, most
of which didn’t work. It was cool at first, but I soon thought that it was pretty pointless to be collecting
what was basically junk since it couldn’t operate and produce any images. Not to mention, the
cameras I did have that worked cost a fortune to use, since each roll of film was nearly $20 to
develop, which was money I didn’t have. It wasn’t until fairly recently, that my film camera collection
had a resurgence when I began developing my own film, which made shooting film, while still costly,
much more affordable. It’s now my goal to collect cameras that fully function and can produce
images, even if that means I have to repair them myself. I’m choosing to arrange my collection by
camera type(format, function) and roughly the year they came out to broaden an understanding of
where technology was at the time, and how little it has actually changed.