Many beautiful things have difficult births or origins
beset with strife. Ireland’s great artistic blossoming occurred after famine.
America’s great technological growth followed on the heels of multiple wars.
Throughout the history of mainland Europe, the greatest periods of artistic and
scientific advancement followed strife or natural disasters. Because, for
humanity, challenge is a necessary catalyst for creation. And, excepting the
1964 Ford Mustang, creations of true beauty take time, revision, hours, and
great and prolonged thought.
Form, shape, and feel are classic words used
throughout the last half century to describe cameras and their use. A modern,
and I argue better word, is interface. Interface grabs all the older concepts
and bundles them into a nice, tidy package. For the last half century, camera
reviewers have gotten a lot right about describing how to use a camera. What
they consistently fail to do, even what the nice little bundle of concepts in the
word interface fails to do, is move beyond a description of the way that a
photographer uses a camera to discuss the way that a photographer connects with
their camera.
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Rose | Bronica S2a | Nikon Nikkor 25cm f/4 | Rollei Digibase Color Negative 200
No one word better conveys all the myriad
aspects of that concept than connection. A connection is an easy concept to
understand. A connection, sure, is plugging a lamp into a wall. But it’s more. We
feel a connection when we look across the bar at someone and our eye contact
lasts a little longer than might be expected. We make a connection with a firm
handshake and a greeting. We build, strengthen, and maintain our connections
when we invest our time, thoughts, and emotions. Connections, true and honest
and real connections, the kind that last years or decades, have difficult
origins beset with happenstance, conflict, and challenges. A true connection is
a thing of great beauty and value, whether it is with a person, a wild animal,
or a camera.
On January 17, 1952, Zenzaburo Yoshino began
the design of a lifelong dream, construction of an amazing and innovative
camera. Seven years later, in 1959, the first Bronica met the world. Seven
years. Long enough to go through college and graduate school. Almost twice as
long as the average time that people today stay at an employer. Entire stock
market cycles can occur in seven years. A child can progress from birth to the
completion of second grade in seven years. Think about your life over the last
seven years, where you were seven years ago, who you were seven years ago, and
ask what in your life is recognizable today from then. Through that lens, a
seven-year design cycle on a vision, a dream, an unproven product from a
company that had previously made nothing more complicated than a cigarette
lighter, becomes a rare and beautiful venture, likely beset with challenges,
strife, and hardship. Nothing like that could happen in the camera world today.
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Creek | Bronica S2a | Nikon Nikkor 25cm f/4 | CineStill 800T
From that seven years of design and
engineering, Bronica created one of the most beautifully designed cameras ever
put into mass production. From where I sit, I am unaware of a more attractive
6X6 camera. The Bronica, like many of the gorgeous mid-to-late fifties designs
from Japan, channeled both the classical elements of traditional Japanese
design while embracing the best parts of contemporary Western design.
In one of my favorite personal essays,
Junichiro Tanizaki’s “In Praise of Shadows,” Tanizaki writes “There are those
who hold that to quibble over matters of taste in the basic necessities of life
is an extravagance, that as long as a house keeps out the cold and as long as
food keeps off starvation, it matters little what they look like.”
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Insects in Light | Bronica S2a | Zenzanon 80mm f/2.4 | Fuji Velvia 50
I say let us be extravagant. Let us quibble
over matters of taste in camera design. The Bronica S and C cameras have clean,
flowing lines that simultaneously channel and improve on both art deco and
mid-century modern aesthetics. Those design aesthetics are filtered through the
eye of one of the last generations who could have heard stories from people who
lived before Japan opened itself to the West. I would argue that in the same way
that nostalgia influences the designs of modern cars, camera, buildings, and
clothes, a nostalgia for a simpler time in Japan, for a more traditional
Japanese design aesthetic, had to influence the Bronica’s design.
The Bronica arose from mid-century Japan, a
time when Japan was coming of its own on the international stage and
transitioning from the classic Japan of modern folklore to the Japan that we
would recognize today. Against that backdrop, while other Japanese camera makers
were busy cloning German cameras, Zenzaburo Yoshino was designing his own.
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Soft Focus Grasses after Fire | Bronica S2a | Zenzanon 80mm f/2.4 | Ilford Delta 3200
Tanizaki later in the same paragraph I’ve
already read from, goes on to ask of the Japanese people, “Suppose for instance
that we had developed our own physics and chemistry: would not the techniques
and industries based on them have taken a different form…” I say, suppose, for
instance, that a camera aficionado took it upon himself to design a camera from
scratch using design and engineering principles clearly Japanese in origin.
Would not that camera take a different form, with sensibilities that tastefully
and thoughtfully incorporate components in places and with clean lines that
facilitate use and hide the vulgarity of obviousness that thoughtless design
embraces? Would not that much more Japanese design have looked outwardly
elegant and simple, yet be and operated in a manner second nature to the
photographer?
The S2A’s user interface is refined to simplify
and streamline every operation. The lens mount and mirror are engineered to
make the camera as small as possible for the film format. The engineering goes
to great lengths to keep the camera body thin and to allow the camera to nest
well in almost anyone’s hands.
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Three Reeds | Bronica S2a | Nikkor 105mm f/3.5 Leaf Shutter | Ilford Delta 3200
Beautiful design divides people. Beautiful
design creates camps of those who love and those who hate, often with little
middle ground. There are large swathes of people who hate the S2A, write it off
as derivative of Hasselblad and with a dimmer focusing screen. And there are
those photographers who have picked up an S2A, felt a connection, and realized
that a camera is more than a light-proof box with some round glass slapped on
the front. I’ll paraphrase one of my friends, a devout Hasselblad man, from a
few months ago. “If I had come across the Bronica at the same time as the
Hasselblad instead of just now, I would be a Bronica user.” And the reason for
that is simple: with Bronica, the camera’s connection with the photographer is
primary and dictates the camera’s construction. With other similar systems, the
camera’s engineering and placement of gears and cams dictates the camera’s
construction.
The S2A was designed to allow as many potential
uses for as many people as possible, to gift the photographer with the ability
to create beyond the typical bounds of camera design. Truly, the Bronica S2A is
not the sum of thoughtfulness, features, and design that defined its origin.
No, the S2A is made more substantial, more complete, by the creativity and
ingenuity which a connection with this camera inspires and encourages in the
photographer.
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House on Hill | Bronica S2a | Nikon Nikkor 25cm f/4 | Fuji Velvia 50
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